How Motivation Works 101:
The most important and often overlooked concept here is this:
Motivation comes after action, never before.
So, you’ll have to get yourself moving, just the littlest bit, to start breeding the motivation to stick to something.
If this doesn’t make any sense to you, you may be confusing inspiration with motivation.
Getting inspired is easy…a flower, a Rocky movie, a song…but staying motivated is the trick to long-term change.
Only do a little something to get the motivation rolling. If you do too much, your brain will convince you that the new behavior is way too cumbersome and do whatever it can to get you to stop.
Once you start feeling good about being a runner, or a guitar player, or a Spanish speaker, stop after only a little bit of action to keep that motivation coming to get you back in your running shoes, picking up the guitar and practicing your Spanish. Although it may be counterintuitive, restricting the desired behavior that you want, will get you wanting more and more of it, so stop the new behavior just when you’re in the height of feeling good about it.
Knowing that motivation comes after action, taking the little by little approach and restricting your new, desired behavior regularly will do more then just get you motivated, it will actually keep you motivated!
Peace,
Cheri
