To begin this week I would like to pose a question. Is your motivation for leading a healthy life or pushing harder during your workouts something that you look for in other things or other people around you or is it something you create for yourself?
Loss of motivation is one of the biggest reasons why people do not adhere to the healthy lifestyle that they otherwise say they want to live. I get it. Right now we are being dragged down by negative events, restrictions on our lives, and being cut off from physical contact with close friends and family. All of these factors are highly DEMOTIVATING. At the current moment in history it is extremely difficult to find something or someone that will just innately motivate you. It may be hard to believe but this can be the case almost all of the time even under more “normal” circumstances. This is why I posed my initial question. Is your motivation coming from outside of you or are you creating it to keep yourself going?
Intrinsic, Extrinsic, or Both?
Traditionally motivation is considered to be either completely intrinsic, coming from within yourself, or completely extrinsic, coming from outside yourself. I would like to challenge this notion and say that extrinsic factors can help you manufacture intrinsic motivation. A great example of this is when a healthcare worker sees poverty, disease, and disarray around them. The social issues are simply the vessel to which the healthcare worker is providing services to achieve their overall goal of making the world a better place. A deeper look at this example shows that the initial extrinsic motivation was the social issues which are a deeply negative topic. This is important because in psychology we know that negative motivating factors may feel strong at first but ultimately will diminish over time due to the taxing nature of the topic. By taking this strong but negative topic and using it to manufacture the intrinsic motivation of making the world a better place the healthcare worker is safe guarding their motivation far into the future. Once again I ask, is your motivation extrinsic or intrinsic?
How This All Applies!
An easy place to look to see how well this concept works is to look to the sports icons that have been considered to be the best of all time. They do not just look at the negative comments by fans, reports, and other players know them down. They make lists of everyone who has ever slighted them or said a negative thing about them and used it to manufacture their motivation for whole series or even seasons. If professional athletes are having trouble motivating themselves I feel I should pose the question again. Are you looking outside yourself for inspiration or are you the one delving out that inspiration?
Try using this next bit of advice for yourself and see how it works. Take the time that we have been given because of these stay at home orders. Yes, this is disruptive. Yes, this will slow our careers down. Yes, this is going to keep us apart. Now let's turn these negative topics into manufactured intrinsic motivation. Now I have the time to devote to myself or my family. Now we have the time to look at what we really want out of our lives. Now we finally have the chance to work on ourselves so we can be better members of our society, community, and our own family. Trust me these positive motivators will help you hold on and keep going long after the anger and frustration wears thin. I will ask my question for a final time are you looking for motivation or are you manufacturing motivation?
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