Sustainable Motivation

“The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.”

— Aldous Huxley

There are two basic options you have every time you seek to motivate yourself toward a task or a goal. One acts like Superman's Kryptonite, draining your energy, creativity and sometimes even your will to live, and the other acts like a vast array of brand-new solar panels, powering your progress with no further investment through the inevitable daily dose of the sun's rays. You may now find yourself wondering, if this is true, why in the name all that is good would anyone choose the first option?  That's an excellent question!  In this blog, we'll look at why we do this, and what the two options are in the first place.

The first option, which most people vastly overuse in the quest for motivation, is shame.  I've heard it said that while guilt is the feeling that you've done something wrong, shame is the feeling that you are wrong. Did you get the difference? Give a moment to sink in, because this is important. Shame is, frankly, guilt gone too far. If you believe that you just are bad, that doesn't leave you anywhere to go, and if that doesn't drain your will to live, I don't know what would! The purpose of feeling guilt at all is to let you know that you've veered off course, and you have some work to do to get back on track so that you're living within the parameters of your own values. And here's where we get down to the reason why we then flip into shame:  We were taught to.

The application of shame is a very popular tactic for attempting to keep children (and later, adults) in line. If a caretaker implies that a child's behavior is bad and love may be withdrawn because of it, she is likely to be scared into submission.  She is also likely, with limited understanding, to take away the message that she is bad—sometimes that's even the intended message. The point of all this from the adult perspective is to maintain some control, and to teach the child safe and desirable behavior. Parenting is hard, children are energetic and unruly, and sometimes anything that works without obvious harm is the goal.

Adults will use shame tactics on adults for control as well, because they know that subconsciously, many will be intimidated and manipulated by them without even noticing what's happening. Also, these are the tactics they were taught themselves—and these things get passed on generation after generation. You can see this playing out in arenas like politics, advertising, and religion, not to mention family dynamics. We learn, from the way others try to motivate us, how we should try to motivate ourselves. And while I'm no child development or parenting expert, I can tell you that for adults, this approach is a disaster.

I want to move on to a better way, while first acknowledging that though you can do a lot through the power of choice and intention, you may need more than that in order to turn away from the habit of overindulgence in guilt and shame. Many of you know what I'm going to say next! EFT, y'all. Otherwise know as Tapping. It's simple to learn, free to use, and once you're comfortable with it, you can use it to rewrite how you experience old memories and how you process new experiences. Depending on your situation, this may take some work. It may even be appropriate to seek guidance from a mental health professional as you do this work, depending on your situation. But I have not found anything else to be as helpful and empowering across such a range of complaints. That said, now let's move on to greener pastures!

The second way to motivate ourselves is through joy. Does that sound good to you? If not, you may find that you have a lot of programming around this concept that causes you to immediately assume that this is dumb, wouldn't be effective, is the territory of the self-indulgent, etc. If so, that right there will prevent you from fairly considering just how efficient it actually can be, and making some amazing progress. What I find to be  true over and over is that when we find ways to amp up our inspiration around who we are and the path we're on, everything becomes easier and more fun. That, in turn, builds confidence and optimism, not to mention enthusiasm and physical energy, that will carry us through challenges and setbacks when necessary.

So how do we go about connecting to the infinite power source that is joy? You'll find your own tricks and refinements, but the essential part of the endeavor is in acknowledging that you have a unique part to play in life that has to do with many factors, including where you came from, your family, your friends, your natural talents and the skills you've built, as well as your desires and passions. You are valuable. Knowing that you have something special to offer, you then get to decide how you will assemble all of your pieces into a work of art. This should be fun!

• If it's not fun yet, consciously ask yourself all throughout the day how you could make your tasks more fun. You're alive today!  Act like it!  Celebrate it!
• It's also important to celebrate what you want (your vision for your future) as well as what you have right now, and love both as best you can. If you're really loving and appreciating something, anything, you're building reserves of joy
• Lastly, celebrate yourself.  You will always make mistakes and do some things badly, especially if you're learning, growing, and trying new things.  That never means that you are bad.  It means that you're human, and there will always be more to learn
• If others are sending you the message that you're bad, that's about them, not you.  You decide what you will improve about yourself.  It's great to take feedback into account, and others can teach us a great deal, but you are the final arbiter of what's right for you and your timing
• Every day, you need to be spending some time purposely enjoying and honing your vision, and considering your best next steps for getting there. You need to "keep it real," in other words,  allow yourself to think of that future you want as a real thing that's being built right now
• It's also important to train yourself to be awake, alive, and aware in the present moment, because that is where all opportunity will show up. Have you ever noticed that an opportunity is never offered to you in the past or the future? If you're spending too much mental time in either, you're missing out on what's happening and what's possible right now!

Powering your life with joy and inspiration is like hooking up to a renewable energy source that draws you forward. It's the most efficient and sustainable way to boost yourself into the future you want, so think about adding more of it if you want to generate perpetual motivation.

Who's Driving This Thing?

“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.”

— Carl Rogers

I’ve noticed in my work with clients that many people are much harder on themselves than they would be on anyone else, especially people they love and care about.  Something for which one would easily forgive a friend becomes unforgiveable in oneself for reasons that are hard to fathom.  Sometimes the client will even say that it seems irrational for him to feel so guilty about something relatively minor, and yet he does.  What gives?  And why is this such a common experience?

I think the answer is that we have learned this behavior, usually from people who had no idea what was being passed down, in two different ways.  First, the conscious part of the equation:  When we’re children, we hear from all the adults around us, as well as from friends and peers, about what constitutes being a “good” person.  We may have trouble unifying everything we’re told into a cohesive theory about how to behave, but we do know that we’re supposed to try to be “good.”  We doubtless remember times when we were accused of behaving badly and intentionally embarrassed by someone, whether publicly or privately.  We may learn that life tends to go more smoothly when we behave in a pleasing way toward others; we then take on the job of policing our own behavior, taking on the voices of people we respected or feared and obeying them even in their absence.  This is relatively easy to recognize if you think about it—by which I mean that it may take some work to notice when you’re trying to please someone who’s not there, but if you pay attention to how you make decisions, you’ll probably start to see some of these habits before too long. 

And now for the second part that is not conscious.  Figuring out how this piece is affecting you can be quite a bit trickier.  In The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton writes about how recent scientific study has revealed that children under the age of six spend most of their time in different brain wave states than adults.  Until the age of two, children exhibit mostly delta brain waves, which in adults are associated with sleep states, and from ages two to six they spend most of their time in theta brain wave activity, which in adults is associated with the kind of “suggestible, programmable” state that hypnotherapists lead people into in order to help them accomplish change.  In other words, young children are generally not in a fully conscious state that adults would recognize.  They do not have access to conscious decision-making and analytical abilities.   Therefore, whatever a small child hears is downloaded into her subconscious directly.  Did you get that?  Young children have no filter; what they hear is recorded directly into their subconscious minds as truth.  When you were young, you learned a great deal that you are not aware of now, and it’s still affecting you today unless you’ve taken concrete steps to update that information. 

That explains a lot about why it can be so hard to change old habits and beliefs even if we want to.  The reasons why we feel a certain way may well be rooted in events and verbal commands we can’t even remember!  We have years’ worth of programming that we’ve never had the opportunity to examine.  We may remember plenty from childhood, and still be unaware of some pivotal beliefs that were instilled in us very early.  The people who taught them to you have changed or may not be alive anymore, but the messages have not.  Part of your mind is being run by ghosts.

We all know that parenting is a tough, demanding, and often exhausting job.  Parents do what they can to keep us safe and healthy and stay sane at the same time.  One of the methods most use is the application of shame to keep us in line—a sharp tone of voice telling us to stop it and a withering look, questions about what we were thinking when we did something that seemed really dumb or dangerous from an adult perspective, maybe a slap upside the head to let us know just how unacceptable our choice was.  (Some of this is non-verbal, or even learned from things we just overheard rather than experiencing them personally.)  If they can make us feel bad about certain choices, it’s less likely that we’ll make them again.  While this can be effective, its continued use can also leave us with a general feeling of not being good enough/as good as others, or the feeling that we need to talk to ourselves harshly in order to avoid bad decisions and consequences.  Once it’s installed, this habit of self-talk can run for decades or a lifetime without your awareness of what it’s really about, or that there are other alternatives.  The only thing that really makes this second half of the equation different from the first is that it occurs before we can be fully aware of what’s happening, and we may not be able to recall it later.

Some of this may not seem very empowering.  After all, what can we do about things we don’t even remember in the first place?  In fact, there are ways to clean up even the mysterious things that may be holding you back.  Making positive change happen in your life often requires the use of tools that can open a dialogue between your conscious and your unconscious mind.  My favorite of these is EFT/Tapping because it’s highly effective, and it’s a self-help tool that almost anyone can learn and use safely.  Once you’ve spent some time getting the hang of it, it’s astonishing what you can learn about yourself and what might be keeping you stuck in a particular area of your life.  It takes practice to become confident in this dialogue, but it’s well worth the effort if you’re someone who would like to feel better physically, emotionally, or spiritually, or to work toward more positive mental habits.  Despite what we may have been taught, it is possible to learn to treat yourself more kindly, and think and problem-solve more constructively.  Quieting habitual negativity can free up a lot of energy for better physical health and greater creativity.  And now that you know more about how children function, you might want to spend some time thinking about how you talk to the little ones in your life.  What you say to them will shape their habits more directly than you might think.  Choose your messages carefully to support their long-term health and happiness just as you learn to be more careful with how you speak to yourself.