Today I am feeling like I need to discuss motivation. This word is possibly the most key term when I think about this journey. What is the motivation to change my life? Well, the answer is pretty simple; I just want my life. I want to keep my life. I want to live my life, not let my life live me. If that sounds stupid, well, tough, it is my blog and my words. When I sat down and thought about what exactly I wanted from life as my teaching credential program was winding down, and I was getting ready for the next step, the next journey, I realized I wanted the ability to live and be happy. That is ultimately the reason why I decided to get my ass in gear and start fixing myself. The focus of this blog has pretty regularly switched between the physical and the emotional strides and stumbles, and I feel like motivation ties those two aspects together.
Over the last few weeks, though, I have felt my motivation slipping. I am making progress as I have detailed, but I could feel myself slowly losing that drive. I have been waiting for something to motivate me, to push me. All summer I was waiting for a job to push me further. It is tough to get out of bed when you are just going to be home all day. It appears counter productive because the easiest time to spend time bettering yourself is when you have nothing to do! However, with nothing to do, you lose sight of what kept you going. It is a vicious circle that goes round and round, which I guess is what makes it a circle. Without a job, I had to rely purely on myself to get me going and it has been rough. Without a job, I stay up later, so I get up later and am lethargic and sad. Instead of working out, I would sit and play video games for hours and hours. I decided I was either going to work out or job hunt and job hunting won. It makes no sense that I could not do both of them, but then it would take me away from my video games and that is just ludicrous.
This all came to a head last week during tech week. I started the week strong but by the end of it I had eaten a burger from Sonic and downed a Double Double Animal style and Animal Style Fries from In-N-Out. I had regressed and woke up two days in a row just feeling awful about myself, not only emotionally, buy physically. My stomach could not handle the In-N-Out the way it used to. It was all kinds of gross to deal with and I knew that something had to give. I very much was falling backwards and I could it affecting me in every aspect of my life. I was losing energy, not feeling as happy and clearly was not myself.
After a pretty sleepless night over the weekend I realized something that we all know, but often forget. Motivation is not just going to jump up, slap me across the face and tell me to follow it. I have to create my own motivation. I have to take responsibility for my own laziness, my own lack of happiness. I needed to find a way to get myself moving. (side note, I very nearly went on a Grinch like monologue. The one where he starts talking about all the things Christmas is not.) First order of business was to get in a routine. I needed to get myself to bed at a decent hour, wake up at a decent hour, eat a good breakfast and then take myself to the gym. It has to be in that order and I need to stick to it. I realized the more I work out, the more motivated I become to keep doing it. Motivation begets motivation. Getting started is always the toughest part of anything, but once I get myself down to the gym and get on the bike, I love it. I love the burn, I love moving and I love trying to outdo myself. Somehow I lost sight of that over the last few weeks.
between worrying about not having a job and wondering how I am going to feed myself on a nearly daily basis, I definitely lost sight of putting in the work on myself. It makes sense because honestly, stress over not being able to afford groceries will do that to a guy. However, a defeatist attitude is not going to help anything. I am tired of attacking life from a pessimistic attitude. What good does it do to wake up in the morning and deciding the day is not going to go my way? When I go work out in the morning, I just feel better about everything. No, it does not solve the bigger issues of my life, but neither does waking up feeling bad all of the time. It is amazing what an attitude adjustment can do. I am not one of those people who believes just positive thinking is going to get me a job, but when I feel better about myself, I more aggressively attack the job hunt. I start my day moving and so I spend the rest of the day swinging. An adjustment in my emotional or mental attitude helps my physical growth. Everything we do is connected to another part of us and the only way we ever achieve anything is by thinking that we can do it and believing that if we do the work, the results will go in our favor. And if we are not seeing the results, instead of getting down, we just have to regroup and try something else.
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