c2006-2009
Conscious Life Skills
Coaching
Conscious Life Skills
Coaching
life coaching and counselling
revamp your purpose, your passion, your choices, your power
revamp your purpose, your passion, your choices, your power
How do I get my motivation back? Understanding and applying motivation
as a conscious life skill
by Frances Todd
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c2009 F. Todd
“I used to be so motivated. Where’s my motivation gone? How do I get it back?”
“I’ve finally got what I wanted. I feel flat. This always happens to me. I go after something, I achieve it, and then I’m flat. I should be happy and content.”
“I’ve finally got what I wanted. I feel flat. This always happens to me. I go after something, I achieve it, and then I’m flat. I should be happy and content.”
Lamenting the lack of motivation and feeling flat upon achieving goals often arise as a result of a lack of understanding and appreciation of what drives motivation. All too often we end up blaming ourselves and attach negative labels like lazy, undeserving, failed again, and short attention span, to ourselves when changes don’t happen as fast as we would like or the way we would like, or not at all. We judge ourselves and repeat unhelpful patterns of attitude and behaviour without a solid knowledge about motivation and how we can drive it.
Have you started this year with a sense of renewed hope drive and optimism, only to find that your enthusiasm is now waning or gone? Are you still in your same old patterns and only thinking about changes you would like? Even forgotten what you resolved to change?
Motivation as a conscious life skill
To practise motivation as a conscious life skill, first of all, you need to first, understand what motivation is and second, how it works in practice.
What motivation is
The simplest definition I've come across is that motivation represents a gap between where you are now and where you want to be. Where you are now equals your current reality and where you want to be equals your desired goal. The gap creates tension in your mind, and the tension is a good thing, because it focuses your mind, creates urgency, and drives you to action to move in the direction of what you want.
Monitoring this gap and keeping this tension healthily creative is the key to staying motivated. You monitor this tension consciously through noting how you feel about your current reality. If you’re feeling content and happy, then the gap between current reality and desired outcome is matching well. But if you are feeling more discontent and unhappiness, then the gap between current reality and desires outcome requires bridging.
To practise motivation as a conscious life skill, first of all, you need to first, understand what motivation is and second, how it works in practice.
What motivation is
The simplest definition I've come across is that motivation represents a gap between where you are now and where you want to be. Where you are now equals your current reality and where you want to be equals your desired goal. The gap creates tension in your mind, and the tension is a good thing, because it focuses your mind, creates urgency, and drives you to action to move in the direction of what you want.
Monitoring this gap and keeping this tension healthily creative is the key to staying motivated. You monitor this tension consciously through noting how you feel about your current reality. If you’re feeling content and happy, then the gap between current reality and desired outcome is matching well. But if you are feeling more discontent and unhappiness, then the gap between current reality and desires outcome requires bridging.
How motivation works in practice
Motivation works in practice by looking at and reviewing the aspirations, attitudes and actions we apply to bridge and monitor the gap between where we are now and where we want to be. Skills in self-awareness and goal-setting are the key to consistent motivation, as well as an increasing capacity for self acceptance, honesty and resilience.
1. Be open and honest with yourself about your current situation and what you do want.
If you clearly know what you don’t’ want, this is an excellent place to start. Write a list of ‘what I don’t want’. Then convert it into a list of ‘what I do want’. Creating this list can also be an interesting exercise in finding out what you think you ‘should want’, which is quite different to what you ‘do want’.
2. Set goals for what you do want and make them:
SPECIFIC
CHALLENGING
ACHIEVABLE
ONGOING
The goals that work most effectively are those that meet our current reality and stretch it out of shape enough to create a different outcome that we can see and experience in a short time-frame. Seeing is believing, so help your mind see where it's going from where it has come. Unless you've got seven league boots like Puss in Boots, your way to achievement is usually via the completion of a series of steps that take you to your destination, not one giganic leap.
3. Celebrate each and every step of your motivational journey.
As you celebrate the completion of a step, you are encouraging your mind to stay focused and thanking it for its past efforts, while alerting it to the fact that something new is coming. You prepare the way for the rise of creative tension.
4. Accept that goals may change as you journey. Take time out on a regular basis to work out what what’s important to you and how you will know when you have it.
Knowing when you have that important something may be difficult to visualize and describe at the beginning, but think back to what felt good when you last achieved what you wanted, and simply focus on that feeling of being good. Then, as you achieve your first step and the next, the feeling good will be more defined as events, people, and outcomes identified with 'having it'.
5. Create another goal when you’ve reached your desired goal or shortly before you reach it.
When you reach your desired goal, it then becomes your current reality, so another desired goal with a gap that you can bridge and monitor is the way to keep the juice of creative tension flowing and your motivation consistent.
If you clearly know what you don’t’ want, this is an excellent place to start. Write a list of ‘what I don’t want’. Then convert it into a list of ‘what I do want’. Creating this list can also be an interesting exercise in finding out what you think you ‘should want’, which is quite different to what you ‘do want’.
2. Set goals for what you do want and make them:
SPECIFIC
CHALLENGING
ACHIEVABLE
ONGOING
The goals that work most effectively are those that meet our current reality and stretch it out of shape enough to create a different outcome that we can see and experience in a short time-frame. Seeing is believing, so help your mind see where it's going from where it has come. Unless you've got seven league boots like Puss in Boots, your way to achievement is usually via the completion of a series of steps that take you to your destination, not one giganic leap.
3. Celebrate each and every step of your motivational journey.
As you celebrate the completion of a step, you are encouraging your mind to stay focused and thanking it for its past efforts, while alerting it to the fact that something new is coming. You prepare the way for the rise of creative tension.
4. Accept that goals may change as you journey. Take time out on a regular basis to work out what what’s important to you and how you will know when you have it.
Knowing when you have that important something may be difficult to visualize and describe at the beginning, but think back to what felt good when you last achieved what you wanted, and simply focus on that feeling of being good. Then, as you achieve your first step and the next, the feeling good will be more defined as events, people, and outcomes identified with 'having it'.
5. Create another goal when you’ve reached your desired goal or shortly before you reach it.
When you reach your desired goal, it then becomes your current reality, so another desired goal with a gap that you can bridge and monitor is the way to keep the juice of creative tension flowing and your motivation consistent.
Motivating yourself is often easier said than done. We don’t have to achieve it all by ourselves, right from the word, go. We are often more motivated by interaction with another. If you need to sort out understanding what you do want, or to find out what’s stopping you from bridging the gap between your current reality and your desired goal, why not take up a single life coaching session to rediscover your motivation?