Motivation

I know I have written before about motivation, but as I have the memory of a dead goldfish I can't remember what I wrote about. Nevertheless I am interested to know what motivates other people. What is it that drives you to wake up each day and go to work? What pushes you to train for a challenge or just to go the gym each week? What keeps you doing all the things you do in life even when you are tired, ill or just plain fed up?

I know personally that my motivation for doing anything in life has been lacking over the last few years as depression and time have had more of an affect on me. When I say time I refer to getting older, but also the time that has passed during which I have fought with my own mind and the energy thereby that has been utilised against it. I used to be a fairly motivated person. Throughout school and into my twenties I was full of energy, eager to learn and excited to try new things. How times change! I think that years of fighting my own mind, it questioning what I was doing and where I was headed in life have fatigued me. I've become more cynical (all be it I started at a grumpy man level) and I've become less excited by things in life. I still experience happiness and I do enjoy the simple things in life, but it's a lot different to my young self. This has all affected my motivation for training, for work and for life itself. It's a sad state that I wrote about last year in which I struggled with carrying on. I've been there several times before in my life and yet I have carried on. Normally I was able to write about how I was feeling and on the rare occasion I even spoke about it. That coupled with amazing friends and family that I love to spend time with have kept me moving, without them I know where I would be. But all this is just part of depression it is no longer surprising to me, nor do I get caught up in it in the way I used to. I see it more as something I can philosophise about and work through rather than something to worry about and affect me negatively. It is actually a joy to write that.

I have asked myself "what am I doing with my life" for so long and tortured myself with the inevitable lack of an answer that it's just part of my life. Where others may see positive accomplishments I see a lack of perfection and that search for perfection is a depressive's curse. Nothing will ever be perfect in my eyes with regards what I do, I just have to accept that it doesn't need to be. My best is good enough. Ugh to even write that is hard! But that constant striving for something unachievable is a gift and a curse as some may understand. Anyhow I digress. Through my own "treatment" I have begun to accept that there is no point to life, no higher purpose other than to experience life and soak up the good and the bad. Above all it is to live in the present moment and worry less about what has been written in your past or is to come in your future. The only thing to be changed is this moment. That may sound fluffy, I may sound like the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney have leeched into my veins and overcome me with yoga love. But it's actually just a survival tool for depression. If I focus on what I am doing today and suck in every moment I can then I can accept that I am living my life to the fullest and be calm.

In regards to training and exercise I struggle with maintaining my usual short term motivation. I have never been one to train for aesthetics. I'm lucky that I haven't had to do too much to maintain my weight over the years, but I've also kept a pretty balanced diet too, so that's not much of a surprise. So that makes training a little more difficult, what am I training for? What is the point? Like life there is no point. Nobody will remember that I rain a personal best marathon of X, nor that I completed several taxing Ultra marathons. This isn't that special. A lot of people can do these things. The deep level motivation is more straight forward for me now. I want to train for marathons and ultra marathons because they are there. I enjoy the experience (not so much the training) of running that event and the feeling after of completing it. There are some crazy events I would love to run in the future and that motivation is what will get me out to train. The other motivation is that it helps my brain, it sticks two fingers up to my negative thought processes and says "look what I can do!" What belief I lack in myself in normal working life I possess buckets of when it comes to exercise. I suppose that's my reason for running and training, to keep my brain in check and strengthen my resole against my own mind.

I've probably spewed enough words out for one day, that's just what happens when you don't write for a bit. I'm still working on my book to help others with depression. It's not something that happens overnight, but I also won't try to make it perfect. It is just something to help me and hopefully others in the near future. Until then let me know what motivates you in life, work or training I really am keen to hear. Just leave a comment below.

Until next time,

are you ok?

Tom