Starting - and Maintaining - a Bonfire

Where does your motivation come from?  Do you look for other people to get you motivated and keep you motivated, or does your motivation come from somewhere deep inside of you?  I read a quote from Steven Covey that addresses this question:    "Motivation is a fire from within.  If someone else tried to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly."

I think we've all had the experience of someone else trying to light a fire under us - whether it was our boss or our mother :-).  It was pretty hard to keep that fire going, wasn't it?  The same is true when we try to light a fire under someone else (one of the reasons being a mother is so challenging!).

If this quote is true, then it's also reasonable to conclude that we can't look  to someone else to provide motivation for us.  It doesn't matter if it's someone else trying to light a fire under us or if we're looking to someone else to do it for us, external motivation doesn't last.  This is particularly true when it comes to making long-term changes in our lives.

For long-term, permanent weight management, we have to find the motivation from within.  Doing this because our spouse, our friends, or even our doctor wants us to lose weight ultimately won't work.  We have to WANT to get to a healthy weight and we have to make the fundamental choice to get healthy.

The motivation we need to be successful isn't a "let's go get 'em" type of feeling, because that doesn't last, either.  The motivation we need isn't a burst of inspiration that sustains itself over time, because inspiration definitely comes and goes.  The motivation we need is born out a decision that we make to get to a healthy weight.  It's a decision, not a feeling.  Because it's a decision, it will carry us through those days when we don't feel like doing this - and there are definitely those "don't feel like it" days.  Once we make the fundamental choice to get healthy, once we create in our mind a vision for what living at a healthy weight will look like for us, we will continue to make the secondary choices we need to keep us moving forward.  That doesn't mean that we will never mess up - some will choose to stay on plan 100% of the time and some won't  - but we know where we're going and we'll keep putting one foot in front of the other, one meal at a time.

When that kind of motivation burns within us, it's a fire that cannot be doused and it will burn hot and bright.  Even on days when we don't feel like doing this, there is a deep satisfaction that comes from doing it anyway because that choice moves us a day closer to our goal.  There were days when I was sick of staying on plan, but I went to bed those nights thankful that I'd made the choice to do it anyway.

Motivation from within will get the fire started and the choices you make will keep the fire burning.  Choose wisely :-)