Motivation - The will to doLast time we defined motivation in our own way what responsibility is: It is knowing that you need to do something and why, and then you take those actions to do whatever it is that needs done. This does not necessarily mean right away; I am sure I’m not the only one who’s neglected things that needs to be done or procrastinated.

Unless you are a Type A person, and then even still there are only so many hours in any given day, even if you stay up for 24-hours, you will only fatigue yourself to the point of exhaustion; to the point you cannot keep your eyes open any longer. So, what is the point? Well, the point is along with responsibility, you must prioritize your day; otherwise, things would get out of hand and you wouldn’t know where to start with the responsibilities.

Okay great, what does this have to do with motivation you might ask? I’ll tell you. The direction this conversation seems to be going is that motivation and responsibility are some how interconnected, and now we are bringing in the word prioritization. I would call that the ability to know what would come first, come second, and so on. People generally know what comes first when it comes to their responsibilities. Unless of course the responsibilities are so out of hand that one doesn’t know where to start. That just becomes so frustration that no wonder someone in a situation wouldn’t know how to put their lives back together, it can be easy to fall into that trap. How do people have their lives together in the first place? Motivation.

Motivation. Let’s stop here for a second. We haven’t defined the very word that we’ve been trying to figure out. Let’s start with this working definition and we will tweak and change it along the way.

Motivation: Having the will to do something.

I think that is a good start for now. When you are motivated to do something, usually you want to do that thing. You have enough will to say “Okay, lets do this.” So, when you get up in the morning are you motivated? Could be. You could have the will to get up, get some coffee, and read the paper. That could be a fun way to start the morning. What about a child on a weekend morning? It is customary for families to have a fun breakfast. Pancakes or waffles usually motivates any child to get out of bed.

Heck, that is usually enough to get me out of bed; even if I know I’m going to make them myself. If I make that particular breakfast myself, I can make the pancakes or waffles with some creativity, put vanilla or chocolate in the mix, make them extra buttery or with more sugar.

I’d call that pretty motivating. I’d get up in the morning for something like that. So, what about when we have a hard day? You know there is going to be a lot of work to do, a lot of driving, or something tremendously difficult. It becomes quite painful even to get up in the morning with a situation like that. I know I don’t like it when I know it’s going to be hard. So why do we keep going to work? I know I’ve heard the saying “You gotta work if you wanna eat.”. Is that an actual saying? I don’t know, I made it up. But the point is you are motivated to get up in the morning because you want to eat later? Can that be right?

Well, more on that later.

Find part two here

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