What is motivation and where do you find it?

What is motivation?

Motivation is the self-induced energy that drives a person to take action.

Often people will wish for the world to give them what they want. They wish for more money, they wish for better health and of course more time. But if you ask those same people to change by stopping their wasteful habits and start investing most of their weekends in money management classes or if you tell them to stick a piece of broccoli in their mouths instead of munching on junk, they will not budge. And God help you if you tell them stop wasting valuable hours watching TV or chatting on Facebook, instead of wasting the time, the extra time can be used to invest in improving their skills so they can be competent enough to start a business in the nearest future.

The excuses start piling up. And the conversation becomes more difficult than trying show a blind person how to drive a race car. Just as it is difficult to show a blind person how to drive a race car, it is equally as hard to show someone unwilling to change, what is motivation?

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The world cares not about our wishes; it cares only about our actions. This reminds me of a quote by David Bly, “Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you have not planted”. We must plant the seeds of our desire with action in order to grow our wishes into reality.

What Is Motivation In The Face Of Adversity?

Whether you are a student in school or a student in life, if you act first without finding what motivates you, it will be easier to give up at the first sign of adversity.

Adversity is not a bad thing. Adversity is the non-negotiable price we all must pay for the promise of a better future. The brick wall of adversity stands in our way not for the purpose of permanently alienating us from the thing we desire. It is nature’s way of forcing us to grow tall enough to step over to the other side, placing us at arms length from our desires so that we can grow large enough to become worthy of eating the fruits of our labor.

No successful person gets to that high level of accomplishment and achievement without being motivated to persevere and persist, even during the most trying times.

Where Does It Come From?

Now that we know what is motivation the next equally important step is to know where to find it so that we may draw from it at will. To take action that will inspire the energy necessary to take your life to a new level of motivation comes in two forms. There is either short-term motivation or long-term motivation.

What Is Motivation In The Short Term?

Short-term motivation is a response to an external stimulus. A good friend of mine once said, “How do you motivate a lazy group of young video gaming couch potatoes?” (Pause… think for a second…) Answer: “Light a match and burn the couch.” You see that the short-term motivation is a great incentive to move away from a pressing situation. However, it will not let you achieve your desires. It is likely that those gaming coach potatoes will only be motivated long enough to find another couch to sit on.

Have you ever felt those short-term surges of motivation, where you honestly felt that this time, “this is it”, this time will be different then all the other times you have failed to stay motivated?

This always happen when trying new things like new diet, learning a new language or trying a new business idea. The pursuit of the new is always fascinating and mystical at first. Although, this feeling quickly fades once we discover that hard work is involved and it is going take more than just words to make it work.

You may be aware that the thing you want to do is something that is for your own benefit. Otherwise, you will not have done it in the first place. However, the overpowering feeling of the work and effort that is required to make it happen creates procrastinating thoughts that pervade through your mind, body and spirit. Each day of inaction continues to chips away at your motivation, until there is nothing left.
So although short-term motivation is a nice tool to make you take immediate action, it will never get you to your dream as this type of motivation comes in spurts, which is short lived.

What Is Motivation In The Long Term?

Long-term motivation (LTM) is the passion that will help carry you through any challenge. LTM is the generator that turns on all the lights inside you. This will create a magnificent obsession with your conscious mind to stay focused on what needs to be done and will inspire you to move forward even when negative emotions are begging you to stop.

What is motivation in the long term? It is that extra support you need when your surrounding environment is less than supportive. LTM keeps you juiced when all you have is an idea, staring in the face of darkness with only faith standing in your corner.

How To Find Long-Term Motivation?

If you find that you are lacking long-term motivation, do not worry. This is not a bad thing, because if you are reading this article you know that you want to be motivated for the long term but you are not exactly sure how to do it yet, right? The important thing is that you have identified an area in your life that needs to be worked on.

I have witnessed this with my own eyes through personal experience and the accounts hundreds of people’s experiences; all the motivation that you ever need to accomplish anything in life is already inside of you. This is what personal development is all about; weeding out qualities within ourselves holding us back and then making a conscious effort to transform these old weaknesses into new strengths.

So if your level of motivation is low at the moment, what can be done about this now? The key to your motivation can be answered by this question, if you had unlimited time and resources, and knew you could not fail, what would you choose to do? The more precise we are concerning our vision for future, the more we are able to borrow from that inspiration. Few people take the time to slow down in this fast-paced world to think about, why they are moving in the first place.

Your long-term motivation for life lies in that answer. For it will help you as it has helped me. It is much easier to be motivated when you are doing what you love, rather than just working in one boring office corner.
Now I know, it is not that easy to just jump ship into a new boat that sets sail towards an adventure that excites you without first taking care of your responsibilities. One also has to keep in mind other determining factors such as a lack of money, knowledge and many other circumstances may prevent you for taking immediate action. So you may not have immediate control over conditions at the moment, but nobody can stop you from dreaming, planning and taking small steps everyday towards living out your passion.

Wishes are never rewarded, if we wish for something but do not feel motivated enough to take the necessary action to get it, it simply means you do not need it badly enough. If you truly want something, there will be no room for excuses.

To motivate yourself to take action so that you can crystallize your wish, you need to possess an overwhelming reason to act. By asking yourself that question stated above, it will draw you closer to your long-term motivation. Sometimes the answer comes instantaneously, if you are lucky; other times it will take you some time. That simply means that it will be necessary to commit yourself to a routine that will help expedite that process of finding that answer, if you have found that answer, then adding this routine to your arsenal will only strengthen your reason to act.

Finding And Fanning The Inner Flames

Set aside 30 minutes each day (if 30 minutes is too much, try 15 minutes the point is to just get started). This time must be adhered to and you can carry out activities like:

Reading about successful people who have made it in the area in which you are looking to succeed. Success leaves clues, so look for the clues they have left and learn from their persistence.

Read and visualize yourself achieving your goals. When you begin to clearly picture what you want most, you will open the gates of your mind to creativity and inspiration.

Write and review all the benefits that you will receive if you stay motivated and hang it up where you can see it on a daily basis. If you keep this in plain sight, you will always be motivated.

Never forget, you are ultimately responsible for your life. Procrastination and lack of motivation are never compelling reasons as to why you did not get the things you wanted out of life, when you look back on it. Achieving a noteworthy goal will always require serious action; especially, when obstacles and challenges are certain to come along the way. This is why it is so important to stimulate your long-term motivation. Doing this will fuel you with enough inspiration which is instrumental to your persistence to take action. Motivation is an irreplaceable tool that you will need to assist you in the process of turning your life’s blueprint into a crystallized reality