Going Through a Dip

I’m going to share a mnemonic with you, and before I do, I want to acknowledge something. I generally can’t stand tick-box coaches whose entire technique consists of working through questions one by one using a handy acronym, as if the complexity of a human life can be diagnosed and resolved with four letters on a laminated card. I call this mnemonicosis, and I may have invented that term, too.

But the DIPP mnemonic is different. DIPP stands for Desperation, Inspiration, Purpose, and Perspiration.

It’s particularly useful when you’re going through a dip in your life, which is precisely when most people need the most help and tend to get the least clarity. Let’s work through each element, because understanding them separately matters before you can use them together.

The D is for Desperation. This isn’t the word most self-help frameworks like to start with, but I’m a doctor, not a motivational speaker, and I’m more interested in what works than what sounds encouraging. I want you to write down what makes you feel desperate about your current situation, or the situations you can’t stand in the future, the patterns you’re sick of repeating, the people who drain you. The version of your life that you absolutely do not want to be living in five years. Make yourself feel it, don’t sanitise it into polite bullet points, really get into the actual discomfort of what you’re trying to escape.

This matters because, properly confronted, desperation is one of the most powerful motivational forces available to you. Research on approach motivation and avoidance motivation shows that both can drive behaviour, but in different ways and with different effects (Elliot & Covington, 2001). When you’re stuck, avoidance motivation — that urgent need to escape your current circumstances — can provide the initial shove that approach motivation sometimes can’t. The desire to move away from something painful is often stronger, at least initially, than the desire to move towards something good. Use it. It’s energy you already have.

I’ve sat with people who couldn’t identify a single thing they wanted but could describe in vivid, furious detail everything they desperately wanted to stop. That’s not a problem. That’s a starting point. The clarity of what you’re running from will get you off the starting line when the vision of what you’re running towards isn’t yet sharp enough to do it on its own. If what you’re noticing is that you can’t picture wanting anything at all, that’s worth mentioning to your GP rather than working through alone — it can be a sign of low mood as much as a starting point for a framework like this one.

The I is for Inspiration. This is the other side of the equation. If desperation is what you’re running from, inspiration is what you’re running towards. Now write down what you want. Not what you think you should want, not what would impress other people, not what seems realistic given your current circumstances. What do you actually want? What would make you jump out of bed in the morning if it were real? What would your life look like if your most self-indulgent dreams came true?

Most people are embarrassingly vague about this. They say they want to be happy, or successful, or free. That’s not inspiration. That’s a category. Real inspiration is specific enough that you can see it, smell it, describe it in enough detail that someone else could picture it too. Studies on goal-setting consistently show that clearly defined, emotionally resonant goals dramatically outperform vague aspirations when it comes to actual achievement (Locke & Latham, 2002). Inspiration isn’t a feeling. It’s a picture with enough resolution to navigate towards.

Purpose

The first P is for Purpose. This is where most frameworks lose people, because purpose sounds impossibly grand. Find your life’s purpose. Discover your calling. Align with your authentic self. All of it sounds like something you need a gap year and a meditation retreat to locate, and most people quietly abandon the search after a while because they can’t find it.

Let me offer a more practical way in. There are three levels of purpose, and most people operate primarily at one of them without realising it. The first level is materialistic purpose. You’re doing what you’re doing for money, for security, for the tangible things that resources provide. Don’t dismiss this. Needing to pay your rent and feed your family is a legitimate and powerful purpose. It gets people out of bed every day in conditions that would stop many others in their tracks. It’s not shallow to want material stability. It becomes limiting only when it’s the only source of meaning you have.

The second level is egotistical purpose. You’re doing what you’re doing to feel good about yourself, to feel respected, to occupy a position in the world that confirms your sense of your own worth. Again, don’t dismiss this. The desire for status, recognition, and self-esteem isn’t vanity to be overcome. It’s a basic human drive that can motivate enormous achievement. The problem isn’t having it. The problem is mistaking it for the deepest version of purpose available.

The third level is intrinsic purpose. This is where you do what you do because it aligns with something inside you that doesn’t depend on external validation to feel real. Research on self-determination theory shows that intrinsic motivation — motivation driven by internal values rather than external rewards — produces greater persistence, creativity, and psychological well-being than motivation driven mainly by money or ego (Ryan & Deci, 2000). When your actions are aligned with who you actually are, not just what you want to get, you become capable of sustaining effort that would exhaust someone operating from purely external motivation.

The question worth spending real time on is this. Which level are you currently operating from? Can you see a path from your current purpose to the deeper levels? Is there a gap where intrinsic purpose should be? Because if there is, that gap is probably the explanation for why you have goals you’re not pursuing, or why achievements that looked satisfying from the outside have left you feeling emptier than expected.

As Oscar Wilde has Lord Darlington put it in Lady Windermere’s Fan, there are only two tragedies in life. One is not getting what one wants. The other is getting it. External purpose eventually delivers something you didn’t expect — the arrival at the destination you worked towards, only to find it wasn’t what you needed. Intrinsic purpose is different because the direction itself has meaning, and the journey justifies itself.

Your purpose doesn’t need to be grand. It doesn’t need to save the world, cure a disease, or build an empire. It needs to be yours. What do you get up for? What would you regret not having pursued? What would you keep doing even if nobody was watching and nobody was paying? Find something that answers those questions honestly, even partially, and you have a start.

Perspiration

The second P is for Perspiration. Everything you’ve built through working with desperation, inspiration, and purpose amounts to nothing without this final element — the actual work, the thing you need to do every day to make things happen.

Not when motivation is high and conditions are perfect, but when motivation has evaporated, and conditions are difficult, and the only reason to do it is that it needs doing. Find out what you need to sweat to make things happen.

Research on implementation intentions — the specific plans people make about when, where, and how they’ll act — shows that people who create these plans are significantly more likely to follow through than those who simply intend to act (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006). Wanting something isn’t enough. Knowing why you want it isn’t enough. The perspiration is the bridge between intention and reality, and it needs to be as specific and as regular as you can make it.

Here’s where most people trip. They design elaborate systems, full schedules, and comprehensive transformation plans. The plan is so impressive it feels like progress in itself. Then the first obstacle arrives, the first day when everything competes with the plan, and the whole thing collapses. Not because they were weak. Because the plan was overcomplicated. The most sustainable action is the simplest one done consistently. Pick one thing, put in the work, work hard at it until you metaphorically or literally perspire, and do it every day.

What is the one thing you can do every single day to move in the direction you’ve identified? Not the ten things you should ideally do. The one thing that, done consistently, will eventually compound into the life you’re trying to build. That’s where you start. And then you start again tomorrow.

Further reading

1. Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119.
2. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78.
3. Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705–717.
4. Elliot, A. J., & Covington, M. V. (2001). Approach and avoidance motivation. Educational Psychology Review, 13(2), 73–92.
5. Wilde, O. (1892). Lady Windermere’s Fan.