If Not Now, When?

I’ve been thinking a lot about motivation lately and the misconceptions behind it. It seems like the majority of people want to feel motivated toward something whether it be starting a new business or tackling the pile of dishes in the sink, but they’re just not. They sit around day after day waiting for motivation to smack them in the face and when it doesn’t they claim they aren’t a motivated person and this is just the way things are.

Here’s the truth though: Everyone is motivated. If you’re sitting on the couch watching Netflix right now instead of doing that thing you’ve been putting off for weeks you’re still motivated. You’re just motivated to watch your favorite show instead of doing that thing because it gives you a greater sense of satisfaction. To your mind watching TV is more satisfying because it requires less effort and it’s familiar. Your mind is sneaky. It’s always trying to keep you in the familiar. It’s always trying to protect you from new things because new things mess with the status quo and to your mind, that’s a threat.

So many people come up against mental resistance at the beginning of trying something new and they give in to it, but here’s the thing: If you want to be motivated toward a certain thing you HAVE to push past the resistance. There’s no other way around it. Motivation doesn’t just appear out of thin air. It’s not going to be given to you just because you want it. Motivation is created from habits. Motivation is created when you fall in love with the result of following through on those habits. You can hate the task all you want, but you have to fall in love with the result to create the motivation to do it.

For example: When I first started my yoga practice I was initially motivated because my husband bought me a yoga mat and I was so excited to use it. Then the newness slowly wore off and I was left with a yoga mat and no motivation. Every morning my alarm shrieked at 5:30 and I would drag my feet out of bed to my mat. I didn’t want to get up at 5:30. I didn’t want to practice yoga before I went to work. I wanted to drink my coffee and sit on the couch until I had to walk out the door. I gave in to that resistance more times than I care to admit, but do you know why I kept going back to my mat instead of the couch that felt so familiar and easy? I fell in love with how I felt after doing yoga more than how I felt after sitting on the couch. I fell in love with how strong yoga made me feel. I fell in love with the clarity and the calm it gave me in my life off the mat. I fell in love with the results of doing a hard thing and the results made me fall in love with that hard thing.

That’s how motivation is created. It requires being brutally honest with yourself about what you want, and if you find you want something different it requires changing your habits. I know change is difficult for a lot of people, but if you want something different for your life you have to do something different with your life. It all starts with you. No more blaming. No more excuses. You can do this.