Motivation is complex, unreliable and unpredictable at best but sadly most people believe motivation is the true engine of behavior change. Beceause of this belief, as soon as motivation vanishes, so do all of our efforts and action steps toward the goal we were aiming to achieve. This, my friends, is a recipe for frustration, defeat, struggle and angst. If you are on a health and fitness journey and are relying on motivation as one of your foundational pillars, I hate to break it to you but it's not going to end well.
Join me today as we really dig into it. Motivation is complex, motivation has a wave, motivation fluctuates but most importantly motivation is not the winning ticket to long term behaviour change. So how do we outsmart motivation? We ride the wave when it's there, but we fall back on our tiny habits when it's not. There's nothing wrong with soaking in the added boost that comes with a surge of motivation, but we have to have a fall back plan for when the wave crashes to nothing. Because it will. And if we're not prepared, we'll find ourselves caught in a yo-yo pattern with our goals taking 2 steps forward and a few steps back every time our motivation ebbs and flows.
So know that you are not a failure or lesser than if you "can't keep yourself motivated". It's really not that at all. Successful people are not always motivated, they have developped a system to carry them forward, even when motivation isn't there.
