No Amount of External Motivation Can Help You Unless You Are Self Motivated

If I ask you what is your phone wallpaper right now, or maybe which is that one biggest poster in your room? There is a high probability that its a quote. To be specific, it’s a motivational quote. Am I right? Study reveals that 80% of the people use such kind of quotes in their workspace or their rooms. If you are in the 20%, congratulations! It’s an achievement.

But do these types of inspirations help?

If I say that through experience, external motivation lasts for only a few days. Let’s assume you found this really inspiring and encouraging quote on the internet, that you think will really help you when you don’t feel like working or are feeling low. You immediately press the download and print button and whoosh! There it is on your wall with 10 others. For the next few days, you will look at it and feel good about yourself, think about all the positive aspects of your life, feel you can do anything, and be on top of the world.

But the next moment when you receive a call “finish all this work and email me at the end of the day”, all the above feelings get buried deep down. Again you look at that beautiful wall and say fu*k o**.

Now, where and why did all the inspiration and motivation go?

It’s all gone and I bet you will never feel encouraged by looking at that same piece again unless you find another one to make the count to 11. The main question here is “why?” The reason is, all these writings and printed stuff are a source of “external motivation”. That means they will not help you achieve your goal or change the way you feel for a long time. They are like that new phone that you caress for a month and after that start treating it like your old one, throwing it around. All of this will never help you in the long run.

So what will really help you?

Before answering this, I would like to ask you another question: why do all the successful people say:“ follow your passion", “ do what you like doing”, “don’t follow others”? There can be a variety of reasons you can think of but let me tell you the main one: They realize the importance of ‘working for yourself' and ‘self-motivation’.

If you work really hard as an employee for some company, you will get nothing in return but just the salary you receive every month. No matter if your work is excellent or just above the margin you will still get the same amount and 0 credit. But if you put in so much hard work to run your own business, it will give you that feeling of self-satisfaction that nothing else can.

Coming back to the question( so what will really help you?), the answer is ‘self-drive’, you can only achieve something if you have that drive within yourself to work for it. If your passion, your work doesn’t drive you, no matter how many self-help books you read or how many quotes you print, they are a mere waste of time and money. If you don’t feel like doing something, it means you are not “self-motivated” for doing it.

Remember the call that you received at the beginning of this article? Why did you feel irritated after it? The reason was you weren’t interested in doing it. You just didn’t have that inspiration within you to work for it

What should you do?

This one is really simple and yet it’s really hard. Do something that drives you, follow your passion. You might have heard this a million times before, but this is the only way out. Being caged and doing something that you aren’t interested in will get you nowhere. It’s hard to step out of your comfort zone and take a step, but once you do, there won’t be a looking back.

But there might be people who already love what they do, for example, if you are an artist and painting is what you really like doing. You don’t care for whom you are doing it for, you just love the action that you are performing every day. This reason is enough for you to be self-motivated towards it everyday, cause, in the end, you are doing what you love doing.

It’s true when they say “ Doctors can’t help if the patient himself doesn’t make an effort to recover”

It’s only you who can make your life better. Stop waiting for the right time or for everything to fall in place. Circumstances are never favourable. And learn to identify whether you really wish to do what you are doing. Ask yourself " do I really enjoy it? ", and if the answer is no, you are in the wrong place. Don't continue thinking that you have come so far or maybe you have dedicated a lot of time and if you leave now all of it will go in vain. Continue because you want to. I agree it can be hard, but if you don't make an effort you will be trapped in the cycle forever.

It's never about being lucky

Most people when asked about their aim for the future don't really have an answer. There might be stuff that they wish to do but they have hidden it deep inside themselves believing they would not be able to do it. How many times have we thought to ourselves "This person is so lucky, he got successful and follows his passion" and then sighed thinking that he might just have made it because he had the ability and you don't.

But self motivation has to be paired with hardwork and dedication to acheive your goals. That person made it not because he was lucky but because firstly, he chose to do what he loved and then put his heart and soul to make it happen. He too might have had thoughts like you are but that didn’t stop him. Take the first step and the rest will work out.