Motivation is a fascinating word! And motivation has a fantastic effect! No kidding it really does, it creates movement. Actually that’s no surprise since motivation comes from the Late Latin movere, which means to move. Motivation is simply about movement and being motivated is as simple as being ready to move or to take action. When consulting Wikipedia though, I suddenly had a different perspective far from that simple. With 20 something theories and models about motivation, I had no other option to question where our motivation is coming from. Is it something driven from within? Or only replying to external constraints? Are we motivated by fear or joy? Easy enough to feel that there is going to be more than one scenarios possible… but the true question is even another one…
Can we create motivation? Can our action create motivation? Or do we need motivation before any action can happen? Can we solve our procrastination issue by simply taking actions?
Let’s be honest, after about 5 years without any running or jogging, the first time I went running I would not really have called it motivation… or was it? At that specific time it felt rather like despair and desolation, but I knew that if I kept at it, if I repeated the action a few times without thinking and only focusing on moving my legs and feet, at some point I will start to enjoy it, and then from the enjoyment I will start to feel motivated to go running. And it did, after about a month, and many outings where my friends’ dogs dragged me more than anything.
Yes of course I had some form of motivation, I had an image on what it would be to be fit again, still I was not motivated as such to take action, however the action created a huge motivation (and many sport people would even confirm that the action creates addiction on top of motivation… oups, maybe another problem…).
And the actions created the motivation, by creating a positive results. It’s true I had to do one thing… I had to switch off my cognitive process for a moment focusing only on the actual movement. What about using the same approach to fight procastrination? Yes the process of switching off our cognitive processes and simply act, one action at a time.
Move, take action, enjoy and… GET MOTIVATED!
talking4good.com 