What even is motivation anyway?
Have you ever found yourself saying something similar to “I don’t feel motivated to do that”? Have you ever wondered how you can help yourself get motivated when you just…aren’t? Motivation is considered “the reason one has for acting or behaving in a particular way”. Motivation is the desire behind the energy to be a certain way, reach a specific goal, or make a change within ourselves and our lives.
It is so easy in our world to look at other people who are doing the things that we want to be doing and compare ourselves to them. We begin to wonder if they actually wake up in the morning and simply think to themselves “I cannot wait to do _____ today”, whether that is moving their body, going to school, going to work, or any other form of activity or responsibility.
When I think of motivation I think of Newton’s first law of motion; inertia. Newton’s law of motion says that an object at rest will stay at rest and an object in motion will stay in motion. Anytime we are hoping to make a change within ourselves, especially in therapy, we may have both external and internal motivators. We may have people cheering us on, asking us for change, and telling us they believe in us. But, their words are not enough to create the movement for the change needed in us. We may even have an internal desire to be different, to grow, and to change, but these thoughts alone are also not enough to create movement in our lives.
So, if motivation is not something that we magically wake up with one day, and if these external and internal motivators on their own are simply not enough for the change to occur, what needs to happen? We need to make a choice. We have to first believe in our ability to grow and change, and then we have to be our own catalyst for change. We have to physically, mentally, or emotionally push ourselves into motion and action in order to see the change occur.
We are all capable of making these changes, we need to believe in ourselves and then take action. The beauty of therapy is that you get to have someone in it with you.