Why Motivation Is Not Enough
What motivates you? If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard this question, I’d be writing this to you from my own island somewhere along the pacific.
Motivation is a buzz word that while harmless on the surface, can really set people up for failure if they put too much emphasis on needing it, in order to be in the emotional state to make decisions or take actions.
Being motivated feels good. It can get us out of a rut and re-energize or invigorate us to raise our own bar and take the next proverbial step forward in our lives.
However, there is also a downside to motivation too.Motivation comes from the external. It comes from seeing, hearing, or feeling something outside of ourselves that jolts an inner spark for us to get in to action in some shape or form.
Whether that has to do with making lifestyle changes around health (in order to vastly improve energy, sleep, weight, and mental clarity),in one’s career (maybe creating new goals or benchmarks that are a bit edgy),or in an intimate relationship (by choosing to express more openly the love and gratitude one has), all of these while beautiful on the surface, aren’t sustainable with relying on the sheer state of being motivated.
See us humans are an interesting species.
Our brains are wired to be comfortable. I know many of you reading this will already have an awareness of this, but hear me out even a little more.
Each and every day we’re creating automatic habits and systems. One of the easiest to discern is brushing one’s teeth.
Every morning after you wake up you brush your teeth right(hopefully)?
The way you squeeze the toothpaste canister is a system. Do you squish it down the middle or squeeze it from the end of the tube?
How much toothpaste do you put on your brush? Maybe it’s a smaller amount that barely covers the brush, or are you more liberal and completely engulf the entire thing?
When you brush do you do it vertically or horizontally?
Do you floss beforehand or afterwards?
When you floss do you use the old school yarn-stick or the individually packaged sticks where there’s no need to measure or cut the thread prior to use?
All of these are self-created systems.
When we first began brushing our teeth, it was completely new to us. The taste, feel, and curiously shaped brush were all foreign to us.
We watched our parents do it and probably expressed many tears when they first began brushing ours.
Why though?
Because it was completely new to us.
Guess what we needed at the time too, in order to convince us to not only accept them doing it for us, but to continue doing it for ourselves when we became old enough to do so: motivation.
I don’t know if yours were similar to mine, but I remember my mom making airplane hand gestures with the toothbrush. Going around in circles and singing a song or riddle to calm my anxious state, until I would fully submit and allow the brush to go in.
Why do I mention all this?
Because it’s a beautiful example of how motivation is able to get us into the act of creating a new habit.
We’ve all have watched someone speak rather in person or onYoutube who we’ve found highly motivating.
Rather it’s their way with words, the confidence in which they convey, the energy and presence they command, or a mixture of all of them.We as humans love to be motivated.
It feels good.
However there are two downsides of motivation, if we’re discussing it on a tangible level.
It’s fleeting
It’s always from something outside of us
It’s an impossibility to always feel motivated to do something.And I mean this about anything.
I absolutely love writing, but I don’t always feel motivated to do so.
I love meditating and doing yoga, but I don’t always feel motivated to do it (especially when I’m tired or on days where I may overextend myself with too many tasks).
Also, it always requires an external stimulus outside of you, that compels you into action.
So, what’s the alternative you may thinking?
Choose inspiration over motivation.
To be inspired comes from within. It comes from such a deep, internal, and authentic place, that it isn’t dependent upon anything outside of yourself to activate.
Inspiration is what gets you into action or non-action(depending on the circumstance).
It’s purely linked to the heart.
The heart knows. It’s a beautiful and powerful energetic center where we can feel either uplifted or misaligned.
We intuitively know when something or someone is serving us.
How balanced do we feel in our energy when around said person or object?
This is a completely individual question that can really only be answered by the person on the other end of receiving it.
Don’t get me wrong, we can all use motivation sometimes.
Maybe the spark of what has effortlessly inspired us in the past, has wandered down to a fizzle.
A motivational cue at the right divine time can ignite us either back to, or create a whole new but positively serving process.
So where does all this lead to?
It leads to commitment and discipline being the keys to create anything new or worthwhile.
These are the name of any game, and though partially synonymous, in my experience they must both be honored and respected to create tangible change.
Here’s the thing though, they come with an uncomfortable price.
Rewind back to what I said earlier about the brain.
Anything new to the brain, has yet to build up a routine.And whatever hasn’t built up a routine, is considered foreign to the neural pathways and connection of the brain.
It’s why the path of mastery (in anything) requires not only the commitment to the outcome of it, but the disciplined and repetitive actions until said tasks becomes an automatic behavior.
What can we truly do with this information?
We can be gentle with ourselves in accepting motivation as an impossible state to sustain long-term.
We can also at the same time, honor and respect inspiration as something with more internal depth and fortitude, with the possibility of us having endless reservoirs of.
Allow motivation to add to your tank of inspiration (rather than vice versa). As when we place our will from within, rather than without, we’re able to consistently stay on the path of fully actualizing whatever it is that we truly commit too.
With Love,
Brandon