The Secret to Getting and Keeping Motivated

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Pat,

Ultimately the real core I believe your readers (me included) need to get to is to find a motivation which is sustained and is sustainable for a long period of time? I like what your friend Alex Salkin says about having a 90 Year plan.

Also I like what another trainer Dax Moy says about peeling the onion about motivation (Ask yourself Why? a number of times (5) i.e. Why do you want to lose weight? Ans: To look good? Why do you want to look Good? etc etc You get the picture.

Would be interested to hear your take on motivation, You are clearly very motivated, You have a serious work ethic, You keep yourself below X% body fat. It all takes motivation. And everyone is different I know, but I think that would be a killer post.

There no question about the methods, I just think if you can unlock the motivation, the goals sort of happen.” – Manjinder

 

What I find interesting about motivation is that everybody from the sports psychologist to the Machiavellian philosopher has a different say on what it is and how to get it. Some will tell you that it is something that can be gained, like warts can be gained, and others will tell you that it is something congenital, either it’s born to you, like a salmon patch, or it’s not.

 

I’m of the opinion that it can be gained, like warts, having gone from a person of rare discouragement myself to a person of successful and dense desire. And it comes, I think, from a place of deep wanting and inferiority, and is propelled largely if not entirely by the vicious affronts of the ego mind.

 

Everyday I set out to do my Great Work. I sit down at my computer around six or seven thirty, and write. It takes me an hour—and usually two or three stiff drams—before I can form anything that resembles a pleasing and coherent sentence. After that, the tedious work of compiling my thoughts begins. [As I say, writing, for anyone serious about the matter, is an arduous and unpleasant task; nothing about writing is delightful, relaxful, or pleasant; and only sometimes does the end product produce a feeling of warm satisfaction similar to cinnamon toast, just so long as it isn’t full of holes. But usually it is full of holes, is revolting to look at, fills you with nausea, and makes you feel about as insignificant as seven pesos.]

 

When I am finished my writing for the day, I have two piles which I separate it into. I have the pile of Great Work, and the pile of Mostly Trash. The first pile is very little and almost impossible to locate; the second is a monument you can see from space.

 

The point is even when you are largely motivated, most of what you do is going to suck anyway. But the person who is motivated is the person who produces enough dumpsters full of trash to find two or three crusts of bread worth saving and that can nourish somebody.

 

Now despite what they might be lacking otherwise, people are never without the ability to delude themselves. I mean, the person I lie to the most, whether it’s about this little thing or that, is definitely me, and I think the person you probably lie to the most is probably you.  I tell myself things are good, when they aren’t good. I tell myself I’ll get around to something tomorrow when I know damn well that I won’t. But I think what separates me from most people, is that I delude myself a good deal less, and I think motivation, in its last analysis, has everything to do with being totally sane—which nobody is.

 

I also think there has to be some great twisting contortion of pain before a person changes their direction in any sane or significant way; there has to be some sort of a deep and festering wound that won’t shut itself or heal on its own. In other words, a burning realization that things aren’t so great as you’re pretending them to be.

 

The ego wants to feel superior. Thus, every man gets his cinnamon toast from one of two things: good fortune to himself, and watching his neighbor’s basement flood with pond water. It’s a wicked device, really it’s quite sick, but it’s how our puny and decayed minds work. Nietzsche called it the Will to Power, and Schopenhauer, Nietzsche’s predecessor, put its basis in our fundamental will to live, asserting some necessary biological function at the root of it.

 

The thing last named, of finding contentment in others’ discontentment, I think is something that can and needs to be transcended as quickly as you become aware of it. I think maybe, at some point, this part of the ego did serve a necessary function, but not anymore. It’s time to grow out of it, to cooperate, and, to reference another a more modern day philosopher, “to be excellent to one another”.

 

As a measure of comfort we choose to believe in things that we know are palpably untrue; that we’ll get around to doing the things tomorrow that we know we damn well won’t; so we sit there instead, defeated and absorbed by the infectious and all-pervasive newsfeeds of social media.

 

I heard my friend from college fell into a fire pit the other day, drunkenly, and when she came out her leg looked like a burnt kabob. Anyway, I’m sure she had every motivation to get out of that fire very quickly, drunk or sober. I do wish Kayla had been more careful, and didn’t drink so much Miller Lite, but now she knows a thing or two about intrinsic motivation.

 

– Pat

 

PS – There is a one day fitness “unconference” coming up in September. The theme, coincidentally (or not) is motivation. I will be presenting there, along with a good number of my other friends and coaches. It’s in Salt Lake City, and I’d like for you to be there, too.

You can learn more HERE.