Motivation Is Not Enough

byDarrenAngus

251 followers

7 years ago

Hi guys! I hope you’re having an inspired day.

I’ve been thinking about motivation lately and about how good it feels to be motivated and inspired to do something. The one thing that people don’t really talk about when it comes to motivation is how addictive it gets. It sounds strange, but at the same time it’s also completely logical. Motivation is an emotion, and it’s such a feel-good emotion that we want to experience it over and over again.

There’s nothing wrong but with that, but as we all know, our emotions aren’t consistent. We’re happy and then we’re sad. We’re okay and then we’re angry. Our emotions are so fleeting that we have to learn how to operate despite the emotion, and we have to learn how to bring about the positive emotions we want.

It’s like happiness - we need to learn how to still go to work in a good mood when we’re sad, and we need to learn how to create our own happiness when that feeling is absent. Motivation pretty much operates the same way - we need to know how to still put in the actions even when we don’t feel motivated, and we need to learn how to create motivation when the feeling is absent.

The secret, I’ve realised, is to not want to be constantly motivated, but to instead focus on discipline. Instead of spending our time and energy on figuring out how to be motivated, we can instead focus on being okay with doing things we don’t necessarily feel like doing because we know what our goal and objective is. And that takes discipline.

We can be inspired, but we must be inspired into action, and to continue that action even when the motivation’s absent. It’s like we can be inspired to smile at people, but we need to continue to smile even when we don’t feel like it. It’s never about forcing ourselves - it’s about logic. For example, if our objective is to be happy regardless of circumstances, then putting in the action of smiling is part of how we can meet that objective. If not, we’re just moving further away from our objective and sabotaging ourselves.

Similarly, if being a more successful, wise and healthy person is our objective, then putting in the actions of waking up early, working out and eating healthy are all the actions we have to put in, even when we don’t feel motivated on certain days.

I write this because I need to remind myself of this every time I feel like not doing something, or when I procrastinate. I want to just do things, and not think too much about how I feel about it.

I hope that this reminder can also encourage you to just put in the actions needed to achieve your goals and follow your dreams, no matter how routine, mundane or painful that action is sometimes.

Have an amazing week head, and here’s to working on our discipline. Don't just be inspired, be inspired into action. Let me know how you’re doing and I’ll keep you updated on my progress too. Let’s make our days less about motivation and more about .. just getting things done.