Staying motivated.

Motivation is a mysterious thing. When it strikes I try to embrace it. Actually, I get quite of rush out of such spontaneously manifested occurrences. It feels great to wake up one day to have that fitness goal, that learning goal, or that career goal. I try to rationalize that I come up with these ideas through willpower, but I know that isn’t true.

What motivates us to get motivated?
I think it’s Turtles all the way down.

So, I get motivated and I start making plans. I come up with a methodology for accomplishing this goal. This typically comes from lots of online research on how others were successful. Typically these have a solid start too. The best motivated changes stick around for a while.

But then something happens to most motivations.
Slacking off starts to creep in.

A sort of slow creep of demotivation starts sneaking back into the routine, until one day, it feels like you are back to the way things were.

But it isn’t that black and white. Sometimes your motivations change. Sometimes you realize that what you had as a goal isn’t really your goal anymore.

This doesn’t change the fact that staying motivated is tough.

It requires an honesty and a fortitude that isn’t easy to keep up. It takes effort to perpetuate behavioral changes that don’t directly benefit you now; changes that are meant to benefit some future version of yourself.

Staying motivated is tough.