Determination, Not Motivation

Photo by Mohammed Photo

For those of you who follow me on Twitter (@elishadew) may have noticed the emotional conversation I had withTara and Renee yesterday morning. I was in the midst of a meltdown, and those two wonderful ladies slapped me around a bit until I came to (THANK YOU! THANK YOU!). At one point, I asked about maintaining motivation without depending on the scale, and Tara replied, in essence, that motivation is useless and determination is where it’s at.

I’ve never thought of myself as a determined person.  I’ve had people tell me that I am, on various occasions, but I’ve never seen it that way. I often say I’m going go do something, and I feel very definite about whatever it is at that time, but I have difficulty following through. That’s not determination, that’s caprice.

Determination means following through. Determination means meeting goals. Determination means setting your mind to something, and then letting nothing stop you. Determination means obstacles are something you work around, not something you stop when confronted with. Determination means you do what you say you’re going to do.

When I think about being determined, I never, as a rule, see myself that way. I see all the moments in my life where I have failed, stopped short of my goals, of what I claimed I was determined to do.

The truth is, there is bad crap in all our pasts. We’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t, and not done things we wish we had. We can’t go back and change that. It’s over, done.  So why dwell on what we can’t change, especially when it just makes us feel bad about ourselves? If we insist on looking to the past for justification ofsomething, why not instead try looking at the things we have accomplished to show us that we are, in fact, capable of steering our future in any direction we choose?

My experience with behavioral science tells me that you need a ratio of four positives to every one negative. Some even contend that you need 5:1. What that means in this context is that you have to remind yourself of the positive stuff in your past at least four or five times as often as you remind yourself of the negatives. That feels like an awful lot, especially when you have a long history of failure in one particular area, like losing weight.

So please allow me to be self-indulgent here (as I usually am anyway) and remind myself of a few things I actually have accomplished. I encourage you to do the same.

In 2004, I lost 40 pounds in 6 months.

I quit a job that was suffocating me.

I grew, birthed, and am raising the world’s most perfect little girl.

I wrote a novel in 30 days.

I earned a full scholarship to college because of my academic merit, and graduated my college honors’ program magna cum laude.

At this point I need to point out that my brain is back-talking to all of these statements. I gained it back and more. I put my family under financial stress. My daughter is doing all the work. I haven’t written anything of note in the years since. My academic achievement was innate/because I had an easy schedule and didn’t challenge myself. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I did it. YOU HEAR ME, BRAIN? I DID IT! I DID IT AND YOU CAN’T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME!

Ahem.

My point here is that it doesn’t matter what the circumstances were.  There are always going to be things that slow you down, obstacles you didn’t foresee (as well as some that you did). Sometimes things are going to be easy, and sometimes they’re going to be hard. None of that matters. What matters is that you got to the goal anyway. That’s determination.

So yes, I can make it to goal. I may take the easy road some days, and I may stall occasionally. It may take much longer than I want it to. Some days–like yesterday–may feel like huge victories, and some–like the day before yesterday–may feel like equally huge failures. It doesn’t matter.

Determination is not giving up, and I have never, ever, ever done that.

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