The Pitfalls of Motivation
How to achieve with more ease
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What comes to your mind when I say the word motivation? Perhaps images of strength, power, and gusto, along with a forceful pumping energy that’s yelling in your ears to ‘push through, do more and be more’? Or is it a gentle guiding voice that allows you to emerge and discover? Activation and push are only helpful to a certain extent and with the right amount. What’s often overlooked is where these underlying motivations are operating from.
Is this motivation driven from a place of pain avoidance or towards pleasure-seeking? Are you motivated by fear, or by the true joy of fulfilling your full potential? We tend to get stuck in fear-based motivations. What do others think of me? What do others expect from me? What if I disappoint my parents? My family? What if I look stupid? It’s only natural to have these fears, but we need to know that creating anything from this space is constricting, gripping, and exhausting!
It’s limiting you from your full creative capacity when you are using up unconscious energy to battle within yourself. Recently, I shared about the concept of failure as merely a feeling rather than a defining experience itself. I would take it a step further and invite you to practice leaning into your fears and coming face to face with them.
Get to know your fears. Sit with it. Let it speak. Within that fear, there’s a timid and frightened child inside of you that needs a bit of gentle encouragement. Coax it out of its shell. Hold its hand and take a deep nourishing breath. What if you don’t have to struggle? What if you could achieve more with less effort? Would that be possible?
We’ve been so conditioned to push through and try harder since a young age and throughout our lives through the messages we receive in our societies. It seems scary to let go of the pushing, and can even make us feel uneasy to welcome the idea of ease in achieving. We fear that we would not achieve without the struggle and grinding efforts. We haven’t been taught any other way or even imagined that it’s possible.
Cognitive awareness and motivational talk can only get you so far. What’s most impactful is an experiential approach where the body learns to behave in a new and more supportive manner, a gentler approach that enables you to achieve more with less struggle.
Our fears and doubts can often manifest as physical sensations in our bodies that go unexamined as we carry on in our busy lives. I know for myself that profound shifts began to happen when I took time to notice my breath, posture, and expression whenever I felt stuck in writing, creating, or anything in life.
“How you do anything is how you do everything.” — Derek Sivers
Start to notice how you are reading this article. Are you trying to skimp through quickly and get the most out of it all in one breath? Or are you sipping your coffee, taking your time to digest, pause, and reflect on what this means for you. Bring your awareness to your breath now. Is it shallow or deep? Do you feel expansive or constricted?
If you begin to observe your breath more often throughout the day, you will begin to uncover great discoveries about your patterns of thoughts and ways of being that you unconsciously carry in approaching your life and hence your goals. I noticed for myself that I habitually tense up my shoulders and breathe from my upper chest when I am worried or stressed.
I carry this pattern of breathing and being when I’m stuck in perfectionist thoughts of trying to make something better and when I’m trying to hold onto control. Now I intentionally drop my shoulders, relax my belly and breathe deeply whenever I notice these sensations coming up. I anchor myself remembering the sense of ease and peace walking in nature brings me, and I hone that feeling into this moment. I shift back to play mode and release myself. I let out a sigh that feels like a great relief.
“Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften.” — Jack Kornfield
The sensation of ease may feel unfamiliar after years of tensing and what we’ve normalized for ourselves. I encourage you to play around and experiment with the sensation of ease. When was the last time you felt at ease? What were you doing? How did your body behave? How did you breathe?
It requires more deliberate practice than just doing it once, but as you build the awareness and make connections between how each thought feels in the body, you will find more capacity to shift your current state to something that supports you best. Over time, these new ways stack up to become traits of you as a person, as a writer, and as a creator that allow you to expand into your creative strengths and highest potential.
