The Most Overlooked Source of Motivation
“If we want to feel an undying passion for our work, if we want to feel we are contributing to something bigger than ourselves, we all need to know our WHY.”
– Simon Sinek
Motivation is necessary for everything we do.
Sometimes we do things motivated by rewards, possibility to impress people, money and many other materialistic and non-materialistic things. And for the tasks that don’t promise any rewards in the short-term, we seek motivation from somewhere else in order to keep ourselves moving and to maintain the momentum.
But in the long-term, motivating ourselves with external factors is a strategy that is guaranteed to fail. External factors won’t last for long. You might get highly motivated by a book, a movie or a song but such things rarely last for long (i.e. for months and years).
The best way to ensure that your momentum does not drop is to find a lasting source of motivation.
No matter what you do, your longest lasting source of motivation will forever be you, yourself.
Your situations, your memories and all those little and big things in life (Your problems, your struggles, your dreams, your goals and the people in your life.) are the ones that will motivate you forever.
Self-motivation is the most overlooked form of motivation.
Most of the people search for external factors and try to make those their sources of motivation. But that’s just a futile exercise.
All the people who have achieved long-term success in their lives have a motivation grid centered around their life.
I am not saying that you should not look up for rewards. It is just that you can’t always look up for rewards but you will always have to continue doing your work.
So there need to be other things to keep you moving. You can call it your passion for your art, your determination to achieve your goals or your commitment to your work. It doesn’t matter what you call it, what matters is whether it is internal or external.
If it is internal it will always be with you, but if it is external it will disappear as you move on.
One thing that really helps me to stay self-motivated is journaling. It helps me to regularly remind myself of my ‘WHY’. “Why I am doing this?” is a question that I regularly ask myself. Even though it gets the same answer every time, reminding myself of the reason why I am doing my work is a very powerful way to keep me moving.
But talking about journaling will take a whole blog post or even more. So it would be better if we cover that in the next post.
For now let me stick with the point, which is to constantly remind yourself the reason why you are doing the things that you are doing right now.
So from now on, don’t search for external factors to motivate you. Instead, search within yourself and figure out your ‘WHY’. It will be the greatest and the longest lasting source of motivation you will ever have in your life.
