Sunday morning and Tommy has had me up since 5am again and as usual he is full of energy and bouncing around the place. Those quiet lazy Sunday mornings are a distant memory. As for a lie-in, well I don’t even recall one of those at our new home and we’ve been here over a year now.

Oh dear looks like my grumpy gremlin has surfaced again. Better find some motivation and get on with another potentially great day and see if I can’t at least put grumpy away.

You know living and loving your life doesn’t mean skipping around all the time with boundless enthusiasm and being smiley. I absolutely know and understand that some days are bouncy, some are less exciting and some are a little flat and even quite depressing at times. But I’m ok with that and each mood puts others into perspective. I can still live and love my life even when I’m not in the best of places, and I always know I have a choice over how I am feeling. Sometimes grumpy is what’s needed to move me to a better place.

I believe one of our life purposes is our own personal growth to be the best version of ourselves we can be. I have invested in my own personal development over a couple of decades now to know that being motivated is not all about prancing around to some exercise routine in front of the TV each morning (those of a certain age in the UK will remember Mr Motivator and Mad Lizzie). Although physical movement does help you to feel amazing and can set you up for a great day, as soon as someone presses your grumpy buttons you can begin to fall flat again.

Motivation: Motive for action / movement (motion) 

When we are motivated we are somewhere on the continuum of moving away from something we don’t want (fear based) through to moving towards something we do want (desire based).

When I initially learnt about this I was given the example of our ancestors in prehistoric cave man days. They quickly learnt to move away from or avoid fearful situations like meeting tigers or bears. They also learnt they wanted to move toward more desiring experiences like mating.

Think of it as a line and on the far left is fear and on the far right is desire. When we want or need to take action we are somewhere on this line and motivated to move. In any situation we can be at any point on the line and if it’s too far to the left we are motivated to do something as we are too close to fear and our basic instinct is to get away. We take action and often then stop when we feel at a comfortable distance again. At other times we find ourselves more to the right and motivated to reach a goal or desire.

Motivation is about movement (or motion) by taking action to make a change. 

Today however I am neither fearful of anything or desire anything too different. I’m just aware I want to feel a little less grumpy and get some energy to get out of the house (as going back to bed isn’t an option). I’m somewhere in the middle of the line and that’s often a harder place to be to actually move from. By definition the middle of the line is the furthest place from either end and therefore further away from either type of motivation.

When you live in that middle place nothing much gets done. I think that we are individually wired to preference one type of motivation over the other, and if your preference (whether you are consciously aware or not) to get you moving and doing something is more fear based, then you probably find yourself attracted to (fear) situations that require you to ‘move away’ more often. You’ll then have a ‘safe’ setting which is the place you feel comfortable at which is far enough away from fear, but it also removes your motive to keep moving, so you get stuck there until the next time you find yourself near fear.

If your preference is more desire based then you are more likely to keep moving and taking action until your goal is reached. Similarly you will find yourself attracted to situations that ignite that desire in you to want something and get motivated to achieve it.

What gets you up and moving? Just notice next time you are motivated to take action which type it is.

With love and gratitude

Nadine.