There are days, weeks and sometimes even months where your desire to do something productive
is barely existent.
Theres a possibility that you’re having a depression episode, but most likely you
aren’t, because you’re not sad, you’re just not feeling compelled enough to get up
and do stuff, stuff that maybe not today, but surely in the future will contribute to
a better life for you, or maybe even for your family and society.
And to properly understand the reasons and solutions to this problem, we need to have
a better understanding of the underlying processes that are taking place when we talk about motivation.
If you’re hungry that's not just a simple drive that’s pushing you to get something
to eat, it’s more of a subpersonality that has a goal, it has a bunch of action patterns
related to that particular goal, and it organizes your emotional responses around that goal.
We can look at it from another perspective.
We could say that motivation set goals, and emotions track progress towards goals.
Generally speaking motivation determines what your aim is, so if you are thirsty you are
going to aim at something to drink, and that will automatically alter your perception so
you zero out everything that is not relevant to that goal.
Once you start to focus on the few things that will guide you forward, your emotions
start to track your progress, so when you encounter those things that facilitate your
movement forward, that produces positive emotions.
On the other hand when you encounter some kind of threat, or blockage between you and
your goal, that produces negative emotions, and that can be anger, disappointment, grief
and so on.
And if you experience some of the more powerful negative emotions like pain for example, that
can cause you to abandon your goal and turn back.
So why is it so hard to get up and do stuff.
And it might be that you just don’t have any goals, it might be that you’re aiming
at nothing.
So no aim, equals no emotions, which equals no neurochemical fuel to keep you going.
Your case might not be exactly the same, but it is a pretty accurate scenario.
And you might ask, how do you fix that?
Well you need to sit down and set your goals.
See, If you observe a starving rat in cage and it knows it has food at the end of a corridor,
if you put a little spring attached to his tail, you can measure the rats motivation
by measuring how hard the rat pulls, you can measure the displacement of the little spring,
and that will give you a quantization of the motivational force of the rat.
What’s more interesting is, if you set up the same scenario with the rat trying to get
to some food and you spray some cat odor behind it, the starving rat would pull even harder,
because it it starving and he really wants to get the hell away from there.
So getting away and and getting somewhere are two distinct motivational systems, and
if you can combine them together then you can make a really powerful motivational force.
And you can start by sitting down and writing your perfect future, and also the possible
hell you want to avoid.
Let’s say for example you’re not motivated to work out.
You can start by imagining how perfect and healthy your body would be if you only started
to work out for 30 minutes a day, you can then imagine the clothes fitting you perfectly,
your posture, your health, stamina etc.
You can write everything down, you can write about the positive mood and outlook on life
you adopted since you started to work out.
Then imagine the opposite, imagine you being overweight, your IQ dropped because you didn’t
exercise or had optimal body weight, so naturally your IQ decreased as you aged.
Imagine going to the doctor and he’s telling you that you have an increased chance of heart
attack.
Imagine feeling anxious and depressed, without any self confidence or motivation, stuck being
overweight forever.
And that's a pretty terrifying future as far as I can tell.
Then once you do this, you can sit down and negotiate with yourself.
You can ask yourself, what would you want in return if you would work out for 30 minutes
a day for the next week.
That can be a walk in the park, a beer with your friends, playing video games like whatever
gets you excited, and then agree on that contract with yourself.
This reward, combined with the visualization of the ideal future and possible hell, is
going to produce a high level of motivation and drive to get you started on fixing the
dimensions of your life that need to be fixed.
Now, you have the knowledge, you know how emotions and goals contribute to your motivation,
you know techniques to combine two distinct motivational systems, and you know that you
need to negotiate instead of punishing or tyrannizing yourself.
So my advice is, do the visualisation, write your goals, get up do stuff.
Because If we all get our act together collectively, then maybe we can make this world just a little
bit better for all of us.