How do you motivate yourself?

[FearlessSwiftie]

Recently I noticed that I lose interest in doing something easily.I did scrapbooking and dancing and playing the flute but in some time all these things became boring to me and it took me about 2 or 3 months to lose all the interest. I remember the couches telling me I have some kind of talent in dancing and music but this didn't really motivate me to keep going. I can give up reading a book and switch to some other, I can give up going to the gym because I bored and so on, but I think it's not really good, right? How do you motivate yourself to continue doing some hobbies or whatever else?

By forming a habit. I am quite stubborn, so when I decide something, I incorporate it into a strict routine otherwise my feng shui gets upset 😂. So for years I swam on a Monday night. Without fail, otherwise I’d feel bad. If I can’t swim, I’ll run, but it has to be on a Monday night. Once it’s a habit, it’s really easy.

I agree with Buddha, forming a habit is a right thing to do. Also I've read about a nice psychological trick: if there is something you want to achieve, you gotta visualize it first. So I did a collage with pictures of all the things I want (i.e. diploma, fit body, country house, a cat etc) and I feel like I really can achieve these things because I SEE them, you know? They are just before your eyes and you can't help but do something to reach your goals. I think it's important for this collage to be printed out, not kept somewhere in your laptop folders. You can use any digital photo collage maker to do that, actually (I used this one) but definitely PRINT IT OUT and put it somewhere where you will see it all the time. Maybe this will help.

Maybe you need some response from others over your achievements. So joining a book club, posting on amazon your rating of the book, joining someone else to exercise so you are letting them down if you don't turn up, selling cards (or trying to)? I find I am drifting more in lockdown - I'm retired and have too much time at present.

I wouldn't see it as a problem. Hobbies and interests are just for fun. Pick them up when you feel like it, drop them and do something else/just chill when you feel like it; there's nothing wrong in that.

I do want to get round to more reading and do something about the pile of books though.

I suppose it's different if it's somthing like dancing where you need to practice/ your level of skill develops etc and if you dropped it for a bit you mightn't be as good as you were getting, when you got back to it.