Motivation Without Stress: How to Stop Waiting for the Last Minute

If you have a tendency to procrastinate until the last minute on anything and everything, this video is for you.

Motivation is a nuanced subject, especially when it comes to those who are neurodivergent, chronically ill, or disabled. My hope is that this will be one more piece of the puzzle to helping you move toward your goals.

Watch the video below, or read on for the full transcript.

Hi! I’m Cassie Winter. Inside my signature productivity and self-care program, The Action Navigator, I help neurodivergent and chronically ill individuals just like you master a toolset for genuine self-care and a bias toward action, so they can choose where to spend their precious time and energy to create the life they want.

Now it’s your turn!

What does motivation feel like?

Take a moment to answer this question: What does motivation feel like to you? Get as specific as possible. Describe what you feel like emotionally and physically when you feel motivated.

If you were to have asked me that in college, I probably would have said motivation feels:

• Like It’s now or never

• Like if I don’t use this inspired, creative energy I’ll be very uncomfortable emotionally and physically.

• I’m energized, restless, or antsy, and my heart rate may have increased.

• This makes me feel powerful and focused.

• Because of this, getting started feels involuntary and it’s easier to accomplish what I’m motivated to do.

Does any of that resonate with you?

Feeling Your Feelings

It’s time for a quick but important tangent on feeling your feelings.

Feeling your feelings means literally feeling the physical sensations in your body that coincide with your emotions.

When we focus our attention on what we’re literally feeling in our body, we’re better able to process those feelings so we can regulate our emotions and nervous system, and not let those feelings get “stuck” and contribute to a dysregulated nervous system or even trauma.

What does this have to do with feeling motivated? I’m getting there.

Take a moment to remember an event in your life that made you feel excited. Revisit that memory and notice what physical sensations come up in your body when you remember feeling excited.

Make a mental note of what excitement feels like in your body.

Next take a moment to remember an event in your life that made you feel anxious. Revisit that memory and notice what physical sensations come up in your body when you remember feeling anxious.

Now tell me, do the physical sensations of excitement and anxiety feel similar to you?

If you were going about your day and suddenly felt that sensation in your body, would you be able to tell whether it’s excitement or anxiety?

If your answer is no and your mind is blown, write “Feel Your Feelings” in the comments below.

What you have just discovered is that:

• Different emotions can create the same physical sensations in your body, and

• How we determine what emotion that physical sensation indicates is through context.

Motivation vs Fight or Flight

Think back to how you described what motivation feels like to you. Here’s mine:

• Motivation feels like It’s now or never

• Like if I don’t use this inspired, creative energy I’ll be very uncomfortable emotionally and physically.

• I’m energized, restless, or antsy, and my heart rate may have increased.

• This makes me feel powerful and focused.

• Because of this, getting started feels involuntary and it’s easier to accomplish what I’m motivated to do.

Now let me ask you this (and warning, it’s a doozy): What other emotions can those feelings and sensations indicate if the context were different?

For me, those feelings and sensations can easily indicate that my sympathetic nervous system is activated and I’m in fight or flight mode.

Here’s my theory: If you have a tendency to procrastinate until the last minute and have resonated with everything I’ve said so far, I bet you haven’t been feeling motivated, you’ve been experiencing fight or flight and mistaking that for motivation.

Side Note: I get that technically, according to the English language definitions of the word “motivation,” that fight or flight is a motivating experience.

Fight or flight motivates you to save your life.

I’m not denying that.

What I am saying is that fight or flight isn’t the only physical experience associated with feeling motivated.

What’s my point?

My point is that if you’re always waiting for the physical sensations of fight or flight in order to “feel motivated,” of course you always wait until the last minute! That’s when fight or flight kicks in!

What else does motivation feel like?

If you feel personally attacked by what I just said, I invite you to take a deep breath with me.

So what do you do with this information?

It’s time to explore what the others ways you experience the physical sensation of motivation. It’s not always going to be peak stress or anxiety (aka fight or flight), and it’s not always going to be peak excitement and happiness either.

Even for those of us whose lives feel like a constant stream of extremes, there are far more moments of in between, of gray area, of quiet feelings and sensations than there are extreme ones.

This means that your next steps are to be curious about what other feelings and sensations indicate motivation for you, and to keep in mind that they’re probably going to be a lot less extreme than peak excitement or fight or flight.

What are the quiet feelings and sensations that indicate you’re feeling motivated?

If that feels like a question you’d like to explore in your journal, I invite you to try out my Anytime Pages journaling technique.

And in case it helps, one of the quiet feelings I experience that indicate I’m motivated is simply wanting to do something. Something I used to say all the time was, “I want to want to do X,Y,Z.” For me what that really meant was I was always waiting to feel fight or flight in order to do what I already wanted to do. When I stopped waiting for fight or flight and listened to the quiet wants and the quiet needs, I didn’t have to go looking for motivation.

It found me.

Earlier I mentioned my signature productivity and self-care program, the 🧭 Action Navigator 🧭. Designed for those who are Neurodivergent, Chronically Ill, or Disabled, it’s packed with tools and techniques for getting motivated, mastering your time, getting organized, and offering yourself radical compassion.

If that sounds like exactly what you’ve been looking for, use the link in the description box below to learn more!

If you also have mental health issues such as depression or trauma and want even more pieces to the motivation puzzle, I recommend checking out another video on motivation here.

If you liked this video, hit that like button and subscribe, and be sure to share it with one other person.

I'll be back in soon with another video.

See you then.

Bye.