The Quest for Motivation

I am a very intellectual person, and finding the motivation to do non-intellectual things is so challenging… well, they just don’t get done. And I’m talking the most basic things. Housecleaning, laundry, exercise to name a few. Back in March, I was struggling with deep depression – that I get every winter – and my psychiatrist said that I was lucky to have a low stress job, and I shouldn’t mess with a good thing. Well, Miss Has-to-be-Intellectually-Challenged decided that she wanted more stress and changed jobs. So here I am in this new job, trying to think forward, and I asked my psychiatrist what we could do to prepare for the winter. His prescription: 2 hours of exercise per day. Work your way up to it.

So, I tried. I tried dancing to funk music. I tried walking the dog. I tried swimming. I was doing everything I could… and then my knees gave out. With arthritis in both knees, it’s only a matter of time before I will need to replace them. But the pain was so excruciating that I couldn’t exercise. I could barely move. I was taking 4 Aleve per day, icing my knees every 4 hours, and just feeling miserable. And given how much travel I do for work, I wasn’t sure how I would get through an airport once I started my new job. My first trip would be in a month. What was I going to do?

It was time to face reality. I needed to lose weight. And to lose weight, I would need to exercise. And to be able to exercise, I would need some help. I started physical therapy twice a week, religiously exercising in between, and within 3 weeks, the pain was gone. So, of course, I slacked. No pain, no motivation.

With winter coming and full-on depression, I knew I needed to work up to my 2 hours/day. I knew it. In the depths of my core. Knew it. And yet. Exercise did not happen. Now, Google is my friend. So I decided to google “why won’t I exercise” and “how can I motivate myself” and “how can I develop new habits”. Learned a lot. Apparently, all of the things we like to do are triggered by something, and once we get into the routine of doing them, we get an immediate reward. Eating, for example. Immediate reward. Drugs. Immediate reward. So, for the things we do NOT like to do, if we want to develop a new habit, we have to create a trigger, and we have to create a reward. And, for someone trying to lose weight, it can’t be food based.

HECK! What else is there to reward yourself with if it can’t be food? It would be nice if “the satisfaction of a job well done” was sufficient reward, and it can be! But I was not feeling it. I googled some more. I found sites with up to 150 different non-food “rewards”. And I rejected all of them. Some were too expensive, some required getting out and about, they just didn’t make for IMMEDIATE rewards. So, I decided to create a reward book. For everything I did that got me started on developing a good habit, I got a sticker. And I can tell you, putting down what I accomplished and applying that sticker felt good. But not good enough. Two weeks later, my reward board was in the closet.

Well, this week, I saw a TEDTalk by Mel Robbins about “The 5 Second Rule”. She had some interesting ideas about motivation and habits. For starters, she pointed out that when you are a kid, your parents make you do the things you don’t want to do. When you are an adult, you have to make yourself do it… or it doesn’t get done. That made a lot of sense. Next, she said that if you don’t FORCE yourself to do things that you don’t like… then they won’t get done. So, true. She had the idea that there are two sides of your brain. On one side is the autopilot side of all of your routines and habits. On the other side is a huge emergency brake that will keep you from developing new habits. Each thing that you don’t want to do requires “activation energy”. What struck me about what she was saying was that it had nothing to do with motivation or cues or rewards. You just have to force yourself to do it.

And then she said, when you have an idea to do something that is new, or that you don’t like to do, you will lose interest in doing it within 5 seconds. Oh lawdy, that is so me. That emergency brake just gets yanked up like a mother. Well, I tested the theory. I had an idea. I should clean the kitchen. Definitely an idea that would get tossed within 5 seconds if I didn’t get off my ass, step away from the computer and go to it. I am happy to say that I did it. Got up, got the sink emptied, got the counters cleared. It looks better, it smells better, a job well done. And really, that was sufficient reward. I will definitely put it on my rewards board…

So, it looks like I’m going to have to force myself to exercise. No cues, no rewards, no thoughts, no decisions, no “motivation”. Not to say that there isn’t so darned good motivation. I’m exercising for a reason. But since that has not motivated me for the past two months, I need to try the “Just Do It” approach.