External Motivation

People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily.
Zig Ziglar

All external motivation is temporary. External motivation is the kind that may wake you up, but it will not keep you awake for long. External motivation is motivation that comes to you from the outside. It may, and it often does, influence you to make a change, it cannot however make the change for you. And it cannot keep you from drifting off course, when the motivator is gone.

Many of you in your school years played sports. If you played and were fortunate enough to have an exceptional coach, you knew that he expected a lot from you but he also gave you lots of encouragement. He picked you up when you were down, he made you believe that you could win, and he let you know when you did a good job. He was a great motivator and he took your team all the way to the top. He was your friend, your ally, and your strongest supporter. You relied on him for you motivation and you got it.

The school year is over and you graduate moving on to college or the work force and the coach goes home. What does he take home with him? Your motivation, that's what! He was your motivation. Now you must receive your motivation from somewhere else, because the motivation was external and now it is gone. All external motivation works the same way. Keep giving us motivation and we will do better, take it away and we will gradually move back to where we were before the motivation began.

That is why so many of the hopeful at so many motivational talks get so excited, full of

energy, and then slow down or stop dead in their tracks within a few days or a few weeks. The inspiration is no longer there, because the speaker has left town. It takes more than a great speech to erase and replace those internal programs, which tell us we should know better than to believe that we are powerful champions of success.

An hour or two of someone else telling us the "we can do it!" simply does not have a chance. The intentions were great, the talk inspiring the ideas incredible. But when the coach goes home - so does the motivation.

I am not saying, or even implying that one should not to attend those seminars, or buy the books, or listen to cassettes. They all help, they all generate ideas, and this one may begin to move you in the right direction. Just do not overestimate the outcome unless you have truly unclogged your mind of most all of your previous negative thinking.