“A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.” – Ayn Rand

Here we are in August and we have almost reached the last quarter of the year. Do you remember what your goals were, what your New Year resolutions were?

If you recall, at the end of last year, possibly before the holiday parties; you know, before you were swept off your feet by life, you promised yourself that you will achieve certain things by a certain time so that you can prove to yourself and others that you’ve done it?

Deadlines and bragging rights about our achievement pushes us to take action some of the time but we often neglect to see whether these things truly motivate us and thus the change does not stick. Today we will look at an effective way of motivating ourselves: Intrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation is motivation that comes from within you. These are your internal value systems that encourages you to meet your goals. Without intrinsic motivation, you will find it difficult to move past a certain point. Before we get into what intrinsic motivation looks like, let’s look at what a typical journey from setting a goal to attempting to achieve it looks like.  

The Last 10 Pounds

Take losing weight for example, do you remember the last Christmas party where you told your friends that you are so going to lose 10 pounds this year?  Or was that your famous last words on New Year’s Eve the year before and the year before that? After all the booze and partying (and of course, the hangover!), the 2nd of January rolls along and what happens?

At first you start off strong, you are motivated and you hit the gym 3 to 4 times a week especially in January and February. Come mid-Feb, life starts to get in the way and you figure you can afford to skip the gym once this week. Then it’s twice the next and before you know it you have misplaced your gym card because you haven’t been for so long.

Your life goes on till August and you start to think, oh wow only 4 months left in the year, best to go back to the gym to make sure I lose the weight for this year’s Christmas and New Year’s. You think about this with the best intentions for the whole month of August and September thinking you still have time. Suddenly, it’s 1st October and you think, crap, only two months left till Christmas! How am I going to fit into that dress? Better get the gym bag out and off you go three to four times a week to lose the same 10 pounds you were ‘trying’ to lose the year before.

To Justify is Human

At every step of the way, you would have created reasons to why you cannot make the time and do what you’ve set out to do. You are normal of course, when the goal is not entirely authentic to us, we tend to justify our lack of action. Losing weight is just one of the examples where we use events and feedback from others to motivate us to make changes and yet fails to motivate us at the same time.

Other examples might include suddenly finding the need during year-end to go on a holiday to somewhere exotic despite not being able to afford it, stop smoking, drink less, eat better even when it is not what we really want and we tend to try to cram all these changes in at the end of the year because we see the time ticking away and as long as we get it in this year, we are OK.

We’ve made it in time for this year’s resolution and we have bagged the bragging rights, in our minds we have achieved these things and console ourselves with this self-acknowledgment.

A little impetus like bragging rights and deadlines is not a problem in moderation but that will not sustain your motivation in the long run because sooner or later the same factors will no longer matter so much and you will no longer feel the same amount of pain that forced you to act previously.

So what will propel you forward at that point?

You guessed it: intrinsic motivation.

Let me explain.

Making changes in your life is a constant and it is something that you should be able to start and maintain on your own accord. Setting goals, making changes in your life is your responsiblity and no one else. For a change to take place, you must find that intrinsic motivation in yourself.

Intrinsic motivation is achieved when you meet these criteria:

-when you perceive this change or action as within your control

-when you believe that you can do this

-when you are genuinely keen on making a change because it is rewarding for you and no one else

-when the goal you are trying to achieve is meaningful for you, based on your own values

To find out whether you meet these criteria, you must ask yourself these questions:

• why are you making the change?
• What is the best thing that will happen for you if you make the change?
• What is the worst that could happen if you don’t?
• What are your reasons behind your want to change?
• Who can make this change happen?

What does intrinsic motivation look like for you?

Let’s look at losing weight, we all want to lose weight for one or all of these reasons: to look good, to feel good, to get healthy.

The difference between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation is that when you act on intrinsic motivation, you want to feel good, look good, be healthy for yourself. When you act from a place of intrinsic motivation, you will still have days when you are not motivated because you are only human. The difference is however, one day off the wagon will not turn into a permanent state but only if the motivation comes from you.

For example, it is Monday morning and you look at the alarm clock blaring loudly at 6am and you think to yourself, I don’t want to go to the gym, I want to sleep in. But then you think, hold on, I want to feel good about myself and I know will feel great when I look better and have energy after the workout. If I don’t do it now, when will I ever get to the gym?

Reaching for that cupcake at 3pm when you want to cut down on your sugary snacks, you used to think to yourself, having one won’t hurt, I will get back on my diet tomorrow. But now you say to yourself, I will have a cupcake at the weekend as a treat for all my hard work because there is always another cupcake for another day, I do not need to have one now.

Remember, all that hard work is for your own reward, no one else.  

Find the desire within you and from that desire the motivation to act will come.

No one else can tell you why, only you can.

So, for today find that one change that you really want to make, be clear with your intrinsic motivation on making the change and remember that changes, like puppies, are not just for Christmas!