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The struggle is inevitable: You make a plan, organize your tasks, and do your best - but - for whatever reason - things just don’t work.

To be clear, there can be a million reasons why your efforts don’t give your desired results - and many of them are outside of your control:

⛔ Bad weather
⛔ A glitch in the system
⛔ An accident
⛔ Someone changed their mind
⛔ Aliens land on Earth 

➡️ What is your motivation like in these situations?

Feeling let down is inevitable, but how you deal with disappointment can make a big impact on whether you recover motivation and move forward, or get stuck dwelling on what didn’t happen.

There are also reasons why things just don’t work that exist at the blurry limits of your control:

🟡 You’re learning
🟡 You get sick
🟡 You prioritize others
🟡 You change your mind
🟡 You make a mistake

➡️ What is your motivation like in these situations?

It’s often within these unpredictable areas - those that are partially within your control, and partially determined by chance - that it can be the most difficult to stay motivated when things don’t go as planned.

Why is this?
 
Well, one important reason is that unpredictable situations obscure the relationship between cause and effect. When your actions don’t bring you predictable results, why keep trying?

In these moments, it can be tempting to keep pouring effort into whatever’s not working with the hope that something will change.

We are, after all, programmed with messages that favor action rather than reflection (or - gasp!! - just plain ol’ giving up). You know, just keep trying!! The problem is that when factors outside of your control or awareness are at work, relentless effort alone will simply stop working at some point.

For me, this principle came to light during a recent garden project that ended in total plant-pocolypse (yes, it was brutal - no, you don’t want to see pictures) 🌱 After killing two huge flats of outdoor herbs in less than a month, I discovered that the soil I inherited in the garden boxes contained a large amount of salt. Before I discovered this, I watered and weeded and fertilized dutifully - all while the soil was at work sucking the life out of my plants ☣️

Lesson learned: When outside forces are at work on your goals, you can keep pouring efforts into the un-workable until your motivation dries to a crisp - just like my oregano.

Keep reading for the latest articles from The Flow State blog on how to stay motivated and balance your mood when things just don’t work.

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The Latest on When It Just Isn’t Working from the Flow State Magazine

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