One of the things I hear over and over again with my clients, whether they are Pilates or Mindset clients, is that they tell me they lack Motivation.They say they simply don’t have the Motivation to stick with the new diet or exercises regime, they don’t have the motivation to do the work to create a better life for themselves, they lack motivation sometimes to get the simplest jobs done.
But, let’s think about this – do we really lack Motivation?
Motivation is literally the desire to do things, are we saying that we don’t have the desire to do things??
Well, from what I’ve seen, we all have shed loads of desire: we want to be slim, look great, be fit, be able to do the things we love like walking, cycling, swimming, playing with our kids/grandkids. We want to be less stressed, not to work as many hours, to spend more time on doing things for ourselves, we want to live comfortably, not to have to worry about paying the bills or putting food on the table. We might want to further our knowledge, take a course, get a degree, whatever YOU desire, one thing is certain, we definitely have desire and therefore the motivation, so WHY don’t we achieve what we want?
The answer is simple, our brains don’t work that way. Our brains want us to be safe. Anything that requires change (remember our brains are pattern recognition machines), puts us in threat, i.e we don’t feel safe.
If your brain doesn’t feel safe, it will do everything it can to make sure you don’t make the changes – hence we stay stuck, procrastinate, nothing changes as that is what your brain wants!
Think about it this way: as you get up in the morning and hop into your shower, you don’t hesitate; as you brush your teeth, you don’t hesitate; as you drink your morning coffee or herbal tea, you don’t hesitate, you just do – that leads to a happy brain, it’s feeling super safe 🙂
Then you decide to do something different, you’re going to make some big changes in your life as you realise you are fed up being stuck. So, the alarm goes off earlier to wake you up for your new gym routine, you hate waking early, so you hesitate, shall I bother or not? You hesitate and in that split second that you hesitate your brain has a wobble………what’s going on, why are you hesitating, something mustn’t be right, this doesn’t feel safe, let’s get back to what we know and have another 10 mins in bed and then hop in the shower – now your brain is happy again.
No Gym and you spend the rest of the day berating yourself for not being able to stick with your new regime!
For those of you who attended our Slim Forever seminar, you will know that you ONLY ever stick to something you enjoy doing i.e something that makes you feel safe.
Now, this is not to say that you shouldn’t be pursuing your heart’s desires, exactly the opposite, but pursue them in a way that is enjoyable, that makes you FEEL good, that brings more PLEASURE into your life, not less.
You know my favourite saying:
Consistency + Simplicity = Success
One small enjoyable step at a time is how you achieve your Happiness.
You don’t lack Motivation, you’re just creating Hesitation.