04.11.07

Motivation by Happiness

Posted in Paths to Bliss, Quick Tricks at 11:38 am

Here’s something while I work on my other big plans: I’ve run across an idea so simple and obvious and the fact that it didn’t occur to me sooner still amazes me. Why don’t we start motivating ourselves so we can feel good rather than to avoid feeling bad? (I told you it was obvious.)

If you’re like me, the follow scenario is an old story. There’s something you know you should do like paying your taxes or eating more vegetables or quitting smoking. You know you should do these things because the consequences of not doing them (fines, body issues, lung cancer & yellow teeth) are not something you want to deal with. So you think about how you’re going to do them and then make a vow that you’ll start tomorrow and then if you manage to start, you kind of grudge your way through it until, in all likelihood, you give up and go on with your life–or you do it and remember how hard and awful it was to do it and are therefore not inclined to do it again if you can avoid it.

This may be familiar “Gargh! My clothes don’t fit! I feel so fat! I have to exercise!” or “I suck. I know I need to do [X], but I never do so I’m weak and unmotivated. I don’t know about you, but I don’t really want to live a life where my primary motivation stems from self-loathing. I’ve tried that for most of my life and I’m here to tell everyone that it doesn’t work.

I have a proposal for us: Let’s start being motivated by how good things feel and how great we are. Let’s exercise because our bodies like to move and we want to celebrate the ability to walk and run and stretch and dance. Let’s eat things because they taste wonderful and give our bodies energy and nurture our souls and then stop eating things when they no longer taste just as wonderful or make us feel uncomfortable. Let’s stop smoking because we will love the taste of things more and be grateful for more lung capacity. Let’s pay our taxes so we don’t have to be bogged down with worry of things left undone or be trapped by the idea that we don’t have enough money.

What I’m proposing is mostly a change in perspective. Deep down we know we’ll feel better when we’re making healthy choices for ourselves. The trick is to focus on that better feeling of doing rather than the crappy feeling of not doing. The other trick is to disregard the idea that you always have to do the perfectly correct an ideal thing at all times. Sometimes it feels wonderful to do the bad thing. Appreciate that and use it to motivate yourself by using it as a reward. And guess what? You can reward yourself before you do what you’re rewarding yourself for.

The next time you beat yourself up for not being motivated, try and turn the thought around to focus on doing something that will make you feel good rather than focusing on why not doing it makes you feel bad. Try this once a day or once every two days and see how it will start getting the energy in your life moving in positive directions.

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