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Harnessing your motivation—purpose and attainable goals
Finding the motivation you need to reach any goal can be difficult. To keep working at reaching your wellness goal can often be overwhelming. Even though the payoff can be huge, we feel like we need that “something” that keeps us going. After reading Dan Pink’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, I understand the “something”—the reward — is secondary to what truly motivates us and helps us be successful.
Last week, I shared with you what I had read about AMP, the acronym Pink created to describe three things that push us toward genuine motivation: Autonomy and Mastery (detailed in last week’s article) and Purpose —which I want to touch on today.
Purpose
When it comes to attaining wellness goals, we need to connect them with something purposeful. Actually, the goal of wellness is hugely purposeful, but because it seems related only to the self, many feel they can let it slip. According to Pink, purpose is “Am I doing something in service of a cause larger than myself, or, at the very least, am I making a contribution in my own world?”
Purpose is a complex motivator. There are two levels of purpose:
1) Contributing to something larger than you. In other words, you are motivated to wellness because your children and elderly mother (“grand cause”) need you for support.
2) Feeling your work makes a difference, that what you are doing really matters in the grand scheme of things.
When you are doing for others and receive their positive feedback, you tend to work harder and stay motivated to do more. Studies show this with volunteers who remain focused and motivated despite long hours when they receive feedback from those they are trying to help.
With personal wellness, this is much more difficult, except that you can ask your friends, loved ones or family for feedback on how you are doing. You can ask them to tell you how they appreciate your efforts and need you to keep going. They love you and want you to live a long and vibrant life with them, to help them study or achieve their goals, or learn new skills from you. All of this creates a more grand theme around your wellness goals and provides meaning to them greater than your personal self.
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Smaller goals motivate the most
It seems no matter what that having smaller, more attainable goals is a great motivator to keep moving forward. The ultimate goals of becoming a rock star, competing in the Olympics or becoming a millionaire are less motivating that a dozen smaller goals in route. Can you imagine not graduating from 1st through 4th grade to get to 5th and finish elementary school? It would seem like a never ending process of schooling and homework for a 5 years goal of graduation. Instead there are grades, semesters, mid-terms and quizzes to keep you motivated, and on track, along the way.
With health, the process is long and sometimes difficult. Rehab from an accident or surgery, weight loss, relief from pain… these take time. But according to Pink, “using small wins to ignite joy, engagement and creativity” keeps you engaged. In fact, he says what’s most fascinating is that “the mere illusion of progress is enough to get our engines revving.”
This “illusion of progress” sounds a lot like the placebo effect. It’s all in how we perceive what’s happening. If we can set small, realistic goals and measure those goals (with scales, charts, subjective ratings, blood tests, etc.) we will feel that we are progressing, get excited and more engaged in the process, and travel further along our wellness path. All of these are motivating factors that will nudge us forward.
You can read an article I wrote about setting and keeping wellness goals, here, here and here.
You must be important to you
When all is said and done, you must love yourself and hold yourself in a place of high importance. No one cares about you more than you should, and so your ultimate motivating thing must be belief in yourself and love of yourself.
Personal motivating is called “intrinsic” motivation, wherein you are motivated to become well not because others will “get off your back” or praise you, or the bikini will fit or because you care what others think of you. You must have internal reasons to become motivated to care for yourself. For many, such motivation is the desire to be pain free or less fatigued to thus live a more vibrant life. You may want to live a longer life or even want to be physically active again. These are intrinsic goals that studies show, and Pink points out, are far more motivating over the long haul than “extrinsic” goals, or external feedback loops.
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Summary
Before concluding, I would like to suggest you take a look at Dan Pink’s book if you lack motivation. It is compelling, gives tons of real-world examples and sets a tone for motivation success. Borrow a friend’s, take one out of the library, or read summaries online. And while it does focus on work-life motivation, its concepts and examples can be applied to so very many things in life, including health and wellness.
For those who just need a little motivation push, Pink’s work can be summarized as follows:
- Focusing too much on external rewards is actually demotivating over time.
- People feel most motivated when they have AMP: Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose.
- Smaller goals provide greater motivation, so keep metrics and set a series of short-term goals.
- Intrinsic motivation is the most powerful type. Find meaning for you and your life in your goal and stay focused on that over the external motivators.
Remember: It’s the journey not the destination. Self-knowledge, self-discovery, and greater health, happiness and joy can arise through this journey of gaining or restoring health and wellness.
By Dr. Mark Wiley
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