Motivation is inconsistent. You can’t really depend on it. One day you will be highly motivated after having a restful sleep, a hit of caffeine or after hearing your favorite “influencer”, the next day life happens and suddenly you’re not in the mood of doing any of the tasks in front of you, everything just goes out the window. Totally sounds familiar, right? It took me some time to realize why this is and I will explain it as simply as I can. There is an important neuromodulator that is responsible for the hype that we’re experiencing whenever we’re “feeling motivated”, it’s none other than Dopamine. Simply put, Dopamine is the fuel to our gas tanks, we fill our tanks and over time as we consume it, it gets emptied. Hence, our motivation, it comes and goes. Now considering this, why would you rely on something that gets emptied? The point I am trying to highlight is that we should not be dependent on “the fuel” and instead become the person who regularly fills his tank with the right amount of fuel.
It took me a long time to realize this. I remember listening to motivational speakers on YouTube with their rich, uplifting tone urging me to get shit done but all I did was watch them for hours telling me to get my shit done. Hilarious but true. Either I will work on something and then quickly realize it was not for me or to work on my old projects that I did not follow-through only to stop again. It was a never-ending cycle of meaningless crap. Tank gets filled, then emptied, then I fill it back up again after it goes dry–you get the picture.
If you’re serious about your goals, why would you rely on the erratic nature of motivation? I understand that there are a lot of people on various platforms telling us to find our Why, then everything will follow. Well, if for instance we found our Why, what’s next? Get motivated? I don’t think so. I’d say form habits that will operate towards your Why. Our habits, the good ones that stick, are the “How” to our “Why”. Motivation is so vague, it’s like shooting without a target; habits, on the other hand, have specific outcomes and can be scaled. The other feature that I love about habits is that they can withstand the storms that come to our lives, like when we deviate from our “Why” or still looking for it, our habits are there to stay whatever our circumstance is. The habits that are ingrained in us don’t change just because our lives changed, we do them without even thinking. It is more sustainable and efficient not only for your mind but also for your body. It may sound blunt and robotic, but we have always had habits that are automatic to us, like taking a bath everyday, brushing our teeth after a meal, I don’t think we need motivation every time we execute them. Try creating one and make it stick.