By Rafael Robledo

Most of us have seen the meme of Shia LaBeouf where he says “Just do it. Make your dreams come true …”  but how can someone just do it if they don’t feel like doing it. As college students we may feel unmotivated at times and that is totally fine. We just need to find that spark to bring ourselves up to “do it.” 

There are two different types of mentalities that define one’s outlook it the situation and this is key to being motivated. The Locus rule, consists of two different mentalities that many of us choose to adopt. There is the internal locus of control and external locus of control.

The mindset of external locus of control consists of a person blaming their surroundings for everything in their life. With this mindset one does assume responsibility for their actions and as a result make the person feel less motivated to do said action. For example let’s say that I have an assignment due today and instead of doing it I get a call from a friend to hang out. I would in turn hang out and probably feel less inclined to do the assignment and instead blame my friends for taking my time away. In this case the surroundings would be my friends and I would not take responsibility that I made the decision to go out. 

Within the external locus of control mentality, one may not feel as if they are in control of their life and instead blame life for the outcome of the decisions made. This is bad since one may simply feel less motivated to do anything and it becomes a cycle. The way to counter this would be to adopt the internal mindset of control.

The concept of internal mindset of control is defined as having the mentality that one’s actions determine the outcome of their life. This simply means that one takes responsibility for their actions and have motivation to improve oneself. Let’s take the same example of going out with friends instead of doing the assignment due. If you assume responsibility that the assignment was not done because of a decision that you made you might self reflect on how things could have gone differently. This gives off the incentive that you are in control of the situation and feel more empowered to actually do things. As such you become more motivated to do the tedious obstacles. By giving yourself credit when you actually accomplish the small things you basically give yourself a small morale boost which helps out in the long run. 

Personally, these past few days, I’ve been really burnt out and didn’t know how to get myself motivated and back on track. This is why I searched up on how to become more motivated. What I plan on doing is waking up early and have a nice morning jog to start the day. Then go to school and continue my daily schedule. I will start out slowly so that I can adjust to my new norm. This is so I can exercise again and to have a better sleep schedule to hopefully improve. 

Something that I learned from researching this up is that if you let life control you then you feel less inclined to do the things that you like, but if you control your own life, then you will actually enjoy them. Just remember that change comes up slowly so don’t rush. Simply notice the small improvements and start from there. I hope you have a great week and hopefully get started on the road to improvement.