Waiting for Motivation is a Mistake
Motivation feels great when it “shows up” for you but what about when it doesn’t? I meet a lot of women waiting to feel motivated before they take action. They want to move their bodies more, eat less sugar or drink less alcohol BUT they’re waiting to feel motivation before taking action. When it doesn’t show up, they don’t do anything and then they feel worse and definitely not motivated.
The feeling of motivation is derived from our thoughts. You can create motivation with your thinking. In fact, that’s the only way it really shows up at all.
Motivation and the thoughts that create it often get lost in belief patterns and perfectionist tendencies. For example, I came across a woman trying to reduce her drinking habit. She had not drunk for twenty-three days, then on the twenty-fourth day she decided to drink. She said that thirty days was the correct number of days to squash her drinking habit but she had “fallen off” and made that mean she had failed. No wonder she no longer felt motivated. Her thoughts were creating negative emotions that drive inaction. Not taking action is the opposite of what she wanted. It’s hard to feel motivated when you’re busy beating yourself up, yet that’s what many of our brains have been trained to do.
Instead, what if she believed there was no wagon? What if there was no magic number of days to reach a goal? What if twenty-three out of twenty-four days of not drinking was amazing progress and not a failure? What other emotions might she expect to feel while creating change? What does she need to believe to feel motivated? Is commitment strong enough when motivation isn’t accessible? What does progress look like?
The answers to these questions might reveal new thoughts that create the feeling of motivation OR she might decide that she can feel kinda shitty and take action anyway, which is commitment. They both work but we often forget about the importance of commitment because sometimes you just don’t have access to the thoughts that drive motivation, and that’s OK. That’s human. Having both, the ability to create the feeling of motivation with your thinking and commitment are the magic duo that creates results.
If you have mistakenly been waiting for motivation to get you where you’d like to be, let’s talk.
We help people be healthier in body and mind. Stop overeating, emotional eating, or solve mystery gut-health related issues. We can help!
