Motivation
Dec. 2nd, 2006 12:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trixtah[It's all about meeeeee this week, sorry. I'll manage to do a erudite, witty and intellectually-detached post sometime, I'm sure.]
I was having a chat with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
saluqi today about my least-favourite personality aspect. I don't mind my irritableness, lack of patience, pig-headedness, vagueness, egocentricity (ha-hah!), and so on (I'm sure more negativities would come to mind if I pondered a bit more) nearly as much as I do my lack of motivation. I seem to surround myself with fairly go-getting types (and saluqi did point out that that personality quality is hardly typical), and in comparison to them, I'm an indolent lump of lard.
I know I have a short attention span for non-fun-related things. I also have the willpower of a starving person in a chocolate shop. However, I'm fine if something needs to be done. Like going to work, paying the bills, and occasionally, doing the housework. I like doing things for someone. I like doing things if I feel that my efforts will be appreciated (like most of us I imagine). But even if it's something I'd like to do - such as, say, brush up my French, or get properly fitter - getting the impetus to get started and then sustain doing whatever it is seems to be annoyingly difficult.
It gets to the point where I feel like bitchslapping myself and uttering trite homilies to myself like "just do it, already!" But do I? Not often. It's a layer of my personality that's always been with me, and it periodically drives me insane. Ok, it's not as if I haven't achieved anything in my life, or that I'm an utterly useless waste of space. Considering some of the crap I started off with, and some of the rumptions of my adult life, I'm doing ok. But I look at someone like my OGF, who had shit for her early life, due to which she ended up leaving home and school at age 14... going to running a multi-million dollar company while having a fantastic family. And I feel bloody inadequate. (Not that I want to do either of those things, but achieving more would be nice)
Of course, she (and plenty of my other similarly go-getting friends) don't grok what the hold-ups are. I know I don't like taking risks - although I have, plenty of times - but taking French lessons is hardly risky. I loathe loathe loathe looking incompetent, but one can't have a learning curve unless one starts to learn. I'm lazy, but I am fine with necessities, or when someone else says "would you mind?" But needing to be prodded into action seems juvenile. Bah.
Well, I want to track down a homeopath and see if taking a remedy might shift it. Embarrassment and annoyance at myself doesn't work. Being lectured/shamed definitely doesn't work. Pop-psychology books (at least, extrapolating from the couple I've read) will not break though my judging brain. Identifying a problem is all very dandy, but I've not evolved a mechanism to fix it. Anyone else have a consistent problem with motivation/impetus? What do you do about it? How does one develop willpower?
I was having a chat with
saluqi today about my least-favourite personality aspect. I don't mind my irritableness, lack of patience, pig-headedness, vagueness, egocentricity (ha-hah!), and so on (I'm sure more negativities would come to mind if I pondered a bit more) nearly as much as I do my lack of motivation. I seem to surround myself with fairly go-getting types (and saluqi did point out that that personality quality is hardly typical), and in comparison to them, I'm an indolent lump of lard.I know I have a short attention span for non-fun-related things. I also have the willpower of a starving person in a chocolate shop. However, I'm fine if something needs to be done. Like going to work, paying the bills, and occasionally, doing the housework. I like doing things for someone. I like doing things if I feel that my efforts will be appreciated (like most of us I imagine). But even if it's something I'd like to do - such as, say, brush up my French, or get properly fitter - getting the impetus to get started and then sustain doing whatever it is seems to be annoyingly difficult.
It gets to the point where I feel like bitchslapping myself and uttering trite homilies to myself like "just do it, already!" But do I? Not often. It's a layer of my personality that's always been with me, and it periodically drives me insane. Ok, it's not as if I haven't achieved anything in my life, or that I'm an utterly useless waste of space. Considering some of the crap I started off with, and some of the rumptions of my adult life, I'm doing ok. But I look at someone like my OGF, who had shit for her early life, due to which she ended up leaving home and school at age 14... going to running a multi-million dollar company while having a fantastic family. And I feel bloody inadequate. (Not that I want to do either of those things, but achieving more would be nice)
Of course, she (and plenty of my other similarly go-getting friends) don't grok what the hold-ups are. I know I don't like taking risks - although I have, plenty of times - but taking French lessons is hardly risky. I loathe loathe loathe looking incompetent, but one can't have a learning curve unless one starts to learn. I'm lazy, but I am fine with necessities, or when someone else says "would you mind?" But needing to be prodded into action seems juvenile. Bah.
Well, I want to track down a homeopath and see if taking a remedy might shift it. Embarrassment and annoyance at myself doesn't work. Being lectured/shamed definitely doesn't work. Pop-psychology books (at least, extrapolating from the couple I've read) will not break though my judging brain. Identifying a problem is all very dandy, but I've not evolved a mechanism to fix it. Anyone else have a consistent problem with motivation/impetus? What do you do about it? How does one develop willpower?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-01 02:03 pm (UTC)But I can thoroughly understand your dislike of looking incompetent. I hate feeling incompetent (whether I look it or not). It's partly the fault of a school influence, where quite a few of the teachers had the attitude that I should be able to work out things myself, instead of asking questions. Hello? Learning without asking question? Erm... In the late twentieth century? *rolls eyes* I've been trying to overcome this.
But what I have to say related to your post was my experience with driving. If there was one activity where I feel thoroughly inadequate, it's driving.
OK, I got driving lessons in high school; passed my examination and got my license when I turned 18; then when I was in the US, my father and stepmother did a refreshing course for me, I went through another examination (again, successful), and got a second license.
I was still, at that point, shaking-nervous behind the wheel. No real reason, except that I felt I was a terrible driver. The first license was issued in early 1999; the second - in early 2000.
I almost didn't drive a car at all till this August.
In August, a friend and I started making a plan for a trip, a week-to-ten-days, by car, around the Balkan Mountain. Which sounded lovely.
But in that case, if there were to be just the two of us... we had to be both able to drive. Anything could happen - a fall when we were walking, her feeling ill, whatever - I had to be able to drive.
Which worked wonders as a means of motivation. My mother had been coaxing me to refresh-course for _years_; she jumped at the idea immediately. I must say it was very hard on her too, but I sat down, survived shaking knees, having the car stop on me on cross-roads for a couple of days, but I WANTED TO GO TO THAT TRIP. And that overcame the fear, anxiety, inconvenience... whatever.
The conclusion I made from that experience - or rather, that got confirmed for me by that experience - was that positive motivation works best. The trip was a treat (although with the wrong attitude it could have been regarded as a disaster), and I don't regret putting myself through it. What also helped was knowing that I was in control - at any time I knew that if I wanted to give up, I could. That doesn't work for all things where motivation is necessary - not all by far - but it helps, when possible.
Sorry if I bored you with a longish post :)
Greetings!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-02 03:05 am (UTC)Yes, see, in that instance, because I'm doing something for someone else, I'd be similarly motivated. You're absolutely right that positive motivation works best, but I'd like to be able to generate it myself sometime. And yeah, I think you've put your finger on one aspect - control. Knowing that you can withdraw from something if you feel that you've gotten in too deep is always a bonus.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-01 07:48 pm (UTC)Getting older has helped, a bit.
If I had an answer I'd have improved myself by now!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-02 03:06 am (UTC)Here's to further improvement!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-02 10:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-01 07:56 pm (UTC)Also, it would be a mistake to think that
overhigh achievers don't struggle with similar things. One thing that helped me cut free of some internal roadblocks was approaching the "eh" like you are, as a project to sort out.It took me a year before I had the self-discipline to train in martial arts/qi gong stuff every day. I found a few things that worked for me and a heap of things that did not while working on that little project. One thing that really worked was to interview myself if I was about to make an excuse. I caught myself thinking "I won't do leg training because I don't have shoes on" one morning. I find exposing one's internal excuse processes to be pretty enlightening (and embarrassing, and motivating). Others may not.
As to the fear of looking clueless in front of people, that was another thing holding me back. It's actually one of the reasons I started dog showing. I was aware that at martial art I was not relaxing properly into a lot of the training because I was too worried about being watched and judged as lacking. And of course, the more I worried about that, the crappier my performance got and the more internal walls I hit.
The dog showing was an opportunity to throw myself right into a bitchy snake pit where people would, no matter what I did, think I was clueless and hopeless and regularly say so to me and to others. It's been hard god knows, but it's also strengthened my "fuck you fu" immeasurably. I really don't care these days about looking like a dork, it feels very clean and lets me get on with
the business of getting ahead of everyone else and ruling the world. Mua ha ha ha!!what I want to do - without that critical video camera in my head.(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-02 03:30 am (UTC)Yes, perhaps I was overly narrowing the field asking for suggestions from the overly-indolent. I don't actually expect the vastly competent to be able to launch into everything at the drop of a hat; I don't expect extroverts to necessarily be able to stroll onto a stage and be comfortable addressing hundreds of people. So learning some tricks of the trade from those already disposed to deal with X is dandy.
Looking at it as a project is a good perspective. Having an internal dialogue with myself is something I've been trying, but the results tend to end up as "You're a lazy fuck". "Yeah, whatevah." But I think if I strengthen the process and try and make it more of a routine (rather than avoiding thinking about what a lazy fuck I am), some slight progress might result that way.
Looking clueless in front of others is a biggie, most definitely. I think getting past the "looking like a dork" syndrome is going to be a biiig hurdle. I can be chugging along quite happily thinking "yeah, I'm too cool for school" when a sudden memory of some past gaucheness or fuckup will make me cringe and quite literally blush from embarrassment. Stuff that happened over 30 years ago, even. It's almost pathological (perhaps it is).
I think your technique of launching yourself into the showing stuff is most definitely a take-no-prisoners method of clearing it out. I think my own ego is just a tad too touchy to consider doing something quite that vigorous - while I don't do that "you think I'm shit? fine, fuck you, buh-bye" nearly as much these days, it's still there to some degree. Pathetic. I'm going to have to think on that one. Or evolve some of my own mongrel qualities - I don't know if "yeah, I'll show you" will ever be a major part of my repertoire, but we'll see.
Thank you for the awesome (of course) comments. It also helps narrow things down for homeopathic ponderings too - I hadn't quite considered the potential-embarrassment issue as part of the syndrome (since it doesn't seem to have any impact on the non-public laziness thing), but it's something I need to consider. Critical video cameras in my head do definitely act as deterrents (even if world domination isn't quite my aim, heee!)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-02 07:55 am (UTC)When I have trouble doing something, I tend to look for things that I do rarely, or even slightly shouldn't be doing but allow myself once in a while, and I go, "When I finish this [unpleasant thing], I will [do/take a little of the pleasant thing]".
About being in control... when I think of things deeply, I know that I almost always have the control to pull back, to give up. Of course, with some things it means loss of face, of prestige, but... I can do it. There are points of no return, of course, but they are oh so rare... and it's usually on things one either does want a lot, or just can't help. With everyday stuff...
Like a course in French. With the exception of losing money, withdrawing from it at any point should not be a problem.
The other thing is, not all things I need motivation on are created equal. Some take just a tiny nudge. Some need my taking the time to think through _why_ I have such internal resistance to doing the d*mned thing...
(I seem to have trouble posting this as a reply to your comment, so I'll just stick it to the main entry)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-02 11:07 am (UTC)Regarding the technique of promising oneself X nice thing if one does X not-so nice thing first, unfortunately that doesn't work for me. I just skip to the nice treat. :-(
And that's very true about there not being that many points of no return when engaging in any kind of undertaking. And yes, there are most definitely different levels of motivation needed for various things. Going to work is easy, because then I get to pay the bills. Impressing someone I care about is virtually infallible. But those are external causes, so I definitely need to work on the roots of all that internal resistance for the other stuff.