#53 - Be your own motivation

Have you got something you are wanting to work on to better yourself?  Are you in school or trying to learn new things?  Maybe you are starting a new business and just getting started?  Or perhaps you are planning to participate in a marathon, or move to a new city, or just do something exciting you have not done before.  It could also be starting a new chapter in your life.  Maybe ending a relationship that was not working.  What about even something like planning to start a new habit, like writing daily or meditation or exercise?

With all of these things, we have to find the motivation to do them.  This motivation can come from internal or external sources but for something to really work, you have to want it to work.  If you don't have the self-motivation, you will just be spinning your wheels until the experience gets to tiring or exhausting or you just don't like it and then you will quit.  

The initial motivation for something is critical.  You have to have good reasons, justifications that inspire yourself.  The reason you are wanting to do something, like losing a lot of weight or recreating yourself in your career or climbing a mountain, is going to be the inspiring vision you have for yourself completing the task. No one else is going to benefit from you making this goal or reaching the top.  You must want to do this for you.  

You must work on the psychology of why do you need to make these changes, what is really the motivating factor behind what I am wanting to do?  Find a vision, the picture of where you want to be, what you want to look like at the end of your journey.  You must want to really do it tho.  You cannot or should not use another person as your motivation.  You have to want to change for you or you will never truly succeed in what you are wanting to do.  

Just recently I had a chapter in my life come to an end.  It was a short chapter but I learned a lot about myself.  During that time I was asked to make a joint effort to do something to better ourselves, to lose weight.  I have found in the past that to accomplish something having an accountability partner is a great way to do it.  Being able to celebrate the successes and work towards a goal together is a great way to do it.  I was not only happy with the experience but excited about the outcome.  

Apparently I was the only one who had the motivation to do this, as I was actually told.  The other lacked the motivation to continue.  Not long after that, the entire foundation of the relationship crumbled.  One of the things that was said was that there was no motivation to make the change.  Now that the end of the partnership has arrived, he now says he has found the motivation.  How is that a healthy motivating factor?  I hope it will work for him however I cannot feel that is healthy.  

If you have no motivation inside yourself, you will not succeed in the long run of reaching and continuing to stay at your goal.  You have to find it in yourself to want to do it or it is just another hill you will reach and then slip back down again.  You must be your own motivation to succeed.