Here's What Real Motivation Looks Like

The problem we face with motivation is that there’s never enough of it. It’s incredibly inconsistent. Being motivated is a great thing, it feels great.

One moment you feel on top of the world ready to kick ass, make money and work hard. But the next day you can’t muster the strength to get out of bed.

You might think the problem is that we just don’t have enough motivation in our lives in order to achieve the things we want. However, the real issue is we’re just getting our motivation from the wrong sources.

If you watch a motivation video, that video will give what I call a ‘motivational high’, for about a day. The problem is, you can’t keep watching motivational videos every day to always feel motivated.

Say you find motivation from a book. It feels great, and you might actually learn from that book. But you can’t keep it on you at all times. You can’t resort to it whenever you need some motivation. It’s unreliable.

To solve this issue, you need to understand the difference between Normal Motivation and Self-Motivation.

What is Normal Motivation?

For almost everyone, that base level of motivation isn’t enough to be productive. That’s usually where most people feel depressed or down. And so in order to combat that low level of motivation, we seek motivational videos, books or people. Which gives you a spike of motivation which ends up coming back down.

Regardless of the amount of motivation you get the problem is, it never lasts.

Whereas Self-Motivation is a whole different thing

What is Self-Motivation?

It’s where you’re base level/normal state of motivation is high. And the dips in motivation are natural as that’s what life does. You naturally get down from having a bad day. The difference is you are naturally able to self-correct back to a state of high motivation.

I get this sounds great and all but how does this actually work and furthermore does it actually work.

Well, it does.

Well at least for me. I’m lucky enough to be really happy and consider myself “Self-Motivated”. But understand I still go through the same shit as everyone else. Sometimes more. It’s not like my problems magically disappear, it’s just that I know how to deal with them and grow from them.

Seriously I’ll give you an example. One morning I had to skip breakfast to get to school early and take a test. Later on in the day, I received a test and got a B-. On the way back it was pouring rain, and I was freezing. I generally felt depressed and awful. But the remarkable thing was after taking off my wet shoes and changing into some comfy clothes, I was able to sit down sad, and stand up happy. I sat down, looked in the mirror, and my thought process was able to guide me back to my normal motivation level.

And this was great. But I wasn’t sure why I was able to do this. So I studied myself and my thoughts for a while, wrote down some notes and came to a conclusion. That the reason I was able to have this mindset was that I based my motivational on myself. I naturally loved who I was, and my character and that was what seemed to motivate me.

I was able to access this infinite pool of motivation I never knew I had.

Don’t mix up what having an infinite pool of motivation means. It doesn’t mean I’m always motivated as you can tell by my story. I’m not. But I’m always able to access that motivation when I need to.

How to Access This Infinite Pool of Motivation?

Unfortunately, I don’t have a step by step guide of how you can get into this self-motivating mindset. I can, however, tell you what you need to do to get there, I just can’t tell you how.

As annoying as that is to say. I know that everyone has this so-called infinite pool of motivation. Just not everyone has access to it.

And so my advice to you on accessing it is to do 3 things.

1. Don’t try to be motivated by anything other than yourself.

If you try to find motivation from anything other than yourself, you’ll end up disappointed. The reason why you’re able to always be motivated is that you always have access to yourself.

2. Don’t focus on your flaws, learn to love yourself.

Easier said than done. Loving yourself is a difficult thing to do and is a process. But don’t define yourself by your flaws. That’s such a dumb thing to do. Everyone is flawed. Learn to enjoy your company and who you are.

3. Talk to yourself

I know it sounds crazy, but it works like a charm. Even just talking to yourself in the mirror, motivating yourself every morning is a useful thing. Soon you won’t even need to haven talk in the mirror. You can just look at yourself, be happy and be motivated.

I know some don’t believe in motivation, and others don’t like it. But that’s probably because they don’t understand it. If you’ve finished this article, then you have at least a base understanding of what real, pure, raw motivation is. And if you act upon this article then get ready to get really motivated.