Are you a 16 year-old? Do you spend endless days and nights on your phone, laptop, or tablet? Do you switch between social media apps every few hours while simultaneously ignoring your online school notifications? Well, I have just the thing for you. Motivation! Buy it now for only $15.99 plus shipping and handling! Call now to get 2, not 1, but 2 cases of motivation, only $15.99 plus shipping and handling!
To be unmotivated, especially now where it seems everyone my age is doing something or solving something or creating something or achieving something, will be the death of me. Do you know how many late nights I’ve spent wanting to do something, telling myself I’ll definitely do it tomorrow, only to be struck by un-motivation the next morning?
Hint: too many to count.
Yes, blame it on laziness. Blame it on technology. Blame it on my generation. But you have to admit, the gruesome case of un-motivation is a hard one to overcome. Especially when it feels like everything is stacked up against you: parents, peers, adults.
It’s not just about being unmotivated, it’s about feeling motivated but having no motivation to do the thing you want to do. (I know it doesn’t make sense, but trust me.) There will be days when I feel so inspired to do something with my life like writing a novel or finding the cure for cancer, but then that bloody case of un-motivation will lock the door to my knowledge. The door won’t budge. It won’t open.
There’s so many factors that contribute to me being unmotivated. The biggest one, of course, is pressure. Pressure from my parents, pressure from my friends, pressure from school, pressure from adults, pressure from society, and most of all, pressure from myself. So much pressure builds up that we feel unmotivated to share our ideas. The indicator on the manometer of our minds has broken.
Hearing Kate Simonds’ Ted Talk about being 17 was so unbelievably relatable. I know what you’re thinking, what does this random teenager have to do with un-motivation? Don’t worry, we’ll get to that. To be young and to feel like your ideas are meaningless, or at least not meaningful enough to make an impact, is so heartbreaking. As an overthinker myself, this aspect of society killed me. (If you get that reference, good for you.)
What Simonds was saying was so inspiring because she knew exactly how I felt. Now maybe she wasn’t talking about motivation (or un-motivation) but she knew what it felt like to not have the odds in your favor. Most of all, she understood the potential teenagers have. She understood the infinite capacity of our ideas, the unlimited amount of change our ideas could have, if someone just gave us the chance.
To contradict Simonds, I’d first like to mention Seth Goden’s podcast “You’re It.”. His idea in this podcast is that we shouldn’t wait around for someone to pick us, but instead to do whatever we want to do. It’s up to us to do the picking. Simonds is right in one aspect; adults need to be more open to the ideas of teenagers. But, Simonds is also wrong because we shouldn’t need to wait around like Goden says. With or without the help of adults, our ideas can change the world, only if we believe we can.
Back to un-motivation, because I know you were thinking about it. To be unmotivated, like I said, is the only factor that’s really against us teenagers. We shouldn’t worry about being picked, like Goden says in his podcast. We just need to worry about staying motivated, about actually going through with what we want to do.
So, now you’re thinking, if it’s only motivation we need to worry about, then what’s next? How do we stay motivated? How do we resist the pressures of society or combat falling for un-motivation? Like any question in the universe, there’s no simple answer. The only answer is: it’s up to you to decide.
If you’re motivated enough, you’ll do what you want to do. If you’re motivated enough, external pressures won’t bother you. If you’re motivated enough, overthinking about whether your ideas are meaningless won’t change your output. If you’re motivated enough, your ideas will change the world. But, it’s up to you to decide.
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