Oh motivation. If it only it would stick around, am I right?
I’ve written on motivation before, so I’ll keep this one short.
I personally think motivation is BS. It’s not that it doesn’t exist, or that it doesn’t matter. It does and does. It’s that the emphasis we often place on motivation is misplaced.
We think motivation is supposed to last. If it doesn’t, it means the job or side hustle or workout routine or diet or whatever other thing you are no longer doing was just not right for you. Or it means we are flawed and incapable because we just can’t seem to stay motivated.
Here’s the thing: motivation comes and goes. It just does. That’s just what it does. No one is motivation 100 percent of the time to do even their most favorite thing. We are human and subject to things like: boredom, fatigue, distraction, curiosity. And we are subject to the influences of the people and things around us.
Any one of these things can influence how much motivation you feel on a given day to do a given task.
The trick to mastering motivation is not to try to hold on to motivation 100 percent of the time. It’s to set up routines that exist whether you are motivated or not. The trick is not need motivation in the first place.
I don’t know about you, but most of the time I am not super motivated to brush my teeth or floss. But I do. I don’t jump up and down excitedly, motivated to put eye drops in, but I do. Because I’ve built the routine to do them. And there are consequences if I don’t. Ones I am not a big fan of experiencing.
BIG TAKEAWAY: What are you really wishing you had motivation to do? Where in your current routine can you build that in? How can you start establishing a ritual that is so engrained, motivation because the cherry on top, not the bowl for the sundae.
