“Everything can be taught” – personality, skill and coping ability

For many years, like many other people, I’ve struggled with consistency. There are periods of time when I become intrinsically motivated to be consistent and it usually lasts about a month or so and then fizzles out. Whether it be with a diet, with reading my bible, praying, exercise, routine, work, and other things like that I often go through a period of extreme motivation but I think when it becomes exhausting I often just let a day go by and then I go through another period of high functioning laziness. I don’t become lazy per say but I do allow myself too much room to do whatever I want without thought of the consequences usually leading to nowhere.

I want to overcome this in order to be a different person tomorrow than I am today. So my new goal is to beat my procrastination phases and make a change in my day to day life.

First off, I want to talk about why I procrastinate. I think for the most part I’ve procrastinated because just the thought of dealing with something or someone stressful I’d rather postpone or put off the decision so that way I don’t have to face it. It deals with a little bit of fear of failure and anxiety from dealing with something that I’ve put off. Thats why if I miss just one day I often give up on the whole endeavor. This is not ideal. if you have felt the same way you know exactly what I am talking about.

My somatic class is really diving deep into the topic of motivation. we are learning about what helps motivate us and what doesn’t. one of the things that the class helps highlight is the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic is all about finding the motivation through internal processes such as goal and task orientation. meaning you find satisfaction from learning or gaining new skills and that in turn moves you forward to learn and gain more skills.

The hardest part is to get started, so when I sat down and thought about what gets me motivated it honestly starts out with simple questions which leads to further questions that just make sense like;

• what are your goals? (clearly define your goal)
• when do you want to reach your goal?( make a concrete time)
• what’s the smallest possible step you can take right now to meet that goal?( don’t overwhelm yourself)
• What is stopping you from reaching the goal?( figure out how and why you procrastinate)
• make a plan ( it’s easier to take one step at a time then to try to jump from step one to step 20)

I want to use this as my own personal rubric to reach my goals from 2021-2022 and see how things change for me. i think taking the time to write things out and think about what I want and how to get there will help me move forward with where I want to be. Im actually kind of excited for this and I’d like to share with you my first official goal.

• my goal is to become a personal trainer.
• I want to take the courses and finish in two months: December 6th I will become a personal trainer.
• a small step I can take right now is to purchase the material and get started
• What stopping me is the fear of failure. unsure that I can manage all the things with work and school and still meet that goal.
• I plan to spend one hour a day just study for the PT exam. I will wake up earlier than before and make time to study.

Anyways, thanks for reading and God bless!