Increasing Our Motivation Levels

I think the SAS is actually pretty weak. It tires fast. If you are stressed it will already be depleted. Since it depletes so easily, if you attempt a task without the SAS being at full capacity you may be making the task extremely difficult for yourself. I read once that if you are very tired, productivity can drop by a third.

So if you are about to attempt a difficult task, it is important to make sure that your SAS is ready for action and that its resourcing potential is at maximum capacity. For this reason, if you have daunting jobs that you wish to tackle, in order to maximise your SAS capacity it is worth making sure you tackle the jobs when you are fully rested and unstressed. If you try tackling a daunting job after you are already tired out (perhaps at the end of a tiring day’s work) your SAS may already be seriously depleted, and since this is the situation you are trying to avoid in order to increase your emotional confidence for approaching the chore in question, this may completely undermine your potential for conquering this difficult task.

For example, I often get up in the mornings – have breakfast, grab a cup of tea, go on Facebook or a forum for a bit and then maybe do some writing or some other project. The cup of tea and Facebook relaxes me and puts me in a good mood, which is the emotional state I want to be in before tackling some difficult tasks. Of course most of us Facebook users know that Facebook can de-stress, but that it can also be a distraction from getting any work done! So obviously we need to make sure we are not using it as an ongoing distraction and self-control is necessary. Handled in moderation however, such ‘time-out’ activities can provided much-needed bursts of rest for our SAS during ongoing work on difficult tasks.

Another important factor to consider is our general level of life stress. If our general life-stress level is high, approaching a difficult task will be far more difficult, because the SAS will be depleted. This is why it is essential that, as we attempt to strengthen our life skills, we are addressing all stressful areas of our lives and not just some isolated area, since the multi-lateral effort is necessary in order to help secure developments in all areas of our lives. All stresses will deplete the SAS and we must learn to recognise what is stressing us, and to take practical steps to try and resolve these situations. As we tackle more stressful problems, and develop better life skills, so our stress levels will reduce, and consequently the strain placed on the SAS will reduce. In turn we will then find it easier to approach difficult tasks and as a result of this our stress levels will reduce again and our SAS will be in an even better position to tackle new tasks. Once again we see that a cycle occurs. With this in mind, it becomes easier to understand why depressed individuals often end up endlessly tired. There is just so much strain placed on the SAS due to stress levels.