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Is Motivation Necessary to Start Working Towards a Goal?
The answer may surprise you. It’s a nice to have, but not necessary.
To be fair, motivation is a tricky concept.
Think of motivation as a drive, need, or reason to take action and reach a goal. There are two types of motivation. It can be extrinsic (inspired by outside forces) or intrinsic (inspired by the individual). The problem with it is that your motivations change constantly. You’re never forever motivated to do something. In January you‘re motivated to adhere to your New Year’s resolutions and work out every single day. A month later your motivation shifts from working out to preparing for exams, which now take precedence, so you stop working out so much and start studying more. To make things even more complicated, your emotions can dictate how motivated you can be. You might wake up one day and not feel like doing anything so you’ll be despondent and procrastinate the rest of the day.
If you can’t rely on motivation then, what can you rely on?
Something else — self discipline.
Self-discipline is a practice, a habit, even a lifestyle. It consists of making choices (both large and small) to take action every day that will get us closer to a goal. It doesn’t matter if we don’t feel motivated at that moment. We do it anyway. We do it because…
