Every week, I SWEAR that I am going to blog every day, and every week it never happens.  Sometimes life gets crazy, and sometimes, despite posting a positive quote every day, I just don’t have anything to say.  I love to write, and I love to create, but I seem to lack the motivation.  It’s something I need to work on, and I don’t think it’s something I’m alone in.  Being motivated, and finding motivation can be a challenge.  It has to come from within.  Sure you can have a task you have to get completed for work or school, and you get it done, but is that motivation  internal (is it coming from you) or is it fear of what your boss might say or what your report card will look like?

It’s something I’ve been giving a lot of thought, lately.  How do you tell if motivation is internal or external, and if one is better or worse than the other.  Here’s what I’ve come up with….when you’re doing it because you want to or when you take pride in the final results, the motivation is internal.  Let me explain….think about that thesis paper that you had to write for class, or the report you had to do for work.  When you did it, did the work feel good, and feel write, and just flow from you?  If you can answer yes, that is because you were internally motivated.  If you got it done because it had to be done, and it was expected, and yeah you did okay on it, then your motivation was probably external.  That’s how I’m seeing it, at least.

I go to the gym, and I’ve been doing pretty well, going daily.  I’m not seeing much progress, and I hate it – but I’m going….external motivation because logically, I know it’s good for me and it needs to be done.  But it’s a chore – trust me, it’s a big chore.  I’m hoping to get to the stage where the motivation is internal.  I’m thinking that may happen when I start to see some results – hopefully soon!

Another tricky thing is time and effort.  Sometimes your motivation can change from external to internal just by doing something.  Take for example this blog post.  I was feeling incredibly guilty about not blogging anything in a couple of weeks, so I uploaded some images of the Daily Positive Thoughts that I share on twitter and instagram (and the ones I’m SUPPOSED to be blogging about on a daily basis) and I was just going to share them with a little oopsie I’m sorry I haven’t blogged post.  That was external with guilt being the primary motivator.  Don’t get me wrong, sometimes guilt can be an awesome motivator – think back to mom getting you to get your chores done lol, but it’s not the best one.  Anyhow, when I started writing, the words just started flowing and the motivation changed from external (guilt) to internal (wanting to do a good job for me).  However guild cannot be a primary motivator, but sometimes it gets you going and the motivation can change.

So when you have a task to get done, and you’re lacking the motivation…try and think about why and what your motivation for getting the task done are…then try and find a way to make that motivation internal if it is in fact external.  And if you can’t get everything done, don’t sweat it, pick one thing, get it done and move on to the next task.  You don’t have to be perfect and you don’t have to do everything perfectly you just have to do your best.

Tags: daily positive thought, external motivation, guilt, internal motivation, motivation
Filed under: Daily Positive Thought