When You Want Something but Don’t Have the Self-Motivation to Go Get It
The problem most people have with self-motivation is wanting something but not having the energy within to go after it. Basically, dreaming and not doing, planning and not executing, talking about “manifestation” and not doing the work.
The first two excuses typically given for not being self-motivated is lacking knowledge and lacking skills. However, neither of these excuses are the real reason.
Knowledge is more abundant now than it has been in any other time in history. Anyone who uses the lack of knowledge as an excuse is lying to themselves. Lacking skills is a matter of work ethic. Money to go to college or a trade school is not the first thing you need to learn a new skill. Learning a new skill is a matter of hard work and being persistent with progress. Just like knowledge, there is an abundance of information available to help anyone learn a new skill from the level of a beginner.
Therefore, the real reason why someone wants something but has no self-motivation to go get it is their beliefs about one of three things:
- The desire for instant gratification. i.e., Not acting because you believe using energy to act now will not produce what you want fast enough.
- Devaluing the cost of time. i.e., Not acting because you believe continuing to delay action until a future time will not cost you what you want.
- Incompatible pain tolerance. i.e., Not acting because you believe the pain of acting is greater than your pain tolerance. In addition, you believe the pain of not getting what you want is lower than your pain tolerance.
As long as someone has one of these three beliefs about what they want, self-motivation will be a problem.