Thursday, October 29, 2009

What Motivates You?

Hi Ya'll!

I've been thinking a lot lately about motivation, and knowing thyself. In case you haven't caught on, seems like I'm on a real roll with this entire learning about myself- learning who I am- understanding myself. Personal integrity, being true to myself, honoring who I am and acting on it- these are current themes for me.

It's interesting because there a lot of things I've "known" about myself but never really taken time to inspect and really see these things for myself. It's like things I've known, but almost taken for granted. Truly being in the present and caring enough to get to honestly know me has been a really worthwhile journey, I'm happier and happier.

Last night I sat down and made a flashcard of the things that motivate me, and what type of motivation works for me. I'm a "pleasure seeking" person. In other words, you can be motivated by pain or happiness. Pain can be categorized as such things as a bootcamp type yelling or enforcing training methodology, or gaining so much weight that you feel awful (pain) and are spurred into doing something about it, or see a picture taken of yourself and feel so bad about how you look (again pain) you decided to change your diet and get in shape. For the last few years, I have been completely "pain motivated". Handling things only when they were too much to bear and allowing someone close to me to dictate over me in a painful fashion.

Recently I realized that this is entirely wrong for me. I'm not wired (although I'm not saying it doesn't work, or may be the RIGHT motivation for some) that way. I thrive off of positive motivation, which for me means: praise, admiration, encouragement, support, competition, inspiration, knowing it's been done before, and the pursuit of feeling good and being happy.

Actively recognizing this has changed how I approach my goals and get to where I want to be. It's an awesome discovery and I hope that you too will be kind to yourself, and take some time out to reflect and discover how you're motivated; and then be a good enough friend of your own to operate off your discovery.

ML,
Jades

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