Motivation is a tough hurdle to overcome for many, and even more so it’s difficult to understand. Why am I so motivated to wake up before the sun to go to work at a job I hate, but it’s so difficult to hang my clothes up when I do my laundry? If I’ve even done my laundry for the day.

What is motivation? Where does it come from?
Broken down to a barebones concept, motivation is the desire to engage in a particular behavior or to take a particular action. It’s curated through a process in the brain’s dopaminergic system. It’s the synthesis and expulsion of dopamine into the brain. Dopamine is often considered the “happy” chemical, and while that’s not terribly far off, it isn’t exactly correct either. Dopamine is the main factor in motivation. There are multiple reward systems the brain responds to, and they all fall into one of two categories, extrinsic motivation, and intrinsic motivation.

Extrinsic motivation
Extrinsic motivation is based on an external reward. It’s what keeps you waking up and going to work. You put forth effort into your job and you get the reward of money, which in turn fuels your lifestyle. It’s also the least effective of the two in providing genuine satisfaction. When you do something to get something else, it becomes less about you and more about the outside reward. It’s why a lot of us struggle with the idea of satisfaction in our day jobs. We’re getting what we need, we’re doing what we’re supposed to do, but it’s not fulfilling our internal needs of challenge, passion, and human connectedness.

Intrinsic motivation
Intrinsic motivation is the internal reward system. It does govern the feelings of satisfaction with oneself, and does satisfy the internal needs. Intrinsic motivation is much more powerful for developing habits and lifestyle changes.

The old cliche “Money doesn’t buy happiness.” used to make me roll my eyes into the back of my head. It’s easy for someone to say that when they have plenty of it. Having money may reduce stress and even mental, or physical fatigue and may even absolve someone of certain bouts of depression, and anxiety. But that’s not what happiness is about, lack of stress isn’t happiness. Happiness, oneness, and fulfillment come from an internal system of chemicals your brain releases when you’re fulfilling its needs. Now how do we apply this to our life and get the results we’re looking for?

Let’s use exercise as an example. Who of us doesn’t want to look good naked? It’s not an immoral thing to desire being desired, but it is important to know that the validation of others is an external reward. And for a short time, that’s useful, but once the external reward is taken away, it’s more difficult to create dopamine for the behavior. Wanting to exercise because you believe it benefits your body, and you want that for yourself is intrinsic. I wrote another piece that mentions positive self-talk and how it engages different parts of the brain to produce chemicals and reactions that improve habit forming, as well as developing certain beliefs. And this would be the process in which you engage your brain into believing that it’s important for yourself to engage in these behaviors and actions.

I’m going to make a step-by-step mock up guide of how to train yourself using what we’ve learned together.

Let’s say I want to become a better writer. I’m tired of my nine to five, I’m passionate about writing, I believe that I have important things to share that can improve the lives of other people. But every time I think about it, the motivation just isn’t there. The first step I would take is by journaling and meditation. It takes little effort, and can help you find what exactly your subconscious believes about your worth and what you have to say, and why you deserve things you believe you do, and don’t deserve the things you believe you don’t. All the while, everyday I’ll engage the positive self-talk, and simply say encouraging things to myself while I shave, or brush my teeth just a few minutes every day. Alongside these behaviors I’ll set goals for myself.

Now here’s something we haven’t talked about yet. It’s true for extrinsic and intrinsic motivation that when you complete a goal, it compounds your dopamine. Think “Double it and give it to the next person.” So if you want to become a writer, you don’t set the goal “I’m going to write a novel in a month.” That’s a hefty goal, and sure it could be achieved but if you don’t achieve it, your negative beliefs are confirmed and it sets you back that much farther. So instead set the goal of writing one hundred words a day for one week. Take an extra five or so minutes a day and just write words down. It doesn’t have to be full sentences, it doesn’t have to be coherent storytelling. Just write down one hundred words that come to your mind. When you cash in for that sweet, sweet dopamine set the goal of maybe writing down one summary of a story idea a day. Maybe just change it to two hundred words a day.

The point is to keep investing and compounding your dopamine by setting achievable goals that actually put you closer to what you want. And believe it or not, but writing one hundred words a day is great practice, and gets you much closer to your big goals than doing nothing.

Also what you’ve done is by setting and achieving small goals you’ve confirmed to yourself that all the positive self-talk is true! This is going to feel like you’re lying to yourself, or tricking yourself. And that’s because your internal beliefs as they are now are centered around a reality where you are less than. But keep it up, ride the highs, and keep moving forward and you’ll see huge changes in your life before you know it.

Written by Calder Williams