Sample of Sustain Your Author Career

Note: This is an unedited section and subject to change prior to publication

From Section 5: Building author resilience

From Motivating with Fear to Motivating with Purpose

When you stop letting fear motivate your decisions and stop dipping into fear-based adrenaline for energy to cross tasks off your list, you may find that you get slightly fewer things done each day. This is normal, and I encourage you to view it as a signpost that you’re on the right track. 

The experience of decreased productivity is going to be especially frightening to Threes, and likely also to Ones and Eights. What I ask if you are one of these types and teetering on an existential crisis because of accomplishing fewer tasks in your day, is that you not immediately snap back into the fear motivation. Sit with the discomfort of this transition and keep reminding yourself of the value of letting your digestive system, endocrine system, nervous system, circulatory system, and even your immune system rest after the long-term stress that’s been putting them under so much strain. Notice the anxiety you feel about slowing down and where it’s manifesting inside of your body. Watch it as an interested observer would, but remember that you don’t have to let it take the wheel. And please, for a little while, resist the urge to go back to the level of activity you were doing before. 

If you can hold off on falling back into those fear-motivation patterns, you will discover deeper sources of motivation blossoming from a healthier place inside of you, but you must give these new, more refined and matures sources of motivation space to unfurl. You must trust this process. You must let your body, mind, and heart reset to a sustainable rhythm. Motivating yourself through fear is not sustainable. 

There are things that can motivate us outside of our core fear and core desire, things like a sense of purpose that will sustain us by being more durable than our fragile ego. But only once we commit to rejecting fear as our motivator do we create the space we need to connect to things like meaning and purpose in a deep enough way that they compel us forward. 

The energy of purpose is often not as intense as the energy we’re accustomed to from fear. Our bodies are exceptionally sensitive to fear for obvious biological and evolutionary reasons. Adrenaline is a rush, as it were. You get flooded with it. Your alertness of your surroundings increases, and the blood rushes away from your core to your limbs. The same thing happens when we put ourselves under chronic stress, and it can become such a familiar state that interrupting that cycle can make us feel incredibly low on energy for a while as we endure a crash. 

This crash isn’t limited to physical energy. It can tank our mood, and drag our thoughts down with it, so we must be mindful that we’re experiencing a crash so that we don’t believe the moods and accompanying thoughts. They are simply chemical reactions associated with kicking our adrenaline habit. 

If we anticipate this crash, it’s easier to detach ourselves from the negative thoughts that can accompany it and take proactive measures to alleviate some of the effects. Taking no measures at this point is letting the plane crash. But there is another option: understanding that the rapidly decreasing elevation is unavoidable, we can take steps to land the plane smoothly and safely. We can be proactive about doing healthy things for our bodies that will keep the chemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins from crashing and burning.

Consider focusing on building a healthful diet during this time. Choosing foods rich in vitamins and minerals while avoiding foods that we know tank our energy even further is an important step and an act of deep self-compassion. This is going to be easier said than done, as crashes in adrenaline and cortisol send signals to our body to load up on sweets. If giving into these cravings were a crime, I’d admittedly be on death row by now, though I will say that the more times I choose the healthful alternative, the easier the choice becomes to do it the next time. 

To be clear, I’m not telling you to launch into a juice cleanse or go vegan or start on keto here. Radical changes are probably the last thing you need as you make this transition away from fear. But when you are deciding what to make yourself for dinner, you can start by asking what the most nurturing thing for your body would be. You probably already know that a Double Whopper and a salmon fillet with sauteed spinach do not carry equal health benefits. Providing your body what it needs to be healthy is a loving act, not punishment. (And sometimes just eat the Whopper.)

In other words, all those basic dietary recommendations from your doctor about eating more vegetables and healthy oils and fiber and avoiding processed foods? Actually follow them when you’re anticipating the adrenaline crash of shifting away from fear-based motivation.

During this process, we can also be proactive by putting time in our schedule for gentle exercise. Hard workouts can increase cortisol levels, which is what we’re trying to let decline in a gentle way. So, if you’ve been exercising like the devil’s chasing you with a hot poker, consider temporarily transitioning to something gentler for your body, like going for long walks, yoga, or tai chi. 

And finally, as you approach this motivational transition, look honestly at the sleep you’re getting. Poor sleep or not enough of it puts every system of your body under stress, which puts you at great risk of reverting to fear-based motivation just to keep yourself awake with adrenaline. 

So, clearly it’s not as simple as “stop letting fear motivate you,” although I wish it were. It’s tricky to decompress from the usual stress levels you’re used to. It takes time and trust, and unless you support yourself with healthy practices around food, exercise, and sleep (and ask those around you to support you in it), you may find yourself feeling so low that you aren’t willing to stick with the process.