Life can be bright and warm and easeful. Life can be dark and cold and arduous. In the dark times, it can be difficult to find motivation to even get up in the morning, let alone eat healthy, exercise, and meditate. What’s worse is that these struggles can become our identity as we settle into the groove of being satiated with an unfulfilling existence. But there is a way to find the light again, by learning how to relate to our struggles, and by leaning on those around us.
Skillfully relating to our struggles is simpler than we think: Whatever is going on in your life right now, you have a choice for what happens next. Will you view your struggles as the opportunities for growth that they are? At the next fork in the road, which path will you take? Head for the light and it all comes together. Head for the dark and it all falls apart. When we consistently pick the light, we find the motivation to continue. The problem is that while this concept is simple, it is not easy, especially in our current human predicament.
It’s not surprising that motivation is in short supply when so many of our needs are taken care of by modern technology. Many advancements have been helpful of course, and led to great reductions in suffering. However, they have also led to us becoming lazy humans at a time when we need vigilance to overcome the tremendous hurdles that accompany these advancements. We’re inundated with quick-fix products and assaulted with advertising using psychological tricks to convince us we need to fulfill every desire that arises. We’re pumped full of drugs, legal or otherwise, in order to dull the pain, to mask reality. We’re shepherded into chutes of conformity. These false directives give us temporary comfort at the expense of lifelong satisfaction. It’s all a lie, a fake fix. The alluring promise of a life of leisure has made us soft, it has made us confused on how to feel fulfilled, and it has dulled our drive. Our “motivation” is to get as much as we can for as little as we can, or not bother at all. No wonder actual motivation can be hard to find for so many of us.
Life is hard. Life is confusing. We can’t skip to the next track in the playlist, we have to be present with what is. And we simply must concentrate in order to stay focused on the actual choices we have in front of us. Otherwise, we’ll get swept up in the current of progress and end up making decisions on auto-pilot. The brain beelines toward patterns, toward familiarity, toward whatever the heck will give it a break from the onslaught of information it has to contend with on a moment to moment basis. If we aren’t watching closely, the captain of our ship will steer us toward what is routine rather than what is right. And once we’ve been steered in the wrong direction and we’re no longer on our true path, then our motivation suffers, because deep down we know that what we’re doing, where we’re going, doesn’t make sense.
If figuring this all out seems like a lot, it is. Thankfully we needn’t travel on this journey alone.
For a long time, I was caught on the idea that any “genuine” motivation needed to come 100% from myself, that, in order for it to be real, for it to be lasting, that I needed to be doing things for me and me alone. Now on the one hand, this is good advice. We *do* need to do things for ourselves. We shouldn’t live our lives doing things that we think others want us to do, or that we think society commands us to do. We need to follow our own path, follow our own heart and mind. On the other hand, sometimes that internal motivation is really, really hard to find. And in those moments, it is absolutely ok to lean on others to help you find your drive again.
This was a hard thing for me to process. When I was struggling to find motivation, I was steadfast in my doctrine that it needed to 100% come from within if I were to embark on my true path. I didn’t want to live my life for someone else, I didn’t want to play any more characters; I wanted to be me.
Then there came a moment when I realized that I don’t have to be perfect.
I woke up on August 10 with a slight headache. I had three beers the night before and that was enough these days to give me a mini hangover. I wasn’t drinking often or to excess over the past few months, but it was still happening somewhat regularly, and I hated it. Why did I keep doing this thing that caused me to suffer. That killed my brain cells. That made me have a cloudy head the next day. That made me eat unhealthy food right before bed, causing pounds to accumulate around my waist that I’d then have to double my workout efforts to remove. Why?
And as I contemplated the reasons as I so often have, going through my history and trying to understand my decisions, I realized that I am not, and never will be, a perfect human. That I have challenges, that my body’s chemistry makes me more susceptible to certain types of behaviors, that the limiting beliefs ingrained in my brain from difficult childhood experiences were not things that everyone everywhere had to deal with. In other words, there were things that made this choice harder for me than others. In fact I recently read a study of over 30,000 twins which showed that self-control is largely inherited, suggesting that genes explain around 60% of the differences between individuals in their levels of self-control. This recognition of my (and each individual animal’s) unique challenges helped pave the way for self-compassion, for patience, and even for admiration, as I reckoned with areas of progress and stagnation in my life. I am not ever going to be perfect, but I am a unique individual, doing great in some ways and struggling in others.
Something else happened in that moment. I thought about my dear departed Balto, my sweet, innocent, lovable 37-pound fox-trotting bundle of light. And I thought of some of her struggles. She was not a perfect dog. She was the perfect Balto, but she was not a perfect animal. She had struggles. And I know she looked to me, on so many occasions, for guidance, for support, for love. Some of these occasions were not unexpected, such as her need for comfort during storms and fireworks, but she also had moments of reflection where she simply needed to lay her head on my lap as she contemplated the deeper mysteries of life (or perhaps the not-so-deep mysteries, who knows). Regardless of the need, I didn’t think she needed to do any of it alone, and I never thought for a minute of judging her for it. She still lived her path, her life. It was shared, was all.
That day, August 10, was the two-year anniversary of her death. A year ago, on the first anniversary, I quit using heroin after a six-month addiction that arose from my life falling apart. I was so out of it at the time I didn’t even make the connection that it happened on the anniversary, but that was the day I decided to say no more. And so this year, on August 10, I decided to stop drinking. I haven’t had a drop since.
I did this for me, but I did it for her, too. Thinking of her gives me strength. I think she gave me strength last year when I quit *the worst drug,* and I didn’t even realize it was happening. After contemplating this, I am 100% ok with it, with her giving me strength, with her helping provide motivation. I didn’t think I would be, but I am. I absolutely welcome her inspiration of strength to be the real me. After all, my growth as a human isn’t just about me; becoming stronger and more authentic is a gift to all those around me as well. Being a healthier and fully realized human means that I can show up better every day not just for myself, but for my current housemate Bebop (The Dog) and for everyone else in my life. It means I can show up better in every day-to-day interaction, from work and friend conversations to exchanges with the clerk at the post office. Yes, we must be prepared to put in the work—we cannot expect an easy fix or shortcut, we need to work, work, work (though this effort does become easeful when you know it’s your path and you start seeing the results over time). But it can make all the difference to pump up our own motivation by leaning on those around us.
And not just by leaning on them, but by learning from them, by being inspired by them. When we see a friend kicking ass at something, let that show you what is possible, let that be a guide on your own path, let that help you choose the light. Drop the comparisons and the beating up on yourself for not being far enough; in the words of Ayya Santussika, “The inner critic is worse than useless; it is destructive!” Instead see their efforts clearly and see what is possible. They have made it work and you can too.
And so I’ve started allowing this, I’ve started allowing myself to be pumped up by those around me. My main man Arnold keeps inspiring me—every, single, day, truthfully—but it feels like there’s a limit to how much motivation I can pull from a celebrity who isn’t present in my daily life. So in addition to Arnold—and Balto and Bebop—I’ve also turned toward people who are actually in my life to help with motivation, and I have to say that has really helped fill things out. It’s been just the little push that I needed to get over some lingering humps; it’s helped me realize that the things I want in life are right there, standing in front of me, that all I need to do is double down on myself to ditch the detours and travel the road I’ve wanted to live all along. I know that these people are ultimately helping motivate me to be the real me, and when you’re confident that’s what’s happening, then by all means draw motivation from others to help you get where you need to be.
I don’t know what tomorrow holds, I don’t know where I’ll succeed or where I’ll fail, and I don’t pretend that simply being motivated and taking action invariably leads to happiness. Life is complicated and it feels like we could spend many lifetimes trying to predict and orchestrate some idealized way of living. But doing so would be fiction. None of it is real until we make it real, until we put in the reps and see some results and put in more reps and see more results. Along the way our motivation will ebb and flow, and we shouldn’t be afraid to pull motivation from others when we need it. Paired with self-reflection and hard work, their support will help us get where we need to go, and perhaps best of all, we can rest in contentment knowing that living our true lives will then also inspire those around us. Be there for ourselves, but also remember that in doing so, we’re being here for each other.