Miscellaneous Monday: Motivation v. Excitement

As I was eating breakfast this morning I considered how different my dad and I are when it comes to morning. My dad is up at 4:00 every morning, excited about morning and a new day. I am not; I am up later in the morning (when depends on a lot of factors) and even when I get out of bed easily, it is not usually because I am excited about it. My dad is chipper in the morning; I am groggy and often grouchy. My dad is excited; I am motivated.

I think often we think motivation and excitement are the same thing. They are not. I’m motivated to get out of bed in the morning because I know there are a lot of things that need to get done, because my tummy is rumbly, because I smell coffee and I want some. Once I have my breakfast, get dressed, brush my teeth, I can start to get excited and more chipper. My dad is excited about mornings; he doesn’t need time to wake up in order to be chipper.

So what’s the life application of this?

Realize that being excited about something is a possible way to motivate yourself to do it or do what is necessary to get to it, but that you don’t have to be excited about something in order to motivate yourself to do it. There are many things which can motivate us. And sometimes those motives are not positive. Fear and anger are just as motivating as excitement. Excitement may not motivate us to action.

We can be excited about the next movie coming out, but if we don’t take action to go see it, we show that the excitement hasn’t really motivated us.

Whether we are excited about something or not, we must make a conscious choice to act. We aren’t marionettes. If we choose to sit on the couch doing nothing, no one is magically going to lift us up off the couch and move us to the next thing. There are times where we really have to dig deep to find within ourselves the motivation to do anything, but often those times are very worth it.

So excited or not… Do something.