How many times have you called yourself harsh names in your head in order to “motivate” yourself to change?
We think if we like ourselves now that we are somehow letting the universe know we are ok as we are and will be damned to a lifetime of never truly realizing our fullest expression.
We fear we will not become who we really feel we want to be if we accept ourselves now. We fear not becoming our potential. This misunderstanding could not be further from the truth.
There are so many goals people have in order to feel like they are good enough in today’s society.
Common goals:
Weight loss
Saving money
Making money
Sales goals
Cleaning your house
Being a perfect parent
Most of these goals are authentic, and would result in feeling more alive and congruent to being one’s best expression of themselves. Which is a great goal. However, most people need to feel not enough, less than, or broken in order to activate enough energy to act differently. Kind of like the rock-bottom phenomenon. They confuse self-abuse with motivation.
Feeling like a piece of poo in order to feel propelled to change does not have to be the norm.
Examples of harsh inner talk:
“You fat lazy cow, get on the treadmill.”
“You loser, you’ll never get that promotion unless you buck up and put in more hours.”
“You are a failure, you ate that muffin at the meeting and screwed up everything.”
This militant, critical, common way of talking to ourselves seems to be the only way people know how to make change. Most people have no idea how to be motivated if they already feel good.
But, doesn’t it make sense to feel good now? Then simply make consistent changes by committing to yourself and make actions that move you toward the improved you? Why do we have to be so mean to make ourselves act?
How can we feel good enough now, and then apply that energy to accomplishing a goal with all the good ju ju of already feeling enough rather than a broken, ugly mess?
Start re-writing your internal scripts by managing you inner dialogue (thoughts), and create goals that are broken down into small doable steps. When you don’t meet a mini goal, don’t abuse yourself with harsh self talk. Just re-direct your energy to get back on course.
Anyone who is successful knows success isn’t sexy. It’s a bunch of decisions to do the boring, basic things like practicing piano, running a 5k in the morning, not drinking at parties, eating the salad and not the fries, saving money every month and investing a percentage, or just deciding to be nicer to yourself in your own mind.
Success is not success if you are abusing yourself to get there. What’s the point? Not feeling good enough on the way to a goal likely leads to never feeling good enough when you reach the goal. You never get to feel satisfied. There’s always more to do, and you never arrive.
There is another way.
Push Motivation
A bad feeling pushing you to improve, because once you improve you will finally feel good enough.
Pull Motivation
A vision that inspires you so much you want to do actions in order to experience your desire in real life, not just in your mind.
How to practice Pull Motivation.
Get centered then envision yourself reaching the goal.
How do you feel? What are you doing? Feel the sensations of that future moment.
(This is also called visualization).
Feel it soooo much, that it’s almost as if it has already happened.
Then, take the steps that are in front of you that you know to do.
Do this every day. Don’t try to figure it all out. Do what is in front of you, that’s it.
Sounds simple. It is.
However, changing our motivation style does take time.
If you are sick and tired of never reaching your goals and never feeling good enough try pull motivation on and leave the self-abuse in the past.