Self - Motivation and Gratitude

How does one self-motivate? 

This question of motivation consumes a huge amount of my mental energy, for three main reasons: 

1.  My MSc research project centred around the physiological effects of motivation, looking at the link between testosterone, motivation and sports performance. Evidence suggests in trained athletes (both males and females), there is a correlation between testosterone and motivation to train - but what causes what?

2. The ability to self-motivate is just a really excellent skill in training and in life. It gets things done with intensity and focus, with minimal procrastination and angst. 

3. My brother asked me if you could train the "killer instinct"; I thought it was an interesting question and I really didn't have the answer, but I suspect you can by training the right mental skills.

Cultivating Gratitude

What motivates a person is very complex; it is situational, temporal and very unique to that person. There is however a fundamental building block of motivation - and that I believe is gratitude.

My thoughts about this was prompted after my morning run ended up at the foot of a giant 45m Buddha at the top of a hilltop, and of course gratitude is one of the staples of buddhism. It got me thinking about my recently acquired relationship with this, which happened after recovering from two years of illness after a head injury.

The Phra Puttamingmongkol Akenakkiri Buddha 

Any athlete that has ever been ill or injured however briefly, understands the upset at not being able to do the thing you love. There is a well documented psychological effect of illness, so depression unfortunately is a usual (and unsurprising) accompaniment to any illness - all in all, not great times and one I refer to as the "dark night of the soul"! On the upside, when I was able to resume physical activity and integrate back into life again, I swore I would never take anything for granted again and I have stayed true to that. Being able to train, feels like a huge privilege. No matter how bad the session or how tired I am, I feel very lucky and I am very grateful to my body for both recovering and letting me push it (although I do it a bit more carefully these days). I believe it is this mind set that has helped keep my enjoyment of training (no matter how hard); this in turn creates more motivation and a snowball effect for progress. 

I have found gratitude can usually come about in two ways 1) from having a sense of perspective from varied experience 2) cultivating it by practice and repetition. 

It is refreshing to realise that gratitude like any other skill can be acquired. In fact, I like to think happiness is also an acquired skill because it is based on perception not reality, just like most fear. That knowledge is therefore incredibly empowering, because you have quite a fair amount of control over your state of being.

The power of 3,  journaling and practice what you preach!

I am a huge fan of the journal. I tend to write any moment of reflection or idea down, as it consolidates thoughts really well. To "train" gratitude, I find writing down three things at the end of everyday that went well for you and three things that you are grateful for, works a treat. There is always something..even if you have to get creative! The trick however, with building good habits is consistency and repetition, so it does have to be done everyday.

I had to come back to my own advice after experimenting with a set of enormous false eyelashes, which was like having two pigeons sat on my eyes. Good for a drag queen look, not so good for vision or training.  My rather careless removal technique culminated in ripping out about 70% of my natural ones. Eyelash allopecia is certainly an interesting and different look but all I could think of was...thank god for volumising mascara. 

The joy of discovery - the ultimate motivator

I originally started bodybuilding because I wanted to see if I could make something that doesn't appeal into something fun. When it comes to sport, I'm a real generalist. I will try everything and anything, but bodybuilding I left off the bucket list because it never really resonated with me. The idea of doing a very subjective, aesthetic sport seemed quite frankly really weird, so it was both a psychological and physiological experiment. When you do something you enjoy, it becomes autotelic. You do..for the sake of doing, rather than a means to an end and that is one of the keys to intrinsic motivation and consistency - two important building blocks of successful training. To turn something you hate into something  you love is therefore a crucial skill and in the end I have come to love bodybuilding with a passion. 

The question is therefore - How do you make something fun? 

Of course, the answer is very individual but the trick is to start with what you "can" do rather than what you can't (I'll use bodybuilding as the example). This entails compiling a list of all the training that is acceptable for 1) your chosen category and 2) your body type/metabolism. As a "Figure" competitor (less muscular and lean than a bodybuilder), my freedom of choice for exercise was remarkably high. It is then a question of choosing methods that you enjoy and that is exactly what I did. Variation was key for me because I get bored; I also like to design training - in fact no two training sessions were ever the same.

I believe it's important to do what you like, because it creates motivation. Passion and a fire in one's belly have a funny way of turning an unrealistic expectation into something achievable. There will be times for just knuckling down but they should make up a smaller proportion of training time. In those instances, you just have to crack on!

The "how" therefore is really much more important than the "what". For the same activity or goal there are endless possibilities for how you can go about it. You can make it miserable or fun or anything in between. 
I get huge enjoyment out of discovery and I don't think I'm unique in that. Finding solutions to training problems, whether thats tweaking a training system or changing a mind set is a huge motivator for me. Sets, reps, rest, exercise choice, hand position, foot position, diet..it is all to be played with. It is also the reason why I prep myself, it is a much slower journey but ultimately it is one that is much more rewarding for me. Everybody has different reasons for doing things but perhaps it is useful to stop and ask every now and again..what drives you? It needn't change the outcome it's just maybe it will make the ride a little more joyful. This is something I have only recently learnt but I will never look back now I know there is a different way of doing things. I just wished I had learnt it 20 years ago!

Thailand to me represents the land of possibility. If you had asked me if you could fit a family of 7 on a 50cc scooter I would probably have said no...but now I know you can. 
This is just one example of creative solutions I have seen within 3 days of bring here, so there seems no better place to be for training inspiration. 

Slight poetic licence from "google images" as this family looks like they maybe from Uzbekistan, but you get the idea and it's better than the 7 people I saw!