Hello @rosanna1959 -- Welcome to Mayo Connect. We are glad you found us. What a great question for your first post on Connect. I think it's something a lot of people struggle with, including myself. For myself, I try to feed on positive thoughts and keep away from negative thinking which always seems to be a downward spiral. Regular exercise of some kind also helps me -- nothing big, some stretching, short walk (for me real short!), or whatever you physically are able to do. Finding something I really enjoy doing and making time to do it helps keep me focused on positive thoughts. Setting goals works for a lot of people also. Here's a website with a list that may be helpful: https://au.reachout.com/articles/tips-for-getting-motivated.

@rosanna1959 are you having difficulty getting motivated or staying motivated? Do you have any activities that you enjoy doing that help keep you motivated?

John

@rosanna1959 Motivation for me has always been a matter of picturing what I wanted for me and my family, on down the road. However, over the last ten or twenty years I have just lived by habit, mostly. I spent 50 years as a pastor, so I have a habit of trying to make the lives of other people better. I spent 20 years with a second occupation, playing, coaching and officiating football. So I now watch a lot of football, and burn a lot of energy analyzing the playing, coaching and officiating action. We have four children, 10 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren, helping them, teaching them, washing them, protecting, so I still do that. I have internet friends around the world for whom I feel responsible, so I write books for them, including books of my own disorders (https://bit.Ly/1w7j4j8). I have lived in America all this time, and I put a lot of energy into trying to guide the country and protecting her from her enemies. Six of us have served some way in the military, as have about another 30 or my siblings and their families. That is all the motivation I can handle, for now. The docs told my wife, 30 years ago, that I would not live through the night. That, in itself, is a lot of motivation.