If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out why you’re not doing something you think you really want to do.
You know you want to eat more healthily, leave work on time, spend more time with the kids / husband / wife / dog, exercise more or cut down on your alcohol / caffeine / sugar. Maybe you want to travel more or go sky diving.
Despite *really* wanting to, it just doesn’t seem to happen.
It took me ages to figure out what was stopping me, then I realised it had been under my nose the whole time, and you might not like the answer.
Here goes: the reason motivation doesn’t work is because the benefits you can see from making the change, don’t currently outweigh the benefits from not changing.
The tricky thing about motivation is that it tricks you into thinking it’s enough on it’s own. You have a ‘good idea’ and all of a sudden you’re supposed to be able to change your habits overnight. I think we all know how that turns out…slobbed out on the couch watching another rerun of Big Bang Theory with ice cream thinking that if the weather just cleared up a bit we’d definitely put our running shoes on and get out there.
We are programmed to survive. That means if our brain can’t see enough of a benefit for doing something, it doesn’t matter how much motivation we think we have, it won’t happen. If, somewhere along the line, some habit or behaviour served us and protected us, we have to really convince the brain that something different is now better for us.
This might make more sense with an example:
I never drank caffeine. It gave me energy highs and lows and really wasn’t good for me during the years I wasn’t eating as it made me really jittery. However, when I moved to Italy and started having big pasta lunches, I realised why all Italians had their espresso after lunch – it aided digestion and kept them awake at their desk in the afternoon. My body learned caffeine was a good thing.
When I got back to the UK my diet slowly changed back to eating less at lunch and bigger dinners, plus I was working longer days. I ended up craving the caffeine to get me through the day and still had intense highs and lows in my energy.
I worked like this for four years, until, on 2nd January this year, my brain suddenly realised that caffeine was no longer serving me in the way it had and the scales had tipped into it actually dis-serving me. I gave up caffeine and, whilst I had a permanent throbbing headache for three days, I was never tempted to get myself a coffee.
The reason smokers only quit when they’re ready to is because something has to switch in their brain for it to realise that the escape, relaxation or weight loss they get from smoking is not worth the real health risks. That takes some time and is why many don’t stop until they actually get a serious health condition. The scales have to tip.
If you’re trying to change something in your life, take a look deep into what you get from it currently because if you’re struggling to change, there is definitely something that is serving you somewhere. Once you know what it is, you can work on counteracting it with the benefits of what you will gain.
Eventually the scales will tip and it will be sooooo much easier to change than with motivation alone!
Photo credit: Juan Jose Valencia Antia
Hi Emma,
This is so true and I totally believe it, I struggle with the motivation to get back in shape, I know exactly how to do it and have an endless supply of knowledge and tools to help get me there, I know I will be so much happier and there are so many more benefits but for some reason my brain wont click into gear.
Great article and Website
Hi Mark,
Sometimes the more tools we have, the more distractions we have not to do something. Get out of your head and back in to your heart. Ask your heart what’s blocking you instead of your head. On some deep level, the balance hasn’t tipped in favour of getting in to shape. It will, jus work on clearing the unconscious blocks 🙂