LOST: Sense of Motivation

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LOST: My Motivation

Small, bright spark of energy. Answers to "interest", "focus", or "perseverance".

Very attracted to coffee, libraries, and difficult math problems.

Very friendly (but may ignore you in the presence of interesting challenges).

Last seen in Dr. G.'s Research Methods class on the morning of 4-6-2012.

If found, please call (235) 711-1317.**

Please help! I cannot imagine life without him!

REWARD!! !*


*May or may not consist of pocket lint, thirty-seven cents, and half a packet of ramen.
**No, that is not my real phone number.

can't help you. I'm too busy looking for Sleep and Dopamine, both of which have not been answering my calls regularly for a while, and from whom I haven't heard in weeks.

Sorry.

I started to look for it, but then I forgot what I was looking for (again).

Sounds like a bad case of 'senioritis,' if you are in school. If not, I would recommend listening to some really harsh/severe music. This is what I do when I lose motivation, and it works great. I once nearly fell asleep while driving on the highway, but fortunately "Move, b***h!" by Ludacris was on the radio, and I woke right back up. I would not have found the will to stay awake without it.

Hello. I'm new here. But I just read your post and feel like I'm with you here. I'm feeling rather invisible in life. In fact I just posted on the Haven about this. I just turned 18 and felt like that would offer hope for me, but it hasn't yet. I have ambitions, but feel like they're leaving me. I just got a job and was to start this evening. Due to heating issues the place is closed this evening so I can't go back until next Saturday. I was looking forward to it, although nervous.

But here I am talking about me, I want to address you. I've seen you here in posts. You seem like a sincere person that is nice. It sounds like you had plenty of motivation and have been having a bad few days like I've had. I'm trusting things will get better for both of us. I'm needing someone to talk to and you're needing your motivation back. I browsed this site before joining and remember your peeking cat avatar and the advice you offer on many topics. You seem like a very knowledgeable person on here.

I probably haven't helped any. I just want to tell you you're not alone. I'm sure you know that. I feel awkward here so far because I'm new and so many of you have been here awhile and have tons of posts. But I truly feel like I know how you feel.

Dont know what sort of motivation you are wanting:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fnQavGcwCo[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6xLYt265ZM[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSYtQy9EqTA[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0PrTkE5jG4[/youtube]

On the other hand:

Oh, I think it stopped by here a few weeks ago.

Brief visit, I've been staring at the wall ever since

Would you mind sharing some when you find it?

Stims aren't working for you? I either have manic highs or chemical induced motivation.

No; stimulants make it a little easier to overcome disorganization, but I don't get high or energetic. Just a little more in control, mentally, more able to address problems. When I'm just burned out like I evidently am now, no amount of stimulants can get me moving.

I lost mine around the same time. Think I'm on the verge of a depression..

Jason

Sorry, I haven't seen your motivation. There's been no motivation around here lately. I hope your motivation finds his way home to you.
If you are reunited with your motivation can you have him pass a message to my motivation? Your motivation would be eternally in my debt if he could tell my motivation to stop being so flaky and unpredictable. My motivation has the bad habit of dropping by for brief visits, berating me for my failures in life, making all kinds of plans for the near future, then disappearing into the mist before we can carry out those plans. Could your motivation tell my motivation that I'm getting sick of his unstable borderline abusive patterns of behavior? If he could just do that, I'll give your motivation a cookie before dragging my motivation off to the couples counseling we so desperately need.
Okay, I really stretched that metaphor to the breaking point, and I'm probably no longer making sense to anyone who doesn't live in my head. I assure you, you would not want to live in my head.
Anyway, to everyone on this thread in search of motivation, all the best.

At about the age of 12, I found my motivation through vigorous exercise. I could always find it there; it never let me down for 35 years, except for about a year in college.

Exercise, a hugely powerful drug for motivation and focus; through releases of adrenaline, serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, and even oxytocin; natures way of intrinsically rewarding someone for living.

But also addictive, and a drug that may not continue to be effective or available through the course of one's entire life.

After the adrenaline ran out, I kept trying to find that thing that I understood to be motivation, a chemical reaction that I could depend on.

Come to find out most people have natural emotions that they understand and can depend on to use for motivation. My psychiatrist said you need to use your emotions, and not depend on adrenaline, to motivate yourself.

After 35 years of using natural sources of adrenaline to move myself ahead, I had no idea what he was even talking about. Even more confusing was that he already told me my brain was likely hardwired, where I could not fully understand my emotions.

I guess he forget which patient he was talking to in that session.

I guess in part it's how I delt with Alexithymia, something most people don't have to contend with, and something I never knew I had or even understood to exist. Unfortunately it appears to be a hard wired thing for some. And, in general, measured in close to 85 percent of individuals diagnosed with Aspergers.

Not a symptom of Aspergers, but 85% certainly brings it close. And likely an underlying factor of problems with cognitive empathy for some. I never thought about the emotion/motivation connection, but even the word emotion says it all; motion from within.

And further validated to me in recent research that shows that those that completely lose their ability to feel emotion, through brain injury, lose their ability to make any decisions in life; effectively losing their ability to function.


If one is physically burned out from stress, it can be counterproductive to look for that motivation through vigorous exercise. A human can completely exhaust themselves, if given enough stimulation, in the way of adrenaline either good or bad. Sometimes the only answer is rest and moderation.

However, if one who does not possess the normal emotional process for motivation; and if the other sources of stimulation in life they find such as coffee, a library, and math problems as a way of boosting dopamine and other neurchemicals lose their effectiveness, exercise might be worth a try for some.

The most difficult step can be for one that has lost their motivation to motivate themselves to exercise to find that motivation. A good thing about the addictive qualities I guess, that keeps one motivated to do it, if they are able to feel the initial benefits from it.

So much easier, too, to take advantage of when one is young.


I'm pretty sure those that are particularly good at finding their motivations through emotions, are the ones that are more likely to live to be 80, 90, or a hundred years old. The lily pad folks.

Some others may move full speed ahead to stay motivated, focused; basically to retain their functionality and/or sanity. Maybe, in part, associated with ADHD, as well.

Modern society certainly provides lots of opportunity for stimulation, in so many different ways, to meet these needs. There can though, be a physiological price to pay.

And finally, the question of the chicken and the egg, did the stimulation come first requiring greater and greater levels of stimulation to create the same effect, until at some point the system just gets out of whack.

The potential pitfalls of Instant gratification; a feel good trap that can be so hard to escape, and potentially harder to understand.

As I was venturing more in adulthood, I've found that I had to fight at least at two fronts: my anxiety about no specific things and the anxiety I feel about my future. The former can be dealt with best by both exercises such as riding the bicycle, bicycle touring with a group of eccentric people, swimming, and my other special interests such as listening to music, tweaking audio equipment, lots of reading about astronomy, reading sci-fi books, etc. Sometimes visiting places I like, taking excursions there, or spending a time there, whatever it may be (natural or built, a beautiful park or a library).

The latter is the more advanced stuff, imho. In order to keep your anxiety at bay in the long run you need to have certain arrangements of your life under your control. Why are you studying, where would you like to work, what are your plans in general. The trick is you keep doing these things and at the same time don't get too nervous about them. Having a vague B or C plan in your mind helps substantially. Also, if you have a supportive environment, no need to worry about things.

Sometimes motivation can be a silly thing. Like, sometimes I think I'm so good at cycling when I'm climbing a hill. Of course, I'm good only in comparison to myself... But still, likewise, you may think you are happy to have good understanding and knowledge about something in psychology, for example. Or in physics. Whatever.

The bottom line is, you need to be able to balance the above two major areas of concern. My theory is that you might have a certain imbalance, say, you wanted to do too much in the second area and compensated too much for the emerging stress in the first, hence the burnout. Both areas can serve as a means to reduce anxiety, if properly balanced. So, I'm sure you can regain it, you've done so much to help out the population of WP so far, you can do it to yourself too, with a little help.

Maybe your motivation is on vacation. It may appear to be gone but actually it is searching your sub conscious for new ideas.

I'll help you to find it right after I find my brains. Currently there is only some jelly where my brains used to be. I dunno who changed my marvellous brains to this miserable jelly, but I bet that I'll do some nasty things to him when I find that out.