The term motivation is overused.
What really lies beneath the surface is habit and discipline. Or... the habit of being disciplined.
When I first started rowing I used to run with the slow kids at the back in training.
No offence to the slow kids at the back, but at the time I excelled at sport - sport was my life and had been for the 5 years prior.
I still remember the day my coach drove past us in a car (the only time he ever did this to my memory) and shouted - and I'll paraphrase - "What the f*ck are you doing Ben, run!".
A fair assessment of my laziness. My point being...
At this stage in my life, I was very bad at doing things I didn't want to do. I wasn't very disciplined.
With my school work especially. My grades where average/poor, as they always had been - and I was the master of making excuses both to myself and my teachers.
Mainly because I found it difficult, especially in the case of exams or tests.
But... rowing became a catalyst for discipline.
When you have to turn up day-in-day-out doing things you don't want to do you get better and better at it - you become more disciplined.
Then eventually, it becomes a habit - and that habit feeds into every and all areas of life.
The way I picture this is like a scoring system:
If every time you are faced with a choice, you get a point for the comfortable one or a point for the uncomfortable one - every time you score points for getting out of your comfort zone you become more likely to make that choice again.
Same as any habit, every day that you brush your teeth it becomes wired deeper and deeper into you as a habit.
So... you have to decide whether you want to make a habit of the uncomfortable choice.
...
P.s. this morning I woke up at 8:00 after woking until almost 2:00. I had to get up at 8 in order to hit my commitments for today, but after a long week I went to the toilet - telling myself don't get back into bed or you're f*cked - and proceeded to roll back into bed.
I lied there and faced this exact choice I speak of now:
A) The uncomfortable choice, "Get the f*ck back up".
Or... B) The comfortable choice, "Just one more hour".
Having made the uncomfortable choice so many times, the habit that was wired into me rolled me out of bed and landed me here, at my laptop, prepping today's YouTube video and writing this newsletter.
You're not alone, and you're not demotivated, it truly comes down to habit.