Here's What is Motivating

Changing Ideas

Motivation is an interesting topic. When I was younger I used to think it was really important. Then I started doing a lot of meditation. And I studied a bit more about motivation. And I found out that there was intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Disappointing

Of course I found extrinsic motivation a little bit disappointing. It's disappointing because it leaves you dependent on your environment. So I started looking for intrinsic motivation. And then I started to discover that this is a bit of a magic key. If you have it it's wonderful but magic is capricious and you don't always have it.

So I kept on looking for other ways to motivate myself or keep my motivation up.

Shocking Motivation

Cold showers are a great way to motivate yourself. Now you could argue that they are extrinsic because you need something in your environment. That's good but in point of fact cold showers are relatively accessible. It's easy to get a cold shower just about anywhere. You can't get a cool charger just about any time. When you're at work you can't run and take a cold shower. But you can take a cold shower in the morning before you go to work and the effects last for a long time. Cold showers boost your mood. With a boosted mood you're able to see more clearly. That includes your goals and if you can see your goals and you're in a good mood chances are you're feeling motivated.

Sleep on It

Another one is just getting good sleeps. If you're tired it's hard to be motivated. So once again it depends a little bit on your environment because you may not be able to control your sleeping hours. Or let's put it another way: people with bad sleeping hours seem to find things that are outside of them that control their sleeping hours. People with good sleeping hours seem to find it easier to control their sleeping hours themselves.

Eat Your Way to Motivation

Diet came in for me about 4 or 5 years ago as a big influencer in my motivation. I discovered many years ago that supplements could help your motivation. One of the most famous ones is ginseng, but I found that while that boosts your motivation in the short term, in the long term you crash. This has been true of most of the supplements or supplement like things that I've experimented with. Vitamin c is like that. It gives you lots of energy in the short term but if you take it on a prolonged basis you'll crash. Same with ginger. Drinking ginger tea can boost your energy and hence your motivation but after a while you'll crash.

More Eating

In the same tune of eating, I found another thing that helps my motivation. It was different from supplements. I started to eat a lot more meat, and vegetables. For a while there I thought it was like a keto diet, but the truth was I kept eating lots of rice in onigiris, and at dinnertime. What really helped, I think, was that I ate the meat and vegetables first. Then 20 or 30 minutes later I had the onigiri. This helped because you digestive system makes all the enzymes for digesting protein and fat, and the veggies give lots of fibre. Both of these serve to slow down the digestion of the carbohydrates later. Then you get a long slow burn and in my case, my mind remains clever for over 6 hours. That was a great thing for my motivation.

Old Hocus Pocus

A few years ago I went back to an old old idea that I heard for many years and never really believed. I thought it was silly Hocus pocus. That was the candle. Get a candle and sit in a dark room with the candle burning. Get really close to the candle and focus on the flame, and repeat your target. Whatever outcome you want brackets in yourself brackets, you will get. This is amazingly strong and powerful. But it's also slow. You need 3 months to 6 months to get it going. Once you get that motivation going it's extremely powerful and it's very internal.

Youtube?

But the interesting thing that I came across the other day in connection with my son was a nice video, or a YouTube channel in fact that can really boost your motivation. At least it boosts my motivation. The channel is (morio routine)[https://www.youtube.com/@MorioRoutine] . His videos show his weekly routine, his daily routine. There's no talking in the video. There's only some subtitles in Japanese music and the images in he takes in his camera. He shows his daily routine. He doesn't show his face just his activities. The video editing has really improved over the last couple years. The music is great. And it's very easy to understand, even if you can't read Japanese. Watching his videos is in extremely motivating. Now I do it whenever I need a boost, or I haven't got focus, or my energy is a bit low. This isn't most of the time, but sometimes it sure helps. Other times when my motivation is high and I watch his videos then my motivation goes through the roof.