Lightning won't strike! Discover how action sparks motivation!

February – the month of love, leap years and lost motivation.

Around 80% of all New Year’s resolutions fail, with most failing by February. Most people will chalk this up to ‘a lack of motivation’ leaving them unable to follow through on their goals. But in fact, it’s the lack of understanding of how motivation works and where it comes from that’s the real culprit.

We seem to think that motivation is something that just happens; like a lightning strike, if we just wait long enough, the motivation will hit us and then we will be able to go out and achieve our goals! As Jeff Haden explains in his book, The Motivation Myth, we’ve got motivation all wrong.

Motivation is the internal state or force that propels individuals to engage and persist in goal-directed behaviour, or in other words, the reason that you do or don’t do something. Motivation isn’t something that just happens, it’s the by product of taking action. If you want to feel motivated, you can’t wait for it to happen to you, you have to start! Once you’ve made some progress towards your goal, the motivation will follow and you will feel propelled to keep going.

In The Motivation Myth, Jeff Haden takes particular issue with Tony Robbins’ firewalk ritual. During Robbins’ program, participants literally walk over a bed of hot coals to prove to themselves that they can do hard things. Robbins says that anyone can walk on fire, and as a result, anyone can also be up at 5am and anyone start their day with a killer workout. Haden states that firewalking gives you a short, potent burst of motivation and inspiration that comes from that feeling of ‘I can do anything!’, which, quickly peters out. Haden says that because firewalking only takes 5 seconds of courage, the motivation you gain only lasts for about that same length of time. The motivation and inspiration that can actually help you to achieve your goals comes from the process; from doing the work, day after day.

This concept isn’t new. There are thousands of posters, mugs and t-shirts telling us that it’s the journey and not the destination that’s important. So let’s start acting like it!

If you’ve fallen off the bandwagon of your New Years Resolutions or your 12 Week Goals, this is your call to action to pull up your socks and jump back on. To get that motivation that keeps us going, break down your goals into the smallest possible action steps and start with those. You’ll find that once you start getting small wins under your belt, the motivation you so desperately searched for before, will already be there, spurring you on.

Don’t be a February statistic, kick start your motivation by taking action today!

NB: This a lesson that we need to remind ourselves of regularly. Ironic as it is, I procrastinated writing this blog post on motivation for days hoping to feel like it was the right time to sit down and get to work. Low and behold, the time never came. It was only once I started writing that I felt the motivation starting to flow. If you catch yourself waiting for the lightning to strike, remember that action creates motivation, not the other way around!