On Motivation: fleeting fuel that never lasts

 Being and feeling motivated is amazing. When we are, doing hard work or active things that get us closer to the goals w set for ourselves or closer to things we want, feels so much easier and pleasurable and that feels amazing.

Given the choice or opportunity, being motivated towards something is certainly what we should strive for and anything we can do to get and keep motivation high, is effort well spent.

However, most things worth pursuing in life, aren't things you achieve in a week, or a month or even a year. and the longer the timespans it can take to reach them, the less we can reliably rely on motivation as fuel for the fire that keep the engines running towards our goals.

Because reality and the real world teaches all of us something. We're only human, and all humans experience the following:

• some days, we'll be hungry or tired
• some days, we'll feel angry and lonely
• some days, even some weeks or months, we won't see consistent improvements (because improvement is never consistent) and we'll wonder what's the point at all of putting in effort
• some days, other things will be on our minds, and we'll second guess ourselves and just want to stay on the couch watching random videos and wanting to be left alone

All those types of days conspire against us and our goals and our will power, and when doubt sets in (which it will and does for all of us), "Mr. Ugly" will make us take the easy way out and give us permission to stop pursuing our dreams and goals, to stop believing in ourselves and that we're even deserving of achieving what we want.

So while motivation is a nice-to-have that we should take advantage of if we can, it's unreliable. Motivation has no predictive value of outcomes.

So, Rafael, do try to keep your motivation whenever you can, but know that achieving anything in life will be down to your discipline and your habits, not your motivation as that's fleeting fuel. It's discipline and habits that make it INEVITABLE that you'll one day reach your goals (independent of it taking a month or a year or even longer, because life gets in the way for all of us). Showing up, when you don't want to, when you're tired, when it's kicking your ass, when you can just sit down and chill, is how we achieve what we said we would. and it's what we and those we care about deserve from us and what we deserve from ourselves.