What Motivates Me

What motivates me?  I find that this is an interesting question to explore because if I really take a hard look at what is really motivating me, not what I thought was motivating me or what I told myself motivates me, I can learn a lot about myself and hopefully that will lead to some self-improvement.

What motivated me to work hard when I was in school?  Impressing my teachers or making my parents proud wasn't a true motivator (though I am pleased that I seem to have done both).  Even the objective measures of success, grades, didn't really seem to motivate me too much.  The longer I was in school, the less I was upset by lower-than-usual grades even though I tended to improve throughout my entire scholastic career.  Continuing to dig deeper, I think that doing a good job, in and of itself, is what started me off.  Later, success became a "habit" and I was able to continue working hard on a particular task, even if it no longer interested me.

What motivates me to work hard at work?  I have had a number of jobs that didn't test me or fully utilize my skills, some of which I liked, some of which I didn't like.  Regardless, I wanted to do a good job and what I finally found worked as motivation was to find the co-workers that I cared about and work "for them".  Whenever I had to do an unpleasant, menial, or boring task, I would remind myself that the harder I worked, the easier and more pleasant my friends' work would be.  Hopefully they would reciprocate and work hard "for me" but I was okay if they didn't.  Now that I have a challenging job, I enjoy working hard to stretch my abilities and really utilize my gifts as much as possible.

What motivates me to work hard at running?  I used to train to run faster times, to place higher in important races, and to help my teammates beat other teams.  Those were easy reasons to find to get motivated to run when I didn't feel like it, when it was hot or cold or snowy.  Now that I'm out of college, I don't really have those reasons pushing me out the door and I really can't put my finger on what it is that keeps me running.  Racing with my co-workers doesn't really cut it for motivation and I'm not really finding it in myself to push the way I would need to to lower my times further.  Perhaps success at running has become another "habit" because I'm not sure that I could stop if I wanted to.  Perhaps there's something else there, but the thing I don't understand is that the discipline and hunger that I used to have is missing.  I have resolved a number of times to start running in the morning and have failed pretty much every morning.

What precipitated this introspection?  Strangely enough, it was a streak of recognition for success.  I was given an appreciation award at work for some work that I did and I also finished 4th in a local 5k in 16:40 which I believe is my third-fastest time ever (and fastest on the roads).  Now that I have shown what I am capable of, I suppose I'll have to keep it up.  One more piece of motivation!

-Lane