Repeat after me: “I choose to be motivated”

I promise, you are not a couch potato. Well, you might be a couch potato currently. But you are not destined and doomed to be a couch potato for the rest of your existence.

I can almost guarantee that at one point or another you, or someone you know, has said something along the lines of “I just don’t have a lot of motivation right now”. Well, the truth is, you actually do. You always do. According to Z-Health, an amazing education and training system course for performance enhancement, motivation is a choice, it is a skill, and you always have it.

Motivation is a comparison – an emotional and cognitive comparison – of different outcomes that could happen as a result of your behavior choices. Motivation is a way of prioritizing. So, as you veg out on your couch all weekend, you are motivated to lay there and relax because in that current situation either your emotions or your cognitive brain have decided that it is more important to you currently to chill out and kick your feet back. Does this necessarily mean that this is a good choice? Not necessarily. But if we begin to view motivation as a choice, as something we can consciously choose to make either good habits or bad habits, then we may start to feel differently about what we’re motivated to do (or not do).

Start to be emboldened by this new reality of motivation as choice. Let the weight of this truth take hold in your mind. Lets say you want to lose weight. You just wish you could be about 10 pounds lighter so you could look better, feel better, and just live a generally better quality of life. Sounds like a really rare issue that you probably don’t share with anyone else in this world, or anyone else reading this right now…yes, that was sarcasm.

You want to lose 10 pounds but you also really enjoy the social life you live. The social life of happy hours filled with tantalizing specials on calorifically (a new hybrid word I created : caloric and terrific. Nots sure how I feel about I yet) delicious appetizers and pizzas and cocktails and yum. This is a struggle. You are motivated to lose weight, because you badly want to look and feel better but you also aren’t quite ready to give up the relaxation and the fulfillment of your social needs after a long day at work. So you are technically motivated to do both. What makes all of this interesting, however, is the fact that motivation is a skill, something that can be learned and trained, particularly since it is chosen.

Your true motivation lies in your ability to move these desires into action. You have the ability to learn, and train your brain to choose to take up a new skill, to choose the weight loss option by ordering water and salads instead of beer and pizza. You also have the ability to continue to train your brain to maintain its current choice of indulgent happy hours. Either way, the choice is yours. Yes, one might require a lot more time and energy to learn. Yet, since we know motivation for a certain behavior can be learned, should we not feel exhilarated and empowered by the reality that we can choose?

We can choose to be couch potatoes or gym rats. If you are in control of your motivation, then you can most certainly be motivated to do something at any point in time. With choice comes power and with that power great responsibility (Spiderman rules). So, take responsibility for your choices, and choose wisely. You can be motivated to do whatever your little heart desires – just move yourselves toward the right motivation.

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