I was watching Therapy in a Nutshell (run by a licensed therapist) and YT recommended an old video of hers that I must have missed: https://youtu.be/1gzVhnT3pB4
A few things that really stuck out and made me excited to share here:
Action triggers the reward (dopamine) that leaves you feeling motivated to take more action. ACTION is the start of the cycle, not motivation. This also explains why so many people have struggled with motivation during the pandemic: motivation levels drop when you do less things.
When you take action, reward yourself by taking a moment to praise yourself. This was a big A-HA! for me because I don't think about noticing my good moments. I can spend ages mentally criticizing an unhealthy choice, but I now know that I should take a quick moment to go "good job me!" when I resist a temptation and pick the healthy choice.
Anything that gets you moving can start the cycle. You don't have to commit to an hour of exercise but you could do a five minute walk. This reminds me of the Before Times when I went to the gym, and a trainer used to say "just do four, anyone can do four of anything right?" And it got me in the habit of counting squats or whatever in sets of four. I don't have to do 100, but I can do 4, let's do 4.
Anyway, I've been feeling really drained and down the last week or so and feeling like I'm in a bad cycle, but I feel like I can break it now that I understand even unrelated actions can kickstart the motivation cycle. I've set my alarm for 10 minutes early tomorrow, enough that I'll get up without being so much I just hit snooze, and I'm going to start my Friday with a walk to get things moving. 😁
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/mn6e2t/action_leads_to_motivation_not_the_other_way/
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