Yesterday, I received a beautiful, insightful email from him on the topic of motivation. I would like to share it with you as it piggybacks off of yesterday's post, "Don't give up on yourself."
So here it is: from Stephen Nelson aka "Do What You Can" fella
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I have been told by many that we can not motivate others – and I agree. But, we can discuss what tools we use to keep ourselves where we want to be, and hope others find something that works.
And so, this is a random meander through my thoughts on motivation as I stretched this morning.
OK then, let’s start with motivation for stretching: I feel better when I get done.
Really short term. And effective.
When I was in college I made a rule – I didn’t have to study evenings on days that I took a test. OK – made it pretty important to get homework done ahead of time, but being able to go visit my lady friend (who was at another university some 35 miles away) was a strong motivator. And, with time, I came to look forward to taking tests. See – “test” equaled “quality time with my lady friend”. Coming to view tests as a positive thing has served me extremely well – it is amazing how much better one does when one is not nervous about a test – is in fact excited about the test.
So, while my first example reflects being honest with oneself (you really will feel better if you start your day with stretches) my second involves a bit of prevarication – overall it was sometimes a real challenge to make my test night off rule work – but it made me look forward to taking tests. And resulted in better grades.
I call this my lying to myself rule. Or maybe just misleading myself. It leads to my next example – I told myself, when I was doing the 8 to 5 routine (30 years as an engineer) that working out was what I did everyday for me. Every day. For me – not for someone else. And, whilst true, the corollary was the import thing – No one was going to take it away from me. Everyday I worked out at lunch. Which meant I missed a lot of the noon group sessions with people who’s waist lines grew every year. Don’t get me wrong, I was not a body builder or anything like that – I was just a skinny engineer who was reasonably fit. And who had a reputation for not “doing lunch”. Hurt my career – likely. Hurt my fitness – like NO!
And today – when I retired 3 years ago, I gave myself a couple of presents. One was the right to work out 2 hours each day (OK – I take the weekends off to recover) and the other was getting to play the hammered dulcimer. If one looks at such things as a right – as something we entitle ourselves to do – an entitlement – and then we treat them as rights or entitlements (as in not letting silly things get in their way) – at least for me, I have a better chance of keeping them going.
And, hey, if one does in fact keep them going, one can actually do a really great job of improving ones strength and physique, as well as making beautiful music.
Funny that, when I feel frustrated by something, I often find myself reflecting on how much I have improved my bod, or how much I love the music I now play, and feel pretty darned good about myself. These two “entitlements” have become two significant sources of satisfaction in my life. People need to realize – satisfaction, happiness, they come from doing – not from sitting on ones backside. I suspect satisfaction is going to be a recurring theme in my writing – I suspect you have heard the expression “curiosity killed the cat”. Interestingly this in only the first part of an important truism – the second part is “satisfaction brought he/she/it (politically correct equivalent of “him) back”. Lying to oneself – hmmm – if it means convincing oneself that working out and practicing a musical instrument are what we are going to do – I’m all for it.
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There you have it folks. I hope you enjoyed his words and perhaps even feel motivated. He's contemplating starting his own blog. He so gets my vote to go for it!
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