Motivation and why it lasts or not...

Welcome back!

Before you read this, make sure you read my post on Beliefs, Thoughts, Emotions and Behaviour as this article is a continuation of the previous one.

How many times have you listened to an audio book, watched a video or attended a conference where a motivational speaker addressed the group? When you listen to the audio book, you get excited and decide that you are changing your life around, when you watch a motivational video, you also feel excited and motivated and can write an entire list of things you want to do or change and when you walk out of the conference you just can't wait for tomorrow to start doing things in a different way to get different results.

Does this sound familiar? I know it does!

How many times have you heard people say (or even said yourself): "I had the best intentions, but when I got back to the normal day to day things I just did not have the time to get to it" or "I never felt so good, but that subsided very quickly - the feeling just didn't last"?

If you think about beliefs, thoughts, emotions and behaviour... which one of the four does motivation speak to? In other words, which one of the four does motivation influence or effect? It had a lot to do with how you felt at that point in time, thus emotions, right?  It can even talk to your thoughts as it can make you think differently about something specific.

Do you notice anything at this point?

Motivation does NOT talk to what you believe! So even though you think differently for now or even if you are excited for now, ultimately you will go back to your old ways of thinking and back to your old emotions that will make you behave the way you always do... thus changing nothing!

Until such time as you change your beliefs about something, you will not be able to sustain the motivation.  You will not be able to change anything as a matter of fact.

But is it possible to change what you believe? Absolutely!

I am a firm believer that everything in life is a choice.  You can choose to change your view of something, but to do that you have to be honest with yourself and truly change your view (belief) and not just say you are now changing how you view something.  Saying that, I guess it is also fair to say that one will not be able to change all of your views, but the ones you really want to change, you will most definitely be able to!

Question:  Do you think there is a difference in levels of success reached by optimists vs. pessimists?

Thanks again for reading my blog - please leave a comment or tick one of the boxes below to indicate what you think of the post!

Francois