I don't comment too frequently, but this post struck a chord with me. As someone who struggles with a lot of what you describe, I felt like I should reach out and let you know that you are not alone. Every time I wake up there's the temptation to just stay in, skip class, skip work, and sleep all day. I've done exactly this before. I'm young, in the prime of my life, and sometimes the hardest thing I do every day is get out of bed.

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It sucks, I know. It pisses me off too; I hate myself on those days. I don't know what spawns this behavior; I haven't been able to reach deep enough into my psyche yet. Sometimes I believe there is something in me that strives to find meaning in what I do daily... and on those days where I am unable to motivate myself, perhaps I am simply failing to discover that meaning. Still, I will share, for what it's worth, my strategy for dealing with this issue.

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To me, I try to fight this apathy with what I see as it's opposite: passion. The opposite of love is not hate... hate is too strong a feeling, too similar to love for that to be true. No, the opposite of love is apathy. I would define apathy as the inability to feel anything, the inability to love, the inability to hate, etc. Thus when I wake up every day I try to live my life to the fullest. That sound cliché, I know, but the best times in my life are the times where I am constantly pushing myself to be better, to become the type of person that I want to become.

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It's not easy. It takes understanding, compassion. You will slip up, you will climb that hill a million times... but the trick is to keep climbing, no matter how far down you slide. I have been actively working on this for a year now, and I will admit that I have not succeeded. I still struggle, I still fail, but I forgive myself and move on. Sometimes it takes a day off to get that week back on track... but once I am able to stop hating myself for avoiding my responsibilities, it becomes easier to take them on.

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I apologize... a lot of what I am saying is conceptual, not concrete. I am still working on this issue of mine, every day, and I am doing my best to approach this challenge with a sense of mindfulness. Be aware of what is going on in your head and in your body. When you have a thought or feeling or emotion, pause to try to discover where that thought is coming from. This is something that you can do, you can practice, all the time. For me, applying this sense of mindfulness allows me to have that compassion necessary to keep going. I am able to take a step back and ask myself why I feel the way I do, and that in turn allows me to take a more constructive approach towards feeling the way I want. This practice will eventually free you.

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Again, I'm not there yet myself, but I am closer than I was a year ago! As for concrete steps, a lot of these you will have to come up with yourself. However, I have found a couple things to be extremely helpful for me, and perhaps they can help you too:

1) Going to the gym. I'm a college male and I can speak for all of my kind when I say that I want to be in shape. I don't want to just be in shape, I want to be able to go to the beach, take my shirt off, and have all the women in a 100 yard radius look at me and faint with arousal. That's vanity, accept it and then use it to make you a better person. Look in the mirror and ask yourself: who do you want to see looking back at you in a year? Once you realize that you can become that person, with a bit of hard work and some dedication, you use that as motivation. Motivation doesn't stem from some secret place deep within you, just waiting to be tapped and depleted. Motivation is wanting something bad enough, acknowledging that you can get what you want, and then doing everything you can to do it.

I've putzed around at the gym before... but once I realized what I wanted I went out and got a personal trainer for 7 sessions. Together we talked about my goals (to look good, feel good, add lean muscle, fill out a somewhat lanky frame, etc), came up with a routine that would get me there, and then set me loose to do it. Since then I've slipped up, I've slept through all my classes multiple times, but guess what? I went to the gym.

Going to the gym is a small step you can take to feel better about yourself and feel better about who you are. It is something that is do-able, accomplishable, and great for you. The endorphins, the confidence, all will only help our problem. You will have more energy and you will use this energy to continue to motivate you. This is step 1.

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2) Schedule appointments. Talk to girls, set up coffee or lunch or whatever the hell you feel like. Do it just to do it. Girls aren't some foreign being, some alien come down from space... if you aren't a complete buffoon you can ask almost anyone to coffee for a chat and you will rarely get rejected straight up. They might not like you, you might not like them, maybe it gets a bit awkward, but you are DOING something. This is huge. Again, you have to start small, take the baby steps. Fill up your week with meetings, lunches, dates... and not just with girls, they are just a relevant example. Teachers, friends, fellow students, potential employers, a random stranger you met in line. If you make an appointment, you will go. And more often than not, you'll enjoy yourself and the other person will too.

Do this and you'll become a better person, you'll be one step closer to living a fulfilling life, a passionate life. Human interaction is key, even for the introverts. You can't shun millennia of herd mentality; being with people and talking to people energizes us. I see many gamers label themselves as introverts... yet they play only mmorpgs? This is step 2 because it sets you on the right path. The more people you talk to, the more you can discover yourself. When you talk to people, in an intimate situation, you are constantly mirroring, supporting, and returning bits and pieces of the person you are talking to. This helps you discover yourself, helps you to shape yourself, for you will see yourself reflected in the people you talk to.

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3) Do cool things. I would love to say that I have mastered this step, but I am far from it. After many years of not really doing all that much cool shit, I don't have a good idea of what it takes. Again, start small though... research, look around, be aware of any opportunity that presents itself. Once you keep a mindful eye on all the potentially cool and fun things you can do, you will notice more and more of them. Go to concerts - alone if you can't find people to go with. Try to learn something new that you are proud to say you've tried. Keep at it and when it bores you, move on. When you do cool things you become an interesting person. And interesting people are liked by others and by themselves. Once you like yourself, once you begin to understand yourself, shape yourself, the motivation will follow.

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4) I said it before, I'll say it again: be compassionate. We are each our own harshest critic. Understand that you aren't perfect, but embrace the idea that you are working towards bettering yourself. You will not be able to go from 0 to 60. That isn't reasonable, we both know that. Yet we have a tendency to try to do this, and we burn out, and then we hate ourselves, and then we give up. Stop the cycle, forgive yourself.

That's my 2cents, hope it helps some.