No small amount of human duress is caused by a little hitch in the motivational equipment. What we want isn't necessarily what we need. What we want mostly is what's easy. We're wired for instant gratification, if not vegetation. If there's a product that can help you budge less, it's a winner, whether it's a garage door opener, a robot vacuum cleaner or diet pills that magically take the weight off while you slumber.
Unfortunately, what we need is hard. It takes the opposite of instant payoff to satisfy brain neurons that crave novelty and core psychological needs that demand self-determined action. It takes effort. There's an inextricable relationship between effort and satisfaction. The latter can't exist without the former. Tying your shoes won't bring you gratification. The feeling of satisfaction and the dopamine it generates comes in response to a new or challenging action joined and handled. It's the brain's reward for stretching beyond the familiar. You also feel good because completing a hard task demonstrates competence, one of your core needs.
As we stare down our goals for the new year, it's a good time to zero in on just how crucial the effort component is, not just to get projects and wish lists polished off, but also to create satisfaction in our lives. All the research shows that happiness takes work -- initiating and sustaining effort. When motivation flags, bailing out doesn't just deep-six the goal, it deprives you of what you really need, the gratification of having moved forward.
The belief that the "work" of our goals is incidental and separate from the outcome makes it tough to stick with them and fuels procrastination and flake-outs. Seeing the new exercise program as drudgery, something you're forced to do, shuts down your core need for autonomy and makes you want to bolt. When you feel controlled and pressured, by others or yourself, you recoil from it.
You can avoid that trap by reframing the "work" as part of the mission, not as a way station to outcome. View the practice of a new behavior as the cake to the frosting of gratification that comes with improvement and growth. Working at it is not a root canal; it's the root of competence, which empowers you.
Effort is your friend. It's the unsung engine of the 40 percent of your potential happiness that you can actually do something about, that's not inherited or the result of circumstantial influences (health, environment, geography). Researchers say that this chunk, known as "intentional activity," is the best route to increasing and sustaining happiness, through self-chosen, positive experiences. All intentional activities require you to do something, so initiating and sustaining effort are essential to increasing your odds of finding real satisfaction.
You can dramatically increase your ability to sustain effort by your choice of goals. If you're in it only for an external outcome -- praise, status, success, money -- it will be harder to persevere. Studies show that strong external performance goals undercut persistence. Any setbacks shake the self-image of people ruled by performance standards. Stanford's Carol Dweck found that students who were oriented to the intrinsic goal of learning were able to get enjoyment out of a challenge even when they weren't doing well. They remained eager in the face of setbacks. The externally motivated weren't interested in a subject they didn't do well in. Yes, the performance identity is a quitter, if it doesn't get what it wants when it wants it.
A new friend of mine is a long-distance runner, but he kept getting injured while training for marathons. He wound up burned-out on his passion because he measured progress by the times he ran and how many miles he trained each week. After one too many Achilles and fascia problems, he decided to dump the external yardsticks and run for the fun of it. That changed everything. He now enjoys running again and isn't getting injured. Another important piece for runners or anyone trying to sustain motivation is that varying your course (such as time, length, and intensity) will help keep you at it, by holding off the habituation that leads to boredom.
Intrinsic motivation promotes autonomy and competence, core needs that fuel your ability to be proactive. They are self-propulsion agents. When your goal is intrinsic -- you're doing it for the challenge, fun, growth, learning, excellence -- the usual excuses (it's taking too long, not seeing progress, too hard) can't get in the way, because you're focused on the moment of experience, not the outcome. The intrinsic approach shuts down the unrealistic expectations that lead to bailing out when reality doesn't meet random, imagined scenarios.
I met dozens of folks in the course of doing a new book, "Don't Miss Your Life," on the power of participant experiences, who have mastered the art of persistence with one of the best intrinsic strategies there is -- developing a passion. The more you use initiating and sustaining skills, the easier it is to call on them. It's a kind of "muscle memory" of motivation that builds the skills of showing up and persistence.
Through the day-in, day-out effort of learning a skill, they developed enough competence for the practice to become internalized and part of their identity. Ian Glazer, a technical analyst at a research firm in Washington D.C., is a 10-year practitioner of classical tai chi chuan. When he first started taking lessons at the Great River Taoist Center, he was amazed at how senior citizens in his class could deflect his moves and push him to the ground. He began going one day a week, then two, three, and four times a week.
"You have to push yourself, getting a little better each time," says Glazer. "My goal is to be less bad than I was the last time."
I love that approach, because it shuts down the outcome fixation of judgment and puts the intrinsic goal of learning center stage. The practice is the practice. Every stretch, every exercise, every mistake is part of the life practice.
The insistent call of the easy and comfortable will keep tugging. You're too tired. You're not getting anywhere. You don't have time. Don't buy it. Stay focused on the goal and do something that your instant gratification equipment will never expect: Rally. Override the momentary moods, frustrations and inertial defaults by contesting them. You're not going with the first reaction. You're rallying. You transcend the alibis by summoning your commitment to live without excuses and ego.
From what I've seen in training and coaching people who want to improve their lives and skills through determined action, we're all a lot better at rallying than we think. The next time your body wants to veg when it's time to take care of your core needs with a career-improvement goal or activate your life with a tango class, rally. When the gloom of a bad day shuts down your motivation, rally. You're not going to roll over. Make the rally your counterpunch to any alibi. What if all that was standing between you and completing the goals that could transform your life was trying it one more time? If you don't rally, you'll never know.
Joe Robinson is author of the new book, "Don't Miss Your Life">, on the science, skills and spirit of full-tilt living. He is founder of Work to Live, and is a work-life balance and stress management trainer and coach.
Follow Joe Robinson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/WorkLifeSkills
Joe Robinson: The Key to Happiness: A Taboo for Adults?
Gratification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gratifications-What Gratifications Are and How To Use Them
Money Can Buy Satisfaction–If Not Happiness - The Wealth Report - WSJ
Money Buys Happiness, Emotional Well-being, Life Satisfaction ...
But the end result isn't all there is to it. Tying your shoes will be a real achievement, and bring you gratification, if it's part of a grueling process of recovery from severe injury.
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May I suggest Karen Talavera's "Why Do We Feel We Have to Deserve What We Desire?" also here on HuffPo as a companion piece to your article?
While effort is a crucial ingredient, sometimes we may be proceeding down blind alleys if our struggles simply bear no fruit. I think it's so important that you pointed out our responsibility in choosing our goals (carefully) and the power in the "intrinsic strategy" of developing our passion.
In the arena of our passionate quest, we can rightfully expect, then, to call upon the heart of a champion.
Does anyone here remember Venus Williams in the 2005 Wimbledon Ladies' Championship? People had written her off as a has-been, a shadow of who she once was. The battle she waged, and the victory she forged, against the formidable adversary that was Lindsay Davenport, in what became the longest Ladies Final in that tournament's history, will forever be etched in my memory. I am so glad I witnessed that gilded clash of titans.
I too will rally. I must. And I can.
Thanks again.
Excellent information, and advice. The core concept for me is the following statement, "There's an inextricable relationship between effort and satisfaction." Things that are too easy never seem to carry the same value as those requiring great, sustained effort.
But, there is also a relationship between effort and devleopment of self. Part of the process of pursuing your passion is the change in who or what your are. The vigil of consistent persistence changes you, and even if you do not completely reach your goal, you have developed yourself by developing your "self".
Most of the time, what you become along the way is more important, more meaningful, or more significant than where you are when you complete the journey.
Now is we can just get all parents to understand not just how important this is for their kids, but how to mentor, guide, and nurture their children so that they will find their passion in life and pursue it while focusing on each moment along the way.
Thanks for the fine post! I'm a fan!
Lawson Meadows
Or maybe: What you become during the journey is the real destination.
Lawson Meadows
Or maybe I just like being different.
But I always knew that what I really needed was the effort, the challenge. Before, I never felt my life was worthwhile; even medical school was not what I had expected n.
Then I came here and did internship, residency, fellowship, boards. In those sleep-deprived nights I felt at home in my life. To do the hard thing makes life worthwhile.
Alexa Fleckenstein M.D., physician, author.
think the value of self-help books or speeches really all depends on the nature of the self-help book or speech.
The problem with most of them is that you don't know that the person practiced or practices what he/she preaches, you have no idea how they truly got to where they are and they do not cast a wide enough net with their advice to truly reach the minds and hearts of the potential audience.
"Birth of a Salesman" by Carson V. Heady has NONE of these problems.
Not only is it spot-on, can't-miss career advice that is tested and triumphant, it is a book-within-a-novel about the author of the book. Unique spin from someone living in reality - it is a cut above all others.
http://www.amazon.com/Birth-Salesman-Carson-V-Heady/dp/193544431X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1284000823&sr=8-1
this relates to Dr Goldberg's blog in the health section " sequential processing " digit span exercise
2 points from a wise man : " rest is the basis of activity " " expansion of happiness is the purpose of life " The Maharishi
expansion means sustainability
I think there is only so much fun we can have, because the next time we always seem to need a little more than the last time, until finally we cannot handle the load physically or mentally.
But there is much less limitation on the gratification of accomplishing things. There is so much work to be done in this world and so much to learn and teach that it is an endless source of gratification.
Wish me luck!