After that, you suddenly want to start working quickly, so you start a blog, launch a startup, or even try to lose weight, promising that this time will be different and you will be able to achieve your goal, all as a result of the motivation boosts you have gained.
Unfortunately, none of that lasts. After a while, your enthusiasm will dwindle, and you will not stick to any of your goals because you did not make enough effort to work on them. You will then look for another motivation boost, and so on.
Extrinsic motivation
Behind everything online is a story that gives you motivation. It's the profound experiences of others that make you want to rethink your expectations because if someone else can overcome the difficulties, so can you.
For example, a motivational fitness story can fall into one of the following seven categories:
- The story of a person who lost interest in life and was able to regain it again through physical fitness.
- The story of a woman who can both meet the requirements of children and maintain her physical fitness.
- The story of someone who experienced betrayal and whose fitness helped them get over it and love themselves.
- A story of a person who struggles with a disease to which many succumb but who goes on and comes out victorious.
- A story in which someone learns to accept themselves, understand that they are enough, eat healthy, and exercise.
- The story of a person who reassessed their life and prioritized self-care.
- The story of a person who came from a humble environment but opened up to the whole world thanks to fitness.
Fitness motivation is just an example, and any success story can have a similar scenario.
By observing these narratives, which we see a lot on social media, with many details, some of which are true and some of which are exaggerated, you will feel great motivation. Yet, this same motivation will disappear as quickly as it came, but why?
Because none of these stories work for you, of course, you've suffered before, but you haven't fought depression or had a life-changing experience. You might get inspired at first, but it will diminish later.
You will begin to feel weak and compare yourself to a person you follow on social media. Inferiority and guilt will eventually replace the motivation you felt before, which is similar to subjective pain, and these feelings are something your mind prefers to avoid. So you stop checking these people's profiles, find yourself starting to look for motivation elsewhere, and start the cycle again.
Intrinsic motivation
If the extrinsic motivation doesn't last, can it come from within? Can you consistently motivate yourself towards a goal based solely on your motives? Yes, you can, but it is essential to choose a way to do it, as long as you think of any achievement as a set of challenges you need to overcome. Chances won't last, and if you can add some fun to the equation, then you understand.
Let's take a look at the idea of fitness again. If you decide to build your six packs and convince yourself that you will suffer all the way and not reach your goal, at some point you will start to think, "Why am I doing this myself?" You will be able to withstand some strict restrictions, but after a while, it will seem like punishment.
When evaluating the possible continuation of this punishment, your body and mind will lose the desire to strive for the goal (or maintain the results) and will do everything to stop suffering, similar to the way they stopped the guilt coming from extrinsic motivation. Continuation means war with yourself, and losses are inevitable.
But this does not mean that intrinsic motivation will inevitably fail
Although you can't base your motivation on the idea that you need to punish yourself, you don't have to treat reaching a goal as basically suffering. When you start thinking of the process while you pursue your target as fun or designing it to be fun, then you can go on for a long time.
On an intuitive level, we seek pleasure, which makes us produce happiness hormones, which are addictive. We want to keep doing the things that bring us happiness, and then we move on to the goal, so pleasure is a permanent source of self-motivation.
But what does it mean to use pleasure as a permanent source of motivation? Anything worth pursuing is hard to compare to eternal happiness. Yet, on your way to the goal, you should love what you're doing. For example, if you don't like uncertainty and prefer security, you probably shouldn't quit your job and freelance.
In addition, you need to reframe some ideas to enjoy them; you've smoothly trained yourself to think of them as unpleasant. In fact, you can reframe some situations to make them very pleasant.
On the way to your goal, you will find some unpleasant things, regardless of how you look at them; whatever those things are for you, they may be impossible to avoid. In this case, you need to develop a plan where there are always rewards worth looking forward to. Surely you will suffer, but you will get what you want.
In conclusion
While the importance of other people's stories in getting us motivated can't be underestimated, the motivation they generate rarely lasts long; it's fleeting and will soon disappear, replaced by guilt.
On the other hand, intrinsic motivation can give us the energy to keep going. However, self-motivation is not just positive self-talk, convincing yourself that you can do it regardless of expectations. When we force ourselves to suffer too much to achieve a goal, we are likely to collapse before reaching the finish line. We are programmed to avoid suffering, and on the other hand, pleasure is something that drives us to strive.
To make pleasure part of our intrinsic motivation, we need to love what we do, recognize where we need to change the situation, and design a process so that rewards become an integral part of it.
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