Motivation | Thrive #Do
You’re only given one little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.” – Robin Williams
Only recently I’ve come across the term “glimmers”. According to author, Sara Moniuszko, glimmers are small moments that spark joy or peace, which can help prompt our nervous system to feel safe and calm.
A change of focus and perception (mind shift) can make a positive impact on our health. The brain is neuroplastic and therefore it is important to be conscious about what we feed ourselves.
Of late, I didn’t focus much on glimmers, realising this was a wake-up call, it alerted me that not focussing on glimmers will lead to an undesirable state and prompted me to be mindful and to pay attention to my thoughts and energy. As the saying goes; “Energy goes where attention flows”, Tony Robbins.
To consciously focus on glimmers, we shall take a deeper look at motivation, emotion, and the feeling of excitement.
Motivation | Emotion | Excitement
What is Motivation? The essence of motivation is energised and persistent goal-directed behaviour. When we are motivated, we move and take action. To illustrate motivation, let us consider what it looks like in everyday life. Here are two examples, children running and jumping, simply for the fun of it, motivation at play here is Intrinsic. Extrinsic motivation, for example, is when athletes exercise because their coach tells them to do so.
Motivation is viewed as stimulation to act and behave to achieve a desired goal, while emotion is the feelings that appear from the behaviour caused by the reason and from the achievement.
There are several links between motivation and emotion. To mention a few, emotion, and motivation both energise behaviour. It is typical for basic emotions to possess motivational properties of their own. For example, happiness motivates us to achieve better performance. A noticeable similarity between emotion and motivation is that they are both linked to energy and intensity.
EXCITEMENT
Excitement begins in the mind and brain like any other emotion. We are familiar with the experience of stomach sensations (“butterflies in the stomach”) in response to a state of excitement. These are the body’s responses. Excitement is a condition of physiological arousal. Excitement is a feeling or situation full of activity, joy and exhilaration. Although, there are a few types of excitement they all get our attention, and, excitement is definitely not boring. If you can’t wait for your birthday, you are feeling a happy kind of excitement. Important events and reaching milestones in your life can be exciting, like an award ceremony, graduation, or wedding. In reality there are endless things to be excited about.
To better understand positive emotions, we can also often think of positive emotions as high-energy. To illustrate, coming to mind, is the song from The Pointer Sisters (an American group); “I’m so excited and I just can’t hide it” (hope you are singing in your head while reading this).
BENEFITS
There are many health benefits of increased motivation. Motivation as a psychological state is linked to our physiology. When our motivation is depleted, our functioning and wellbeing suffer. High-quality motivation allows us to thrive, while its deficit causes us to flounder. Excitement is great for our wellbeing. Excitement of any kind is a state of arousal. Arousal means that the heart rate increases, the sympathetic nervous system increases activity, and the brain begins to signal the increased production of hormones. When we are excited, our emotions become more powerful and affects our engagements.
TAKE HOME MESSAGE
There are 1440 minutes in a day. With this in mind, there is time to search for excitement and cultivate motivation. When you cannot get yourself motivated, stop beating yourself up and give yourself a break. Pause and do or focus on something simple and fun that you enjoy.
Actions that involve behaviour change reignite brain activities and spark motivation. It can range from something as simple as taking a shower, making a cup of coffee to something more complex, like figuring out a wordle. The point is to get your brain to focus on the here and now rather than contemplating intangible, worrisome distractions.
Divide the doing and being between intrinsic and extrinsic.
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- Intrinsic – I’m doing it for the love of it, I enjoy every moment.
- Extrinsic – I don’t love doing it, however I’m doing it for the outcome. Fitness, health, knowledge.
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When excitement comes around, don’t hide it, take the time to soak it in and embrace the motivation. Here is to catching the feeling, appreciating it and make it last.