Having A Lack of Desire
Most people have had the experience of starting something new for the all the wrong reasons.
When starting on a new job, sport, or any unfamiliar activity we might rationalize at a later time why the particular endeavor wasn’t that important to us.
Why do people tend to start things they want to enjoy doing only to abandon them later on?
Continuing to stay motivated for a long duration is much more of an issue for most rather than getting started on a new venture.
It’s easy to get motivated for a short period of time but true perservence is a lot more scarce in individuals.
The influence of motivation can originate from two difference sources: intrinsically or extrinsically. Both of these factors play a big part how long we persist with tasks.
How to Know You’re Not Motivated
A local high school football player in a highly competitive school district one day has to decide whether to stay in the school he’s currently in or transfer to the larger school across town that’s often scouted by Division I college recruiters.
He may be extrinsically motivated because of the potential to be selected for the more competitive and prominent school.
If he was intrinsically motivated he would probably stay at his current school to improve his skills and to get recognized from his own hard work.
Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation are both important because they both help us make decisions to choose things that we like to do and stay persistent with them.
For example, one day you may try figure skating during your free time as way to help you bond better with your kids. You may later on realize that skating gives you a sense of calm that you never gotten at home.
This would be an example of being extrinsically motivated to explore a new activity that could maintain your interest.
You typically start extrinsically motivated for a particular cause until you later find a reason to become intrinsically motivated.
So when you find that you’re not excited to go to the gym anymore, it’s probably because you ran out of reasons to keep going.
How to Keep Motivation Going
Most people don’t know that chasing things of superficial or monetary value can ruin the passion and excitement you had for an activity.
You may like to get behind the wheel of your car and drive around town everywhere you like, but you may hate it if you had to make a living at it.
While extrinsic rewards sound great at first, they often ruin the values you started with and force you to compromise yourself.
Many famous athletes struggle with the waning love of their sport because of the pressure from highly lucrative sponsors and coaching staff conflicting with their instrinsic motivations for the game.
For this reason alone, it’s very important to have a solid foundation of intrinsic motivation setup to go through the tough times.
Extrinsic motivation in bodybuilding is the six pack abs models plastered all over magazines covers or the bikini model next to a hot car.
Intrinsic motivation in bodybuilding comes from the physical results you get or what you see on paper.
Long term commitment towards fitness and exercise involves you loving your body more than anything else in life, even more than money.
To motivate yourself to keep going use a journal or a log to track what progress you’ve made on any exercise that you’re working on.
When you actually see progress written down on a pad rather than just made up somewhere figuratively in your mind, you more likely to keep your motivation much longer in the gym.
The next thing you need to do is think of all the reasons you wanted to work out in the first place.
Writing this down too can will only keep yourself accountable when you forget why you started your fitness journey.
The last thing you want to do is avoid outside influences from people who won’t be that supportive of what you’re doing, because they always show up.
Expect to get criticism from some people, but take it with a grain of salt as you know you’re headed in the right direction towards your goals.
The Wrap Up
Motivation can be either intrinsic or extrinsic and plays a big part of how we make decisions. The choices you make may be extrinsic in nature, but they should have some kind of value to you intrinsically so that you’ll have a greater likelihood of sticking with them. The reasons why you wanted start is what will keep you going.
What else do you want to know?