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Motivation
[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?
no subject
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
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.