To achieve anything in life, you must be motivated. The source of your motivation will be very much a personal thing for you, and what drives one person on will be like water off a duck’s back to someone else, and this is one of the reasons why losing weight can be so hard. You know you need to shed some pounds, and you know you’ll feel much better if you do.
However, unless you can home in on some factor that will give you the drive to succeed, you’ll continue to pursue the instant gratification of another cheeseburger rather than the long-term possibility of health and happiness.
Why is it so hard to motivate yourself to do something that you want to do?
It doesn’t seem to make sense; if you want to achieve something, and failing to do so is making you unhappy, surely your brain should be able to override your cravings and look at the bigger picture. Sadly, it isn’t as simple as that. If it were, everyone would have stopped smoking as soon as it was confirmed that tobacco could cause life-threatening diseases.
The brain is far too complex an organ, working under the influence of a whole host of evolutionary, biological and psychological influences, many of which work counter to our best interests.
How do you overcome all these contradictory influences?
The answer is both simple and incredibly complex. The key to finding a source of motivation is like finding an actual key, one that fits into the lock in your brain that is preventing you from entering the room where your motivation is waiting for you. The complex part is finding the key because everyone’s is different and looking for it can be like a spectacularly frustrating game of Where’s Waldo. Sometimes an event in your life will deliver your key to you.
For example, contracting pneumonia and being told you will die if you start smoking again. It doesn’t have to be something life-threatening though. Your doctor may have told you that you are morbidly obese, but that isn’t your key. However, when your child asks “why can’t you play with me?” suddenly there is a click in your brain as that key finds its home.
Why you shouldn’t wait
Waiting for your motivation to click in is like being a writer waiting for inspiration to strike, and you could still be waiting when your time is up. The only course of action is to keep looking. Your answer may lie in a visit to a cosmetic surgeon like Aaron Kosins MD to discuss reduction surgery. It may be giving yourself a goal like completing a walk for charity, booking a vacation and aiming to get a tan on the beach or being able to help your daughter with her soccer practice.
Your motivation may come from something as simple as reading a book that inspires you, or you might want to get to the root of why you overeat by talking it through with a therapist. Your key is out there somewhere, so keep looking until you find it, then unlock a healthy, happy future.
