It’s safe to say that a good portion of us today do not realize how tired we are or how it’s affecting our ability to function and perform at the level we want to be. We want to look and feel better too, like the much younger person we remember ourselves to be, but we just don’t have enough energy.
Not only do most of us not know how much energy we actually have access to, or how to access it proactively; but on the shadow-side, we don’t realize how many mental and physical conditions are caused by or affected by low energy reserves, due to all the bad habits that the fatigue gives rise to.
I’m not just talking about the energy we create from food, but the energy we need to do even that, which we’ll never have enough of if we are over stressed, without the needed space and time to power up each day.
In this post, I’m going to delve into The Myth of Motivation—why psychology can’t cover up, or overcome fatigue for long and what to do about it so you have the natural energy and motivation you need to succeed.
Think about every time you run into your bad habits.
Sure, you may not know better, need to learn and build a new and improved lifestyle habit; this is normal and natural. We are in the business of helping people establish new lifestyle routines that deliver the results they want here at Performance Lifestyle Inc. We do this so that driven, goal and success-oriented people can maintain higher levels of balance, health, and personal performance and avoid being distracted or held back by the hidden lifestyle challenges.
“Lifestyle challenges” are those conditions that build such as overwhelm, exhaustion and poor eating habits that cause the common diseases of lifestyle; in particular, constant fatigue; a condition that is typical amongst achievers.
But there is something you need to address before you can be consistently successful at building new habits and that is your energy level. Your energy levels are more responsible for why you engage in bad habits than you realize. See why smart people make dumb decisions.
At the root level, bad habits, beyond the fact that the modern market seems to specialize in creating them, are engaged in mostly because you’re tired and in need of a stimulating pleasure hit. It’s not simply because you didn’t have the original motive to take a better action.
One only needs to look at the proverbial treadmill that’s gathering dust while you eat cereal in front of the TV to acknowledge that. It’s not because you weren’t interested in getting in shape. You are. You’re just not motivated because you are tired or fatigued.
What is that “something” that keeps a person motivated?
To answer that question, we need to understand the anatomy of the word motivation. Keep it in mind here forward. “Motive” —is the reason why we are doing something. “Ation”— is the suffix added to the word “motive” and it means the action or process of doing something and doing something, anything for a sustained period requires energy.
You may have your reason why you want to do something, but if your reason is not compelling enough or you don’t have enough energy, acting on your motive will be doubtful. And therefore, you’ll have less motivation. Your energy level also affects every other human function necessary to take action and can accentuate fear, resistance and the like if it’s too low.
You see motivation is more than psychology alone, it’s the interaction of thought and energy that creates motivation. Yet, nine times out of ten, experts will default to psychology and emotional work to deal with what’s being caused by low-grade fatigue promoting dysfunction. I see this all the time.
So what do you do?
You proactively learn how to harness the optimal energy levels you need. What “optimal energy” is, is for another post.
Harnessing optimal energy starts with the practice of proactive energy renewal so that you can get yourself out of what’s known as personal energy debt, the hidden variable that undermines all health and success initiatives.
Without that practice and the new balance of power that follows, I don’t think we can comprehend how much action, growth and desired experience we are forfeiting. When we rely on psychology alone to motivate ourselves to act in the face of fatigue, we are left to rely on heroic action, and you can’t depend on that.
Up front, having an excellent psychology is essential and is by no means being overlooked; it’s just that unless you have enough energy to act on thought even the smartest people fall short. Relying on psychology is very challenging when you’re tired.
By the same token counting on sleep alone to restore the energy level that gives us that radiant confidence is not enough. That is, to live the life we aspire to; particularly for achievers—people who are committed to actualizing their dreams.
It’s your energy level that is ultimately moving you forward. Energy itself is the primary motive. It has as much or more influence on your ability to take action than your psychology does.
Just think about a time when your head was making mountains out of molehills and then you rested. Once rested I bet you ate that “mountain” for breakfast.
Sure we are driven (motivated) greatly by other factors revolving around human psychology, and external drivers such as bosses, finances, and environment, but what’s ultimately and primarily driving you, like you, is pure energy.
That energy needs to be harnessed, starting with proactive renewal.
Energy is a process and experiencing high levels of it is completely dependent on the proactive practice of renewal and this can be tricky if you don’t understand the energy principles.
When we approach the day with an all-out assault on accomplishment and achievement without the awareness of how much personal energy we’re spending, we simply run the risk of running out of energy when we need it most. Push it too much; we dip into our reserves, and that leaves us in personal energy debt, today, faster than every before. Push it too far, and you can just imagine what can happen.
Amazingly, most people don’t know much about this — their primary source of personal energy and power. They don’t know how to balance all the elements that go into maintaining the optimal levels of energy they want in your life and they fall prey to the “mysterious” and often negative experience of low energy levels. They then focus on psychology to solve their thinking, emotional and motivational problems and it just doesn’t address the underlying problem.
The primary purpose behind sleep is to help us restore our power, but it’s not fully understood, and therefore it’s often an afterthought. We do it because everybody does it but being told to sleep without a clear understanding of why, besides the obvious, means it’s expendable.
As I like to say; “we are not divorced from our primary source of energy (as that would be impossible), but separated and estranged, we are.”
Most of us have had our attention diverted to other so-called sources of energy which are not, in fact, sources at all, but rather stimulants, giving the impression that they’re giving us energy when they’re not; they’re using it up.
All the essential and nonessential activities we engage in to get through the day and make a living require energy, and today lots of it.
Now, of course, no one would suggest that we not spend our energy; it’s a necessity to make a living and live our lives, and we are naturally motivated to do that. We must spend our energy. The thing is, most of us are overspending our energy, and that energy is trying to catch up with a body and mind that is moving faster than the energy can regenerate. And it’s that reality that kills our motivation and leaves us downright depressed at times.
I know that depression first hand, as an overachieving entrepreneur for years, who suffered from what seemed to be constant fatigue that manifested as all kinds of psychological and physical dysfunctions. I had to learn how to harness and proactively renew my power, and when I did, the process began to change everything. It also opened up the door to understanding “the secrets of optimal energy.”
The myth of motivation is thinking you can stay active, performing at high levels without significant attention on harnessing and balancing your personal energy.
