Motivation

What Motivates you?  How do you stay motivated?  These are questions I've gotten from several people over the last few months.  There's not an easy answer for this because with me as with most people I find motivation in several different places.

We all have days that we're not as motivated as other days & sometimes there are days where we don't feel like doing much of anything.  To me these are all part of the natural cycle of nature.  We all have good times & we also have bad times.  We need to have both to learn to enjoy the good times, I wrote about this in my "Opposites" blog a week or so ago.  No matter how connected you are to God/universe you will still have this natural cycle.  The difference is the more you are connected to God/universe the more you'll understand why you are having a bad time and this connection will also make the bad times shorter & easier to take.

So back to motivation, in my daily life I have several things that I tend to need motivation to deal with.  The first is the day in general.  The way I deal with this is two fold.  The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is lay in bed and be grateful for another day.  Then I thank God/universe for all the amazing things that are going to happen to me today.  The second part of my daily motivation is to pay attention, for the first few hours of everyday I pay attention to as many small things as I can.  In these small things I find positive things.  It could be just a feeling I get from reading something or the smell of the State park that I ride through on my bike.  Between these two things I tend to start the day very positive & this feeling sets the tone for the rest of the day.

The next thing I need motivation for on a daily basis is my bike riding.  Many of you know that I've been riding my bike every morning for the last couple of months.  I am currently riding 30 miles a day through the State park that's about 5 miles from our home.  But this riding is not always easy for me.  There are mornings when I wake up that I just ache & I really don't want to get on the bike & ride.  The motivation I use for this is also two fold.  I first tell myself the benefits of riding the bike.  I talk to myself about how this will help my physical conditioning & overall health.  The second thing I do is tap into my competitive nature.  I tell myself that I'm not going to let this ride beat me.  I'm going to make it through no matter how tough it becomes.

The final thing I need daily motivation for is looking through job ads.  As many of you know I've been laid off for 3 months now & on a daily basis I go through 100 - 150 job ads looking for jobs I believe are a match for me.  If any of you have done this, it's very dull & not a lot of fun.  My motivation is again is looking for the positive, I try to tell myself that the prefect job will be found in this daily review of ads.  I believe that only through the action of looking can I find the perfect job even if this job isn't in the ads I review.  Action often sets things in motion with God/universe.

The bottom line with motivation should be whatever works best for you.  I believe by finding the positive in everything situation you can always find some motivation.  This motivation adds to your overall joyful/positive life because the more motivated you are the better you'll feel about anything that comes into your life.

Until tomorrow,

Bill

Quote of the day: "Find motivation in the small things everyday.  For true motivation will lift you to a more positive life."