I would call myself a motivated person in the sense that I am energetic, positive, accomplished, efficient, and I am very results oriented. But that is according to the generally accepted definition of the word ‘motivation’ and it does not do justice to the concept of motivation. When we look at motivation clearly we have to ask the question, ‘why are you doing this’ because the true definition of motivation is your reason for doing something. And that is not always the reason you are telling yourself. it is the underlying, deep, true reason for your actions and when we investigate our motivations and motives we can find that we can have more than one and they are often not aligned or working together.
There is an external reason and an internal reason for everything that we are motivated to do.
What is my reason for how I work and live my life? I am a learner, I love learning new things, exploring new adventures and being able to get things done. I enjoy the sense of accomplishment that accompanies starting and finishing a new task. I have over 100 pairs of shoes. I love being outside, gardening, bicycling, and hiking. I am an accomplished musician and I enjoy playing music. I am also a celebrated author and podcaster and I love interacting with people from all over the world.
That is my external reason for my motivation.
My internal reason is far different and not something I have talked about much in the past but I do talk about it more today. As you know I spent 5 years of my childhood, from age 5 to age 11, paralyzed due to a vaccine injury. For two years of that time, from 5 to 7 years of age, I was a quadriplegic. I could not move from the neck down and I was in a hospital. From age 7 to about 9 I got some of my mobility back as was a paraplegic, I could not move from the waist down. Then I had to be in a wheelchair and when I walked, it was by wearing hip length leg braces and using crutches.
It was not until I was 10 years old that I could use the crutches less and I wore leg braces to the knee.
Then when I was around 11 years old I finally got to get rid of the braces and could walk alone. I will never regain full mobility in my right leg and I lost my sense of balance but I can walk and move around on my own without support, and that is a miracle as I was told that I would never walk again.
During the time I was paralyzed and trying to regain mobility I could not do anything that other children did. I could not run, play outside, go to a friend’s house – I could not even go home. Even when I could walk again I was not physically strong enough to do a lot of things that other children did. ‘You cannot do that’ was something I heard a lot during those years.
And it was true, there were things I could not do. But hearing that I could not do them all of the time motivated me to vow that one day, when I could walk again, I would do everything and no one would tell me that I could not or try to stop me.
As you can guess, I went through a period of time, in my teens, when I did everything I could not do before. That led to a few injuries and mishaps but I was determined to make up for lost time and to show everyone that I could do everything just like everyone else.
For a long time my motivation was to prove myself capable in every way so no one would look at me with pity or leave me out because I was ‘crippled’. Even writing that word is still hard for me today.
I have 100 pairs of shoes because I could not wear the fancy shoes that were popular for little girls at the time. I had to wear high top, heavy leather ankle boots so my leg braces could be attached to my shoes. I remember desperately wanting a pair of black velvet Mary Jane shoes with the little strap across the instep.
I could not walk at the time so my mother was not going to buy a pair of shoes for a child who would never wear them. I can’t blame her for her thrift but it still didn’t lessen the blow of not getting to wear the shoes I wanted. Once I started buying my own clothes, shoes became an important part of my wardrobe and they still are.
My internal motivation for doing things has always been to experience as much as possible and I have. Thankfully once I realized that I did not have to do everything I learned to discriminate and to delegate and that has saved me a lot of time, heartache, and exhaustion.
My purpose in sharing this with you is to talk about the issue of motivation – what really motivates you to do the things you do and while you may say one thing, there is probably another source of motivation you may not even be aware of. Once you understand your true sources of motivation – the real reason you move forward or not, feel stuck, are anxious, or push so hard to achieve your goals – you can be more discriminating about what you are doing and why, and make more discerning choices.
Your motivation is based on your motive, the reason behind the action being considered. What are you trying to do, accomplish, or to avoid? Motivation has two sides, what we are trying to accomplish and what we are trying to avoid. Sometimes our accomplish and avoid strategies go haywire and are at cross purposes, and then we get stuck because we have an equal level of motivation or reasons to move forward and to stay where we are.
We have a lot of motivation to avoid pain and suffering too. How many of you go over the speed limit when you see a police car next to you? How many of you test the bathwater before you get in the bathtub?
Our external motives are based on the reality we want to see. Our internal motives are based on how we want to protect ourselves and manage our safety and security needs.
Our ability to move forward depends on how much of a chance we are willing to take and how confident we are in our ability to switch timelines and make different choices.
A timeline represents a flow of energy from past to present. Every timeline we have has been created from experience. If we switch timelines we create a new starting point in the present moment, there is no experience and no history for us to refer to. We are on our own and we’re all alone, at least as far as supporters and believers are concerned.
In my guilt and shame webinar I shared the story of one of my clients, I’ll call her Anna, who had always wanted to move to Hawaii. I remember the very first time she had an intuitive consult with me, that was one of the first things I said to her, that she really wanted to live in Hawaii so why did she live in Minnesota?
Anna started crying because she had wanted to move to Hawaii for over 10 years but every time she tried her family stopped her by making her feel guilty about moving away from the family homestead and leaving the family behind.
All of her family lived in Minnesota, within a few miles of each other. They had always lived there and believed that it was insanity to want to leave. Why would she leave the family, they would ask her when she talked about moving, instead of why she wanted to move to Hawaii. In their minds, her motivation had to be to separate from the family. They could not consider the possibility that maybe she did not like Minnesota because that would be way out of their belief system.
But Anna did not like the long, cold Minnesota winters and she always felt she belonged in Hawaii. She vowed that every winter would be her last and did that for nearly 15 years. One day, Anna called me for an intuitive consult and I sensed a big shift in her energy. She felt far happier and more at peace than she ever had. And she was because she had finally moved to Hawaii.
Her family disagreed and they were all angry with her. They accused her of destroying the family, of being mean, of rejecting them all and used everyone one of their guilt and shame tricks to make Anna change her mind. But this time she didn’t and as soon as the snow melted she sold her house and moved away.
How did Anna break out of her family loyalty timeline and move away? It took a lot of courage and a lot of belief shifting and some research so she could assure herself that Hawaii would be a safe place for her. Vacationing somewhere for a week or two and moving there permanently are two different things. Anna knew that. So she prepared herself for a move far away from the only sources of safety, security, and support that she had ever had.
Anna’s primary motivation was to move to Hawaii because she felt she belonged there and to get away from the cold, harsh Minnesota winters. But her internal motivation was more complicated. She really did want to leave the family and live her life outside of the narrow and critical microscope of living in the family sphere. Her timeline was based around these family connections and moving to Hawaii put her on a different timeline, one that would not include her large caring, if intrusive, family.
Have you ever wondered about what motivates you? When you say you have ‘no motivation’ to do anything what do you really mean? That you are feeling tired and uninspired or that you do not have a good enough reason to get off the couch and do something? It’s more honest to say that you’re motivated to rest than to judge yourself for being lazy and ‘unmotivated’.
How do your motivations and timelines interact and intersect?
Are your external and internal motivations aligned?
Are you on an old timeline and can’t make the shift to a new one that is causing you frustration and grief?
Are you replaying old guilt and shame patterns to avoid a transformation?
Are you aware of your internal motivators and their influence on your choices, decisions, and actions?
Is your motivation based on what you are moving towards or what you are running away from or trying to avoid?
Next time you think about motivation give yourself some time to ponder all of these issues before you judge yourself for lying on the coach with a cozy blanket instead of blitzing through the house on a cleaning frenzy. Maybe what you will gain from lying on the coach and taking a break is exactly the motivation you need in that moment.
Your level of motivation does not depend on how energized or desperate you are. Motivation is led by motives – the reason you do things, or do not do them. When your internal and external motives are in synch, they are moving along the same path and are aligned in their intention, you can be motivated. When they are not, when your internal or external motives are different then you will feel unmotivated because you are being pulled in two different directions and the one that is pulling the hardest is the one that keeps you in your comfort zone.
