Motivation Isn't as Important As You Wish it Was.
Happy New Year!
For me, 2021 felt like a year where I finally started to pick up all my shit that I dropped when this now years long pandemic began. I’m entering this new year feeling like I’m actually headed somewhere. I have things I want to achieve, goals I want to meet. I feel ready, excited, and motivated. Having been stuck in a rut for so long taught me that motivation isn’t all that important when it comes to reaching new goals. If motivation was all it took I don’t think I would have gotten stuck in a rut in the first place. Sadly the human mind (and each individual person) needs a little something more than just pure motivation to do difficult things on a long term basis.
I’m not saying motivation is a bad thing by any means. That feeling can be a really important first step. Think of motivation like a spark though. A spark has so much potential to grow into something huge and powerful, but without the proper conditions or fuel the spark is just going to burn out pretty quickly. Similarly, if you feel a sudden burst of energy this January to finally exercise consistently, keep your spaces cleaner, or start on a new project you probably won’t get very far unless you set up a proper environment for yourself. Here are my suggestions on how to set yourself up for sustained progress and success.
Now, I’m not an expert on life, human behavior, or anything like that. At the end of the day I’m just some woman on the internet. My suggestions are based mostly on what has worked for me and what has worked for other people. Figuring out how to run your life is unfortunately unique to you. Even if most common strategies work for you, they might have to be tweaked to fit with how your brain works and what your lifestyle allows. Anyway, here’s what I suggest:
Have a plan!
This plan doesn’t have to be crazy and complex. In fact, having a looser plan might help you roll with the punches when life inevitably does the life thing and blindsides you with a new challenge or obstacle. Our goal, which will be used as an example in all the following steps, is to “get healthy”. This goal, or some iteration of it, is a pretty common one to make a New Year’s resolution. It is also incredibly vague. What does that mean to you? Part of planning should be defining what you exactly mean to do with your goal. What is the end game? Is there an end game? Do you want to have more energy? Lose weight? Generally feel better in your physical body? Etc.
The next step is to break it down further into subgoals. These should be little habits that you work on forming that will get you to your ultimate goal. For example, you might decide in order to get healthier you want to work on forming good habits around drinking enough water, eating healthy, or getting enough sleep. Building good, sustainable habits are a really important part of working towards a goal as vague as “getting healthy” because there is no real end point. There probably won’t be a day where you wake up and decide you’ve done enough on your health journey and that you’d like to go back to your old ways of sleeping 4 hours a night, exclusively eating food that’s either frozen or from 7/11, and smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Whatever your goal is, you should be able to break it down into smaller behavior changes you can actually live with. Even if it is a goal with a defined end point, inevitably you’ll reach that and either have to maintain something, or you’ll want to build off of it. With things that are important to us, are we ever really done? In the next steps I’ll expand on how you can best live with (and even enjoy!) the potentially daunting changes in behavior you’ll have to make.
Don’t trade pain for pain
Ok, so you’ve finally decided you’re sick of feeling tired and sluggish all the time and you’re going to start getting healthy. Anyway, you’re motivated to get healthy because you don’t like the way you feel and think you could do better for yourself. In your planning phase you’ve defined getting healthy as physically feeling better and you’re going to do that by staying hydrated, getting enough exercise, and eating well. You are off to a good start. You dive in head first as soon as you recover from your hangover on January 1st. You sign up for the gym, you go grocery shopping and fill your cart with vegetables, and you buy one of those huge water bottles to carry around with you everywhere. Within two weeks things have fallen apart for you. Yeah, feeling physically crappy kind of sucks but so does never eating a satisfying meal, going to the stupid gym each day after work, and missing your old hobbies you’ve pushed aside to make time for long hours working out. If you want to build a new habit you have to find a way to make it not suck for yourself every day. Relying on discipline, willpower, and motivation won’t get you very far if the long term benefits aren’t tangible yet and your daily life lacks things you enjoy.
For example, maybe you get takeout every Friday and that gives you something to look forward to during a tough week. Don’t deny yourself that joy! Focus on eating better throughout the week and leave your weekly treat alone. Explore new ways to make healthy meals, incorporate your favorite flavors into them, and for the love of all things good in this world let yourself eat your favorite “unhealthy foods” in moderation. You can expand this idea to exercise and drinking water as well (and pretty much anything). If you hate going to the gym, try a workout class. If you hate working out around other people, find some workouts on youtube to do at home. Find something you actually don’t mind doing like dance cardio, pilates, or biking. If you don’t drink a lot of water because it’s boring, maybe put some slices of citrus fruits in your water bottle or throw in some fresh mint or ginger. When it comes to ways to make the new habit you’re trying to form less miserable, you might have to get creative but, you might also just have to google it and see what other people have done.
In conclusion, don’t torture yourself. Don’t make your daily life significantly worse in hopes that it’ll make you happy in the long run. There’s no point, and you won’t stick to whatever you’ve started doing.
Start small, build from there
One of the best ways to give yourself the time you’ll need to make sure the new habits you’re forming don’t suck is to implement them slowly. Give yourself time to experiment with what works best for you and to adjust to a new schedule by starting small. Is there one habit you could establish that would help you with the rest of them? Are there a few little changes you could make that you could potentially build off of? Let’s go back to this idea of “getting healthy”. Maybe you’ve decided that staying hydrated is the most important thing to start with. It will help you feel well enough to exercise more and help you make better food choices. Maybe for the first week of your health journey this is the sole habit you focus on forming. Once you feel comfortable with that and start to feel the benefits you can start adding on other habits that will help you reach your ultimate goal of getting healthy. Start small with each little part of your plan. Your consistent exercise can start off as taking a once a week workout class and/or taking a 20 minute walk a few times a week. Eating healthy can start off by making sure you’ve had a fruit or vegetable with two out of your three daily meals.
Beginning whatever journey you’re going on with steps you know you can reasonably achieve, and not overwhelming yourself with too much change is going to help you maintain it all. Plus, it feels good to reach a goal you set! So set yourself up for success and actually set little goals you can reach!
Do your best to be flexible
As I said earlier, life will do the life thing. You will face new challenges, both internal and external, that you didn’t see coming. There isn’t much to say about this one other than to be prepared to change how you’re doing things. For example, let’s say you’re really into a new group exercise class at your local gym. What happens if another wave of COVID hits and we go into a lockdown? What happens if it stops being offered? What happens if you just lose interest or it doesn’t work for you anymore?
Situations like that could make a whole aspect of your plan crumble if you were reliant on that one method of exercise. As someone who loves routine and struggles with rigid thinking from time to time, I can’t say I’m really good at going with the flow when disaster strikes. It’s good to at least have familiarity with other options you have though. This can be as simple as passively taking note of other methods people are using to achieve similar goals to you. This might look like connecting with other people who have similar goals to you on social media, talking to friends who have achieved a level of success in an area of their life that you admire, or something along those lines. Knowing that the way you have found to achieve something is not the only way out there can help when something unexpected wrecks your whole system.
Celebrate little wins and milestones
Earlier I talked about starting small and building on the habits you form. Take time to celebrate those little wins you have along the way! Changing your lifestyle takes a lot of time and effort (both physical and mental). Sure, hitting a small goal already feels good, but you deserve to make a big deal out of it and make yourself feel even better! This can look like sharing a milestone with a supportive friend and sharing the joy you feel, getting yourself a little treat, or taking an afternoon for yourself. Make checklists, sticker charts, or your own method of tracking your progress and then celebrate when it’s all complete. The work that you have put in deserves to be celebrated, even if it is just by you.
As I post this on the 9th, many people will already be starting to give up on their New Year’s resolutions. Hopefully this finds someone who needs reassurance. Whatever it is you’re trying to do, you can do it! Just know that you’ll need a little more than just motivation to get there! No matter when you’re reading this, it's not too late to start on a journey of self-actualization! Just form a plan, be gentle with yourself, and start small. As the old adage says: slow and steady wins the race!
