Motivation is a hot button topic. Last week I wrote to you about watching your motivation as a Key Resilience Indicator. It’s an early warning sign for us that our resilience is dropping when we notice that we’re less motivated to do the things that matter to us. I asked you if you’ve experienced this and the responses were legendary!
Motivation, you told me, can plummet unexpectedly. You can wake up one morning and just feel no oomph – no burn to do the things you usually want to do. Other people told me about a slow leak until they noticed that none of their usual tasks were accomplished, that their relationships were suffering, that their hobbies were untouched. Still others felt like, since some major moment in their lives, motivation has been completely absent. And some folks talk about a daily struggle to find some motivation to make a change that matters to them.
So what works? When we want motivation, how do we get it?
There’s no question that different strategies work for different folks, and that list is the subject of next week’s blog. But before we talk about how to get motivation we have to talk about an unnecessary obstacle towards the goal of motivation. We often talk about and see ourselves as “having it” or “not having any.”
Motivation is not a light switch. It’s not “on” or “off.”
Seeing motivation as binary presents a few problems, the largest of which is that we may never feel that we have enough of it and so we feel constantly “off.” We attach morality to motivation as a society – those who “have it” are somehow intrinsically better than those who “lack it.” That’s not reasonable, nor is it accurate.
Motivation is better likened to a water faucet. It can be off, dripping slowly, a steady stream or a cascade. What we need are strategies to turn the faucet up from wherever it is when we want more, so we can get the right flow for our needs and goals.
Does that make sense? How much motivation is flowing for you right now? And what have you done that has opened it a bit (or a lot) more that’s worked for you?
All my best,
Dr. G