De-motivate
There’s that horrible feeling when the dopamine wears off. It’s not unlike the feeling when the alcohol wears off. When you’re left all alone, fatigued, a little lost, wondering how you got here.
Dopamine is a chemical (called a neurotransmitter) that controls our motivation. The more dopamine we release in expectation of doing a particulate activity, the more motivated we are to do it. So, if for example, we wanted to develop a regular gym habit it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable strategy to try to increase our dopamine/motivation before undertaking the task. And of course, that is what many of us do. We envisage ourselves with a perfect body, complements showering down on us like confetti, fighting off the most beautiful of potential partners. Or maybe we read a self-help book to get us motivated. Or watch some David Goggins videos on YouTube.
The problem with using dopamine/motivation to get yourself to do difficult things is that you then subject yourself to the ebbs and flows, the whims of motivation. Of course, this is fine when you are on a motivational high, but certainly in my case, for every motivational high there was a subsequent low. And then I would miss a few gym sessions before quietly (not even announced to myself) quitting.
A few months later I would vow to get in shape again and re-join the gym (if in fact I had remembered to cancel my membership). And what would be my strategy this time? My strategy this time would be to get more motivated.
Most of us have heard of the definition of insanity attributed to Einstein. Much as I rate Einstein, I think I can improve on his definition to give us the true definition of insanity. NOTE: In coming blogs I will also attempt to sort out his frankly half-arsed Theory of Relativity. Anyway, here we go with the true definition of insanity:
Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, and despite knowing Einstein’s definition of insanity.
Remember that inspirational quote that motivated you to go to the gym last week? Neither do I.
After a while you forget the motivation. You no longer reference the David Goggins speech in your mind. You forget to think of it. And even if you do recall it, the power of it weakens over time. Maybe you go in search of new sources of motivation. More likely you start making excuses about why you shouldn’t go to the gym today. Too much work to be getting on with; you deserve a break. Maybe you start questioning your motivation. You were just being vain when you dreamt of the perfect body. You were being influenced by the photo-shopped images on Instagram. Women like a man with love handles to hold on to. And man boobs? Well maybe not the man boobs.
I used to have a blog called ‘My Whys’, where I listed out all the things that could motivate me to do the tasks I wanted to do (daily meditation, gym etc.). There were maybe thirty whys listed in that blog. Whys that are deeply important and personal to me, such as to be a better role model to my kids. Even the power of motivations such as these quickly diminished until I no longer thought about them at all.
There is a diminishing law of returns when it comes to external sources of motivation. This is not just from any one source but from the motivation ‘well’ in general. The more you visit the well the less motivation you get. In other words when the David Goggins videos start to lose their impact you won’t get a greatly increased sense of motivation by switching to Joe Rogan videos.
I believe that too much (initial) motivation was the biggest blocker to me building positive habits.
Motivation is a hindrance to building habits because habits are about relentlessly doing something whether you feel like it or not. I typically found when I was trying to build a new habit that I would be on a bit of a motivational high for between 10 and 14 days and then my motivation and mood would fall off a cliff. Unfortunately for me two weeks is not long enough to build a habit. They say it takes around 30 days.
I do believe that there is a small subset of the population who can continually thrive on external motivation. You often hear of successful sports people and artists that are still avenging the ‘you’ll never amount to anything’ comments from a teacher decades earlier. Such a comment would fire me up for maybe a week, and then I would start to feel depleted.
Others have a picture of a Ferrari pinned up in their cubicle and it motivates them to make that extra sales call at the end of the working day. After a week or two I would stop seeing the Ferrari.
If using motivation has never been successful for you before, then stop using motivation. If you get inspired for a couple of weeks and then quit, only to seek inspiration to start again a few months later, repeating this pattern over and over again, then it might be a good idea to try another way.
The way that worked for me was to be, if not de-motivated then un-motivated. Kind of neutral. Just meditating for the sake of meditating. I don’t know why I’m doing this really but hey I’ll do it every day anyway. If there was any motivation it was internal. Can I rise to the challenge of trying to build this positive habit.