The Physics Of Motivation - Discover The Secret Fuel Of Success, Ambition, And Drive

The tiny goals you set and achieve but normally wouldn't acknowledge as a "goal surpassed" are actually the secret fuel of the ambitiously successful. This "micro-fuel" is more often than not taken for granted or simply ignored in the full scheme of things. This is a HUGE mistake many people make. For this reason they find it hard to maintain motivation for even the simplest things.

I liken this to how a manufacturing mill producing products that are cut out of sheets of say aluminum, there is always that biscuit like "trim" always left over. Of course the mill always moves that excess into another bin for recycling, remolding into a sheet and once again it's cut and repeated. The trim in this metaphor is those small victories we take for granted.

Can you imagine how much a company would lose in efficiency and cost effectiveness if they simply cut the product out and threw away all that extra aluminum foil (or whatever it is)???? So why do you throw your ambition away when it's not something major or "memorable"?? Most people do this and have the hardest time even staying a little bit motivated past their CURRENT emotional state! 

Below I'm going to show you what most highly motivated individuals NEVER take for granted, why some (like me even) seem, to others, to be so energetic and ambitious they think we're born with it- I assure you I was not... I came up in my ambition skill set (awareness) from the ground up- through failure and life altering awareness's that have consolidated and became the plot to this article.

I'm going to show you what they convert into habit from pure scripted use of a few awareness's. I'm also going to show you what most people do that cause them to get in their own way where motivation is concerned and more. In short I'm going to show you how to save the trim, boost your motivation and by proxy your energy levels and drive. I'm going to show you MY secret for staying motivated no matter what and realistically, most of the time; I don't even have to try. My skill set is forged for so many years it's second nature- I simply do things that recycle small ambitions into bigger synergistic ones. This borders on and is actually a part of a bigger concept I'm developing (not part of this article)called "The Luck Source Code" if you want to read more on that after this. Go to the url at the end of this article.

Essentially, as human beings, we are setting and achieving (or failing) goals all day long. Goals are set and executed with every choice we make. Every micro-second of your day your making and achieving (or failing to achieve) goals.

Making a goal then achieving it often means automatic motivation, but where most people fail miserably and take motivational energy to the cleaners is in not comprehending the value in failure and how even failure can generate motivation! 

 Homeostasis

The human brain and body has substantially evolved over thousands of years. Our origins were all about fight and flight. We perceived danger and would either stand our ground and fight or run. Failure, in the beginning, could have gotten you killed. It only took one mistake and the predators would get you (watch a bit of that show "Big Cat Diaries" (see video below this paragraph): Over the centuries we evolved and became more intelligent- more self aware- and began to find ways to put ourselves in relative safety.

The current mind (with the addition of the frontal lobes essentially), however, trying to return to its roots during "primal" periods of failure or sensing danger, doesn't seem to account for the fact that failures are lessons you need to integrate as well, if for no other reason than to remember what didn't work and to motivate you to learn what does. Learning to fail gracefully and to turn failures into motivation is not automatic for most people. It's not even taught to most people by default! 

It all boils down to psychology and your internal dialogue- your reactive mind, but translates as all things emotional do- into brain chemistry. To put this into perspective, the reason, when you fail to achieve a goal, that you feel bad, is that the body, rather the brain's reward pathways specifically, set up a reward in the form of a dopamine "high" (to simplify it) to reward you for achieving a goal.

Over time you start to anticipate even that feeling and when you don't get it you focus more on the other things you feel (more on this in a second) and it's all down hill from there. Most people are actually wired to fail because they have created internal dialogue scripts that "react" when failure happens. They expect to lose and do. The "feelings" we get from failing, be it consciously or subconsciously, is due to the way we think and how we evolve as a person.

The dopamine "fix" is to engage you emotionally as well as physically. Feelings of well being, energy, and physical traits of motivation all come with this. Do you realize that most of the time when you surpass a goal you get a physical reaction like you just got infused with fresh energy? The problem is people write it off like it's a penny (you know how people think pennies are worthless but others pick them up and at least one guy became a millionaire just looking for pennies!). The problem with this process now that wasn't a problem in the olden days of our civilization upstart is that before it wasn't subjective to your opinions or thoughts- you lived to hunt and survive, pleasure came later. Each accomplishment (that YOU perceive as such) creates energy in the form of chemicals. 

This in turn makes you remember the way you did something successfully so you will add it to your long term memory and "learn from the experience" so you can repeat this success in the future. 
Many don't itemize pain and thus don't comprehend weather or not it's necessary. Instead, they react to what "feels" bad and associate it to their definition of failure and all its pain. Many get it wrong because they don't even try- they are too busy crying over spilled milk or petting their ill gotten ego trip!

Even worse, they don't clean it up and move on blindly. They become blinded by it and walk through the puddle only to slip and fall, slamming their body into the ground. This alone counteracts any motivation that may have been available to tap into!

The punishment (when you become disappointed or don't reach a goal you put a lot of energy behind and anticipation behind success for) isn't specifically an action but rather an inaction- a termination of the reward that was held for you if you succeeded. Depending on how much you anticipated it your mind will race with all sorts of things that in the end are actually the responsible party of how you feel when you fail! The Feelings Of Punishment Are Fake! It's merely not the expected "feelings" you wanted/anticipated.

Instead of "bracing for failure" properly- most people brace for the energies of success and have no back up plan if that doesn't happen. This causes them to land right on their face- teeth first.

The Fake Lottery Ticket Scandal

It's that same feeling you get when someone tricks you with a fake lottery ticket. You think you've won enough money to take care of a lot of bills, to have some fun, and to be "free".

Next you get that adrenalin "rush" and your brain starts to create thousands of opportunities you now think your privy to- then they tell you it's a joke and you feel a deep seated disappointment that makes you feel incredible rage.

It's just a joke right? Not really- in fact it's a VERY cruel thing to do to someone because you are not just getting a quick laugh at their expense, you've caused them to create a long list of things they no longer have to worry about, another list of things to come, and in one swoop you took both from them. Now those thoughts are surfacing as "failures" and since most people haven't developed their "failure gracefully" skill set (the key to success by the way), it causes anxiety.

Deep anxiety. I'd almost rather get stabbed in the hand with a fork than for someone to pull this "joke" off on me. Luckily I'm prepared for failure and this joke has been done a lot so I'm also aware of it and don't anticipate anything until I see money in my hand- until then it's counterfeit.

You see the brain's reward center creates dopamine when you anticipate/expect something good or make a goal. It waits for you to achieve the goal before releasing the chemical into your body. When you fail at it, don't get what you anticipated you'd get, or don't achieve a goal you set into motion, the dopamine is not released but in fact returned to the neurons that held it in the first place (broken up and returned).

Because one of the goals we tend to set by default is to feel that "rush" you get when dopamine is released in the body and brain, and if it doesn't happen we feel an empty feeling; a deep pitted feeling of remorse and even anger. These feelings of disappointment cause other chemicals to form that cause a whole different effect.

Sometimes it's a spike in adrenalin which causes shakiness and fatigue (the fight or flight response of the excitement). When you get excited about something you release adrenalin but when you achieve a goal you release dopamine. Dopamine actually has a part in the energy in the muscles so when you don't get that release after getting excited it feels like fatigue until your body returns to homeostasis. Many actually cause their "demotivation" because they misinterpret what's really happening then link it to their disappointment in not achieving the goals they set.

Another issue is the mental state. When you feel disappointment you tend to associate it with negative feelings and past failures. Since you may not have learned from those failures or even defined them correctly, you may see them as pain instead of lessons. This compounds the problem and causes a sort of reinforcement/fortification of the pain, fatigue, and "let down" you feel when you don't get your dopamine fix.

It all breaks down to how you think, what you associate with failure, and whether or not you realize that all you have to do to beat all of this is to try again, and again, and again if necessary!

What's sad is many don't actually show up to claim the prize for this in the form of a dopamine fix because they don't acknowledge it as a goal surpassed or the energy level or dopamine released isn't "mind blowing-ly" cool... that's a big mistake!

Imagine if every time you left the house, every time you saw a person- they threw a penny at you. In the course of a day you could be looking at hundreds of pennies- thousands if you live in a big city with a fancy mall. What if you saw this penny and let it hit the ground only to walk away because, after all, it's just a penny!

The fact is, those pennies would eventually lead up to a nickel, then a dime, then a quarter, a dollar, 5 dollars, 10 dollars, 20 dollars, and so on. Over the course of a day, a week, a month, or even a year- how many pennies do you think you'd get?

Sounds pretty silly to pass that up- especially if it's happening consistently and your conscious mind would say- wait, one penny isn't much but they are coming every time I see someone! Maybe I should go where there are more people!

Now, you may not actually ever see this phenomenon come to pass- I mean why would you? But it illustrates my next point- that there is an energy source that throws a sort of electron at you every time you do something, that electron is a dopamine molecule from your brains reward center.

To put it into perspective from the aforementioned example, a dopamine molecule experienced wouldn't likely "feel" motivating to any great extent, and dopamine "highs" actually only last a few minutes at best unless something causes a new release (successive events that trigger it).

There are after effects, however that last much longer than the dopamine "fix"- it's not there as a drug that you want to become addicted to- it's there just to boost you when you need it and to fortify your filters of good and bad for you decisions.

The dopamine isn't going to be the end all, but controlling or rather appreciating its releases can create lasting changes that create the environment for motivation, drive, and ambition to thrive in. I see a dopamine molecule as a CEO and there are many 'branches' of hierarchies that are affected by THAT one molecule- now imagine billions of CEO's being released....

That's when you feel that powerful clarity and drive to write, to take on a project that before seemed hard, to do things with a smile on your face and fuel in your blood!

Like I said, you won't walk outside and get a penny thrown at you from every person you meet, but it is absolutely possible to get the motivation fuel your body endogenously creates when you make a goal and surpass it in molecular sized pieces- thrown down through your body's nervous system from your brain's reward system.

This comes in the form of setting and achieving goals ALL THE TIME. I know that sounds exhausting, but the reality is this system really perpetuates itself- its perpetual in the sense that, although you may not realize it, every micro-second of your day your doing it already. The body isn't likely rewarding you for it, however, because the goal/achievement alone doesn't trigger the gumball machine to release all those "dopamine" gumballs. You have to both put the quarter in (so to speak) by creating and achieving the goals, then you have to turn the knob to put the machine into action.

The turning of the knob is acknowledgement of what happened- the goal, the achievement, and the good feelings of that exchange being consciously/subconsciously felt. This takes a conscious effort at first but, believe it or not, eventually forms into a habit- a script you use every second to "auto-approve" the goal/achievement acknowledgement process so your consistently being flooded with motivation. You just feel powerful all the time and this is why.

The body regulates the process so you won't overload- but what will happen is your brain will start to really work better. Your motivation and the ability to motivate yourself becomes incredibly automated, and you get things done!

You start small and work up to the bigger things. We'll discuss that next:

Recognizing that simply getting up in the morning and sitting at your computer "ready" to work- is hundreds, maybe thousands of goals set and achieved. Drinking a glass of water in the morning that you planned to drink is thousands of goals  achieved (how the body achieves this feat we all take for granted after we learn to walk). Don't believe it?

Think about what you'd feel if you woke up and all the things you use and depend on were stolen. Your computer, your laptop, even your fish you depend on to keep you centered and meditative at times... all gone. You'd feel a gut  wrenching pain right? If "stuff" actually controlled your happiness, you'd of felt horrible the second all that stuff disappeared  not when you woke up and realized it was gone. 

The reason you feel that pain, that self inflicted pain, mind you, all the things you "planned" to do (even if only by habit/routine) are all crashing at once- the feeling hurts and is physical pain (again that you generate based on thoughts) not just emotional- although most of it you're doing to yourself due to your mindset. When you could lose your stuff and the only thing you think about is "how do I get new stuff fast so I can get on with my life" then you're ready.

That's not to say you won't feel loss, but you will "deal with it" better, more productively. Crying over spilt milk is just a waste of time and pain generation software incarnate.

You don't have to specifically acknowledge every single goal (the beauty of habit!) of them i.e. getting out of bed requires goals/achievements of opening your eyes, activating muscle groups, compressing and filling your lungs with air, and so on.

You should group them into manageable goals i.e. acknowledging that a lot happened to allow you to stand up, sit up, walk to the kitchen to get that water and so on. Get to know what you should be appreciative of (grateful for). Make long lists nothing is too small to put on it. Do this every night and you will automatically start to feel wealthy for WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE. It's not that you're experiencing anything new- you just never before acknowledged so much of your accomplishments and now you are- Yahtzee!

One way I've found that actually helps the process of appreciating all your body and mind does just to make simple things happen and thus becoming more aware subconsciously aware (and being able to automate the "appreciation script" for those things), is to learn about how your body works.

Learn how your brain works. Watch a bunch of educational videos about the body- many can be found on YouTube! Utilize the powerful resources at your disposal- the internet!

Motivation comes from both the brain-chemically, as the mind/your thoughts, trigger chemicals all the time from fear (adrenalin), to motivation (dopamine, epinephrine) . You can create scripts in your internal dialogue from practice/experience/redundantly doing something that can cause "triggers" that make motivation "clickable" so to speak. I created a product that helps with this in my TranQuil-Wiser meditation/internal dialogue series  to help me build these triggers while I relaxed (link is to another wizzley article about my company and intriguing technologies).

You develop this "trigger" effect by purposely networking/controlling your environment, who you're around, things you do that are enjoyable and blending them with "work" type stuff you don't want to do (tranquil[what you want to do] wiser [ what you want to achieve]).

The easier path is to simply appreciate everything your capable of and acknowledge your goals- mainly micro-goals (that become bigger goals much like one molecule in your body becomes peta-trillions :). Building up your skill sets in all areas will give you motivation because you can do  more with any information or task you find yourself pondering.

Below I'll throw a metaphor at you to illustrate exactly "why" this phenomenon works:

The Molecules Of Motivation Are Endogenous (native) To Your Body

...and activated by your thoughts/internal dialogue scripting

Thank You For Reading, I Hope This Gives You The Perspective You Need To Get Out And Make Your Life Amazing! Share Your Stories, Thoughts, Or supplemental Information To What's In This Article In The Comments Box Below.

p.s. This article is dedicated to and was written and updated for the amazing authors of wizzley as a helpful mental tool to stay motivated (you guys certainly motivate me) *Smiles*