No, it’s not motivation that you’re lacking, because believe me you have copious amounts of that. Sounds pretty contradictory since all you really wanna do is veg on your sofa while binging on reruns of “Family Guy”, doesn’t it?! But hear me when I tell you… YOU ARE HIGHLY MOTIVATED. Motivated to do the exact opposite of what you know you should be doing. “I really wanna start getting healthy but I feel so stuck. I’m just not motivated enough to get myself to the gym. I’ll start on Monday.” Haven’t we all heard this declared so many times? The truth is… it really isn’t a motivation deficiency that we’re experiencing, because in this particular instance we are in fact filled to the brim with motivation…we are sufficiently motivated to stay on the couch. We do it so naturally.

I’ve been heavily ridiculed for the statement that I’m about to make, but I DO NOT BELIEVE IN MOTIVATION! There I said it. Don’t come for me. Well, at least not in the type of motivation which is coercive in nature & facades as a golden, dangling carrot. In my opinion it is quite misleading & kinda like mist, effortlessly disappearing as soon as the sun peaks it’s head out from beneath the horizon. I have been asked several times to feature as a guest at some or other event as a motivational speaker & I have turned up to such opportunities with considerable reluctance simply because I do not like the idea of posing as the hired hype girl, knowingly spurring on a crowd of people to the point of exuberant excitement, only to leave them on that dopamine summit & then later, abandon them to find their own way to yet another “hit” of motivation or potential consistency, for those who actually desire to maintain this “high”. The crash is unbearable & once the temporary giddiness dies down, you’re left feeling a little bewildered & even disappointed. Think about it from a user’s perspective; the hit of the high is incredible, but the coming down is in stark contrast. This extreme polarity begs the question; “Is motivation a drug of some sort?” Mmmmm, it is proven that the neuromodulator; dopamine is one of the key factors featuring in the human mental rewarding process. A reward?… If I’m not mistaken, that is indeed what we are hoping to receive when doing something painstaking or difficult; a reward of some kind? And isn’t it a belief that in order to land said reward, we’d be required to induce a degree of motivation substantial enough to action the task in a trajectory toward this reward? I’m not quite sure how many times one has to build up the energy to motivate oneself over & over in order to get anything worth doing, done. This sounds to me like a fail-safe method for burnout & relentless frustration. So, after I’ve spent time & effort on mental hyping; talking myself into doing ‘the thing’ then only will I start to do the actual thing?! Am I understanding this correctly? Why does that seem like a waste of precious energy to me? Why does it seem like using that energy to simply do ‘THE THING’ is a far better idea? Why does it sound like I’m overly extending myself by taking on yet another thing to do before actually getting to doing the thing? The mental prep alone just exhausts me. WOW!

Is anyone else seeing this or is it just me?

Now from what I understand, motivation is NOT a feeling nor is it an emotion, but they are very closely linked. Feelings make sense of what we’re experiencing & thinking emotionally, while emotions are the underpinning processes happening to us somatically at a biological level. Feelings as you know are elements such as sadness, happiness etc. Motivation is a goal directed type of behaviour which moves one to act in a certain manner, & like any other emotion, these feelings & behaviours change constantly. Believe it or not but, this is the way we were manufactured & set into motion on the production line of life, through means of human Fordism LOL. So, if we’re postulating that motivation like an emotion is ever-changing, would it be a safe bet to trust its reasoning? I’d state a firm ‘NO’. In most cases motivation is actually generated from taking action first & not the other way around. Do the small task first & see how intrinsically excited you start feeling because of the sense of achievement. This spark of action builds more excitement & before you know it, you’ve painted your entire basement in just a few hours.

So, what am I getting at here? Two things: Discipline & the winning of your mind. These are two powerful, dynamos responsible for getting the job done, not your motivation. Here’s a harsh reality to face; if we cannot win our minds – WE ARE NOT IN CONTROL, our emotions are. For example: If we gave into every emotion & caved to our desires at every whim, we may just one day find ourselves acting like complete clowns, eating cereal from the kitty litter box under the kitchen counter, just because we FELT like it on the day. Our emotions have their place yes, & sometimes we have to “let our hair down” & give in to our not-so-diligent desires so as to avoid becoming rigid robots of duty, but we need to hone a sense of self-control & agency as far as managing these frivolities are concerned.

Let’s revert….The pain of enduring a gym session for example, doesn’t exist in the very moment before physically executing the session, because each experience is new, no matter how many times we’ve repeated this action. But we’ve conditioned our brains to the point where we are habitually perpetuating & pre-empting the coming ‘pain’. Now, we’ve become interlocutors with our brains, bargaining & eventually talking ourselves out of doing the session, based on a feeling from the past, whether that past was yesterday or an hour ago. Remember our brains are not impartial & it cannot differentiate between an event happening in reality or whether it is fabricated to resemble a previous encounter. It only responds to the stimulus in front of it. So, when we embody the burn & the struggle within our bodies even before doing the gym session, our brain records it as an actual event happening in the present & aligns it with the emotional quality that we attribute to this event… in this case, suffering. And no-one wants to suffer, am I right or are you left?! LOL.

Now, in order to get yourself off the couch, into your active wear, & off to the gym, you have to initiate the immobilisation of these actions. And to me it starts with doing it in my mind first. I’m not motivating myself; I’m already doing the action, referring to the impartiality of the brain & its effort to record this action as an actual event taking place, this so as to ready my body to follow suit. I am telling my body what we are about to do instead of waiting for a prompt from my emotions, coz believe me, I rarely feel like ducking underneath a smith machine to pump some iron but I do it, day after day after day. WHY? Because I understand, respect, & value my WHY! Which brings me to the first of 2 actionable deeds that I will list for you to consider employing to move you from a place of “I’m stuck”, to a place of “OKAY, I’M DOING THIS THING.”

1. YOUR WHY

NOW, REALLY ASK YOURSELF THIS QUESTION: “Why do I want to do this thing?” My bestie, Cindy is a prime example here. She respects her “why” almost to a fault. Everything she embodies, is directed & attributed to her “why” in that specific moment. Yes, she falls short just like every human with a pulse, but even in that, she finds the silver-lining, makes logical sense as to where on her timeline she came up short, re-aligns her “why” & moves on, swiftly. Kudos mama! And Cindy’s reasoning sets the pace to my unpacking of this “why” ideology.

Now, let me tell you, if you’re really being honest with yourself & you’ve exhumed the real reasons for your desire to do the said thing, you’d come to realise one of two things; either it was for reasons feeding into your superficial ego OR for genuine, pure, long-lasting, unselfish, far-reaching reasons; basically, for reasons that do not instantly gratify. Let me excavate this even further: If I want to go to the gym to please myself & others around me with my aesthetic-superficiality… I will quit sooner or later, but if I really wanted to go so that I could improve my posture, my strength, live long enough to play with my grandkids at age 75, & feel internally solid, I would sign up for the long-haul commitment. I would understand that this additional practice to my current life will take time & require a mindset of endurance. Make sense? When I have those intentions top of mind, I’d go to the gym without a murmur. I’d look at it as a seed that I’m putting into the dirt, a long-term investment that I’d make deposits into with each visit to my local fitness hub, or chapter of study material which I bank into my memory. The same goes for every other venture we decide to embark on. We’ll soon find that we effortlessly attract the by-products concomitant of our intentions. A healthy toned physique or a wealth of knowledge draw to us like magnets & as do the compliments by the way LOL. And these compliments feel good in the moment, but be mindful not to live off of these “empty carbs”. Graciously & humbly accept them, then move on, knowing that you’ve worked for those Abs & internally you already know that they look good. Trust me, your diet would look pretty shoddy if all you’re consuming are “candy-floss-compliments” which instantly vaporise the second it hits your tongue. Motivation works on the same premise, unfortunately – satiating you temporarily, but never equating to sustenance of substance or longevity.

2. STAY IN THE ACTION (PRESENT)

What do I mean by this? So, you’ve jolted yourself up & gotten behind the wheel of your car. Next, you’ve turned on the ignition, NOW STAY THERE! Remain in that moment. For a second stop to think how automatically we glide & transition from one move to the next in our morning routines without so much as a thought of what we’re actually doing? Or how we consume popcorn on autopilot while watching a movie. There is no explicit instruction from any part of the body telling the hand to dig into the bowl, grab a handful of popcorn & proceed to transfer it to the mouth. IT’S JUST HAPPENING. We could essentially do all these things with our eyes closed… This is how innately natural the new action we’re wishing to incorporate should eventually become, needing no hyping, no self-talk, no motivation, JUST QUINTESSENTIAL ACTION in order to complete said task. Stay connected to the present action. Do not try & predict what may or may not happen down the road. Right now, that next action you’re pre-empting is none of your business. That step will swing by as you’re organically transitioning from one action to the next. We often get so caught up in the next thing, or move, or question, or day that we don’t or cannot appreciate the very moment before us. I’m guilty of this as well & I have to constantly heave myself back into the existing moment. I do this literally by playing a little call & answer game with myself. It’ll seem awkward to do at first but after a few go-rounds it’ll become part of your operational functioning. Q: “Candice, what are you doing right now?” A: “I am doing a 70kg leg press.” This seemingly silly exercise pauses my brain, declutters the chaos & the noise & snaps my focus back into focus. It also brings about welcomed mental respite. Try it! It works! And do it as many times as you need. When you’re operational within the moment, motivation becomes superfluous because you are already doing what you set out to do! You don’t need a feeling to spark within you, you’ve trained your subconscious to understand that feelings do not matter, & that they are nothing more than mutable indicators but your WHY is what really matters! And this is ultimately what discipline looks like. As a result, I’ve become all about work & action-efficiency, by virtue of trimming the fat found within redundant efforts of action.

It is said that we make between 33k and 35k decisions per day. Now, to some this may seem like infinite acres of mental real estate value, but if we take into consideration all the micro-decisions, we make on a minute-to-minute basis along with the macro-decisions, this number depreciates at a staggering rate. “What do I eat?, Do I paint my toes red?, Turn left of right?, Push snooze on my alarm or just get up?, Chew or just swallow?” These choices eat into our daily decision quota & I really think that we could save ourselves from mental agony by somewhat scaling down on some of the laboriousness of life. If we just DETERMINE that this week, we’ll paint the nursery & do it, BOOM we’ve saved ourselves from making a menial, mediocre decision (like deciding to chicken out) & instead we’ve retained one more decision in our budget for a much bigger, meaningful one down the way. Waste less time on pandering to your ever-changing motivational promptings because as you well know, your brain will perpetuate this inertia & its algorithm will feed you all sorts of reasons as to why it’s a better idea to spend your savings on that alpaca you found on e-bay instead of buying those textbooks you know you need more. 😂 WIN YOUR BRAIN! STAY IN CONTROL.