The other day I was talking to my friend about motivation. He said that he and everyone around him had suddenly collapsed and that January was a dishonest, inhospitable, grumpy time. I laughed because what he said matched what I was hearing from my circle.
After falling ill on the last day of 2023, I couldn’t get out of bed for days and went through the most difficult and frustrating process I’d had in a long time. I got through it, but it was as if I had left all my will in 2023.
It was as if everything I had been disciplined about had suddenly disappeared involuntarily, I could not continue with my articles, I could not even look at my book when I was about to finish it.
I recovered from my illness, I tried to relax my mind and regain my discipline by returning to my articles, but for once in the last 20 days I could not spare time for my book. I took notes on the story I planned to write each month and put other thoughts in my head, but I simply left my fiction and could not return to it. It seems that the reluctance to the subject is deeply ingrained in me.
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Let’s go back to the beginning, this phenomenon of apathy that my friend mentioned has overwhelmed everyone. If you look at the statistics, every January the gyms are full to bursting. Everyone is enthusiastically carrying the excitement and resolutions of the New Year and reflecting on their responsibilities. But when February comes, the number of people in the gym halves and then gradually decreases. But in my opinion, in recent years this situation has started to happen before February.
Because there is an impatience or a lack of motivation that we cannot control. When my friend asked me why, the first thing that came to my mind was that it was the same thing that brought this motivation.
The New Year, a turning point, a “checkpoint”, gave people a specific or vague goal. The point we had to reach was almost self-evident. As the days passed, we inevitably reached that point, and we experienced the outburst by celebrating New Year’s Eve.
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Of course, since it is about continuity, the most important thing is to find the strength within ourselves to carry it on. I think that New Year’s Eve, which ends the year and creates a holiday feeling, makes us feel different wherever we are, which means that it gives us a purpose outside of our standards (depending on how we spend the day).
On the contrary, we find that the day(s) we think motivate us, our experience of them and the feelings they arouse in us also have the opposite effect. Not every day is New Year’s Eve, but after New Year’s Eve it becomes just another day.
Let’s imagine that we are completely aimless, that we are very bored during the day. We might be in a situation where we have to wait for hours to meet our friend. We may be excited until she arrives, but the waiting is boring. When she does come, our joy factor increases more than ever. But then it gradually returns to a point that we can consider normal, humanly speaking. It is neither as boring as waiting, nor as exciting as seeing it for the first time, but somewhere in between, it begins to take its place on a level that is particular to us.
In short, when people succeed in reaching the point they want to reach, they cannot feel the same as before. Everything that happens in this process (good or bad) can be an experience, that is true. One can even look back on what has happened with sweet sadness or with a deep sigh of relief. But once that threshold has been crossed, it is obvious that we cannot experience the same feelings afterwards.
What can be the solution? New goals and milestones. These may be necessary or refreshing, but they may not be enough for everyone. If possible, there should be more, but at short intervals and within achievable limits. We should not wait for certain days and events to make us happy. Because these situations, which we do not create, cannot offer more than a temporary role. I think this is quite understandable. Therefore, in order to feel happy, we must stop relying on other things.
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