Self-motivation-Part 1
July 13th, 2009
A professor of mine was fond of saying “You have to see it to hit it.”
What she meant was that in order for me to achieve my goal I had to see myself having already achieved it; I had to have a vision of what I wanted, I had to own it, take responsibility for making it a reality. I had to want it enough to fully commit to doing it, I had to be motivated, the greater
the degree of difficulty, or resistance to change, the more motivated I would need to be. Having a passionate vision of what is possible for us to achieve is important to the quality of our motivation. If we feel confident about our ability to do it, we will be more motivated to make the extra effort, be more patient, be more hopeful, and be more persistent.
In the past, I was not as self-aware as I am now nor was I as self-reflective. So when I applied my professor’s teaching to my becoming a member of 12 Step Recovery Programs, I discovered that I had made an unconscious decision to do whatever I needed to do to achieve recovery. I was motivated to seek recovery because of what I will call MAWOF (my ass was on fire) self-motivation. I had tried many, many times over the years to stop being a slave to my addictions without success. I am sure a lot of the resistance had to do with my being in denial but it is hard to deny the feeling of having one’s butt on fire. It also helped that I had some friends in 12 step groups and on April fools day 1984, a friend dropped by my house and took me to a meeting. I heard and saw people who used to be in the grip of some addiction, one day at a time arresting their addictions. I don’t remember saying to my self “this is what I want or I can see me doing what they are doing,” but on some unconscious level, through osmosis something must have happened. I took most of the suggestions such as going to 30, 60, 90 meetings in 30, 60, 90 days which was very difficult to do for a number of reasons but I did it. In the case of my 12 step recovery, my motivations were more implicit or unconscious than they were explicit or conscious but I was motivated none the less.
Through self-awareness and self-reflection we can discover our own particular ways of motivating ourselves, we can become more aware of our implicit and explicit motives and make sure that they are in alignment with what we desire and our vision of what we think is possible for us.