Yesterday I was somewhat down on myself, and I wasn’t really sure why. I couldn’t conjure up that motivation to do anything yesterday it seemed. I wasn’t sick, injured, or tired, I just couldn’t get myself to do anything other than check my phone every twenty seconds (a curse my generation is known for).
Then I decided I wanted to get motivated, so I clicked ‘Safari’ on my phone to open up a browser and Googled ‘How to find motivation.’ It didn’t really turn up much other than a few lousy, supposed-to-be inspiring quotes and pictures with motivational sayings under them. Sigh.
While wallowing in my lack of motivation, I had a great thought run through my head. “Why not check Reddit? Every time you’ve been there you’ve learned something and remembered it well. Maybe the same will do for motivation?” Sure, why not. Off to Reddit I went.
On Reddit’s main site I searched the term ‘motivation.’ There were a plethora of options for motivating one’s self for many different reasons: eating right, staying the course for exercise goals, quitting smoking/chewing tobacco, giving up certain drugs, waking up early in the morning, and several other reasons to keep motivation up.
Here is what will appear if you search ‘motivation’ on Reddit’s main page. As you can see there is a wealth of motivation to be found here. Spectacular.
Yet I was looking just for general motivation. Motivation that isn’t tied to exercising (I exercise on a daily basis, one of the few things I don’t need to motivate myself to do), drugs (I don’t do them), smoking/chewing tobacco (I don’t partake), or waking up early in the morning (I may have to revisit this if I get a job that requires me to get up early in the morning). So what motivation did I find to help me find purpose yesterday? I clicked on /r/GetMotivated in the subreddit listing at the top of the page, but originally thought it would just be more about exercise. I was cheerfully wrong.
(A subreddit is a page dedicated to a certain topic, such as motivation, and can be broken down to even further subreddits if necessary.)
The third link on the /r/GetMotivated is titled “Introduction To Motivation.” I thought, “There can’t be a better place to start than this!” And I was right, this was the best place to start to find my motivation. Here is a snippet of it:
Motivation is an emotion
Have you ever seen a post on /r/getmotivated that pumps you up – this changes everything! I’m going to go out and make my life everything that it’s meant to be! Only… a week passes and nothing much has changed.
The fact the motivation comes and goes after reading something motivational in the same way that sadness comes and goes after reading something sad indicates that motivation is an emotion.
The fact that motivation is an emotion has both advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantages are that it can fade quickly, especially when we are run down, tired, discouraged. The advantage is that we can control our emotions. Not only can we control our emotions, but the more we exercise control of our emotions, the more skilled we become at controlling our emotions.
We can make ourselves feel happy by remembering happy times, feeling ourselves in a past happy moment, fully associating with all the details and making that past experience real in the present. The same is true with motivation. I can remember times when I was down and out wanting to give up, but I stood back up and pushed through the pain and was able to make something great happen. This is motivation that comes from within me.
You have all the motivation you need within yourself right now. If you keep pushing yourself in terms of keeping your motivation and will power at a high level you will begin to find it easier to get and stay motivated.
Here is the rest of it. Truly good work by “TheCourageWolf” here. Another post made me just as motivated as this, but it is more of a pep talk motivation if that works for you!
What motivates you everyday? Let me know in the comments!
Chwomp 