Yes, you always have motivation, so forget that excuse. So, how come, you don’t feel motivated all the time? Why do does motivation fade and can be hard to find when needed?
The thing is that motivation is like attention – it shifts. We only notice motivation, when it serves our interest, when it supports our intention to do something, often something new or different. We hardly ever notice motivation that preserves our status quo, even though this motivation is times stronger than our desire for change. The first is loud and peaked, the other is quieter, but more resilient.
We hardly ever notice motivation that preserves our status quo.
The are a couple of sayings I really like.
- Emotion is energy in motion.
- Motivation gets you going, discipline keeps you going.
These two sayings are head-on about how motivation works.
How motivation works?
Motivation is emotional. It is the drive, the push or pull, the urge to do something. It can even be too strong to resist. It can be triggered by internal or external stimuli. It can be your image in the mirror that prompts you to go to the gym. It can be an inspiring teacher that ushers you to read more. It can be an attractive potential partner that you irresistibly want to kiss.
The emotion is elevating, it is full of power, full of energy. It makes you believe in your personal power. It supports your feeling of greatness. It makes you believe in your autonomy – that you are in charge of your life, and can direct its course to your liking. This makes you follow this drive so fondly, and long for it when you seem to have lost it.
As any emotion, motivation is short-spanned.
It is not like a space craft that rockets into the sky and keeps going until it reaches high enough altitudes to escape Earth’s gravity. And even then, keeps going on the momentum it has achieved. Motivation is rather like Porsche Taycan, that goes from 0-100 kilometres per hour in under three seconds, after which you take your foot off throttle, because you’ve reached or are about to reach the speed limit. Yes, I know, to some of you, it’s just a joke, but you get the point.
Motivation does not run out, fade off or disappear. It transforms. Now it is no longer serving your thrill of G-force, but the security of status quo. Depending on the situation the status quo can mean anything from staying alive literally to complying to your current self-image. Status quo is like gravitation that pulls you back in hope to preserve stability, because stability saves energy. Motivational wave gives its energy to the underlying current. As you know, currents go in specific directions regardless of what is happening on the surface. It may rain or shine, storm or snow, the currents keep moving in their prescribed pathways.
From motivation to discipline
The currents are immensely helpful when you’re trying to keep up a certain behaviour or habit. This is where discipline comes to play. The current represents the discipline. It does not need you to be thrilled of its movement, it does not need your interference to follow its course. It does so with or without you. We tend to scold ourselves for lack of discipline, and we hardly ever stop to appreciate our currents, because they often go unnoticed. But it is the currents, the discipline that can remind us even in the midst of turmoil, how much power we really have. You have the power to keep your world in place, just like you have the power to change it.
Next time you need to find motivation to do something, know, that you already have motivation. You don’t need to come up with something out of nothing. You don’t first need to create motivation to create, what you intended to create. Know, that all you need to do, is
- identify the status quo that your motivation is currently attending to. Identify where your tremendous power lies in the moment. Identify where is your energy currently flowing.
- Then identify the value of maintaining the status quo – and make no mistake, there is value to it. If there was no value, you would not maintain it.
- Once you have identified the value of the status quo, you can test it and weigh it against the rewards you are after in the desired change. If the change does not serve your personal values, identity and feeling of autonomy, you are down for failure. You need to find more lucrative rewards to get your mind on your side of change.
As you do this, you notice your underlying motivation transforming into an overt power to go after what you want and need.
So, you really never lack motivation. You may need to find it, but rest assured the power is always with you.
#motivation #discipline #emotioninmotion #selfmotivation