You Don't Need Motivation (JHP Day 23)

I'm writing this at 11:39 pm. I'm feeling tired, my head is hurting - the idea of getting some sleep sounds really nice right now. But once again, I'm finding myself sat here.

This post is about motivation. A feeling that many of us assume is the driver behind a lot of our choices to do new things - start habits that would be good for us, or develop routines that are supposed to help us live our lives to their fullest.

In my case, it seems crazy that even after 23 days, I still haven't managed to maintain any sort of consistent schedule around blogging. The mental timetable I'd set up in the beginning fell apart after a week or so and I wasn't able to recover it afterwards.

But I know these are the early steps, for me - the falling down and getting up that comes with starting a project. Something I know will grow in the long run.

One big reason for this 30 day challenge was really just to embed those core principles in myself, in a very practical way, so I could learn lessons about creating first hand, rather than just watching YouTube videos. And this is one of those important lessons.

Why Motivation Isn't The Goal:

It's best to think of it like a sugar rush - and one that inevitably doesn't last.

The only recipe for getting it is success, and life will never give you only success. To do anything worth being proud of, you have to fail -  your proudest moments only ever come after your necessary failures. Which means that motivation by nature is inconsistent and sporadic. You can recognise this in your own life - new years resolutions dropping off, or habits dying because one day you just don't have the same enthusiasm to get up at 6am for that morning run.

One way you rewire your brain to help you keep going, though - is to treat more events in your life like successes. Because at the end of the day, a failure is nothing more than an opportunity for a success later on.

We all fail. We all get tired, and feel ready to give up when things aren't looking good.

But life will always throw new things at us. Things that we can use to turn the bad into good. To get back up and try again with an old habit we've not managed to keep up - or to keep going with a new one.

And looking back at those experiences in hindsight - they don't feel like failures. When you finally succeed at something, everything it took to get there seems like just another stepping stone.

So - moral of the story: you don't need motivation to keep going, because it will only ever come after success. When you're having a bad time - you need the strength and discipline to push through it, so that when you DO succeed - you can look at it all and see it for what it always is. A journey towards a win.

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