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In this post, we talk about why gratitude should be one of our primary goals. This is part of our series on gratitude. Subscribe to get a free gratitude log sent straight to your inbox.
Where do you get your motivation?
Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and bang! The holidays are over. It seems like life just moves too fast, and before we know it, we are back into the swing of everyday life. Many times, I can look to the holidays as that time to reset. When I am in the midst of everyday life in September and October, I pine away for Christmas Break, hoping that if I just had a few days to slow down, I could greet life with a new perspective and new joy. And maybe that would make my everyday not so bad. Even though we had just gone through two of the most intentional seasons for slowing down and being grateful, I noticed that I am far from living a life of gratitude. I am burnt out, sad, and angry. Discontent with my lot in the world.
As a teacher, I see a whole host of different ways to cope with the pains and struggles of life. Some of my students are go-getters who have their projects done weeks ahead of time and sail through school pretty unaffected. Other students are overachievers who are working down to the wire to make their work perfect before handing it in, determined to get that 100. But, most of my students don’t fall into these categories. Instead, they are driven by the bad grades they would receive if they didn’t complete their paper. Or perhaps, by their parents after an email home has notified them that their son or daughter has not completed their work after a few weeks of working on their assignment. For these students, things get done because they have to get done. And they have to get done because some outside force is pressuring them to accomplish this thing.
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The root of this problem goes far deeper than that of the merit of the assignment. Instead, it is based on an issue of the heart. For my students, they struggle to find the purpose in the assignment. Because of this, they rely on outside motivations that are both extrinsic and punitive. You can think of all the phrases that parents say to their kids to recognize some of the ways that this type of motivation is enforced: “Because I said so.” “Because you have to.” “Because it’s the right thing to do.” Instead of finding the encouragement they need to complete assignments inside themselves, they rely on these other voices that wear them down and burden them under the weight of their expectations.
Though we may be like the first two groups of students in some aspects of life, we tend to always stray into the third group of students. It’s in these moments that we feel like we are going through the motions. We are not dedicated to any purpose, and we simply float along based on the pressures of outside life and our own desires. It’s these drifting moments that can lead us to the places that we desperately do not want to be. Why do we let ourselves get this way? Because we are relying on some outside force to be our motivator, to give purpose to our lives.
Gratitude: A Solution to the Lack of Motivation
The question then is how can we get out of this fog? How can we have new life breathed into our lives?
We have to figure out how to change what motivates us from being an outside force, or extrinsic, to an inside force, or intrinsic. It requires a heart shift. A change in how we view ourselves and our lives.
At this moment in the new year, I think it can be a wonderful time to do some vision setting. To breathe new life into dull and gray existence we can focus on changing our perspective.
How can we do this heart shift? By living a life of gratitude.
***This post is the first in a series on gratitude. You can find the second post here and the last post here.***
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