The New Year is coming up. For most, this marks a time of setting new goals and resolutions, and of high hopes that this year will be better than the last.
For others, it means not setting goals at all, or not taking them very seriously. We may come up with various surface reasons for why we don't have goals for the new year. But ultimately, when we look deep within ourselves, it is because we don't believe we will fulfill them anyways. Why set ourselves up for the disappointment we know will inevitably come?
So then, why don't we achieve our new year goals? What takes us from excitement and hope, to forgetting or giving up only a few weeks later?
The answer is self-motivation. Every year that we fail, it chips away at our trust in our own ability to stay self-motivated.
Why is self-motivation so hard? The first thing to know is, it's not your fault! So stop beating yourself up about it. It is all in how we were raised in our fast-paced society.
From a very young age, we are told what to learn, what to do, where to sit, and how to behave. Once we start school, we are subjected to the rules of others for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. If we step outside of any lines, we get punished for being disruptive, disobedient, and misbehaving.
We are taught all of these things with good intentions. Our parents and our teachers grew up in the same system, and they want us to learn it too so we can have a chance at success in the working world. And of course, in the working world, we are then told what to do by our bosses - who are told what to do by theirs, and so on. And so the cycle continues from at least Day 1 at school, until at least Day 1 of retirement.
This is not something to hate, but rather something to note. For what effect does being told what to do constantly, bring? Most of what we do does not come from a desire deep within. It comes from what others have told us to do (or it comes from wanting to rebel against what others tell us to do).
We never learn how to be self-motivated! So how can we expect ourselves to be pros at it, when we have little to no experience with it?
Being self-motivated is a choice. But it is a hard one to make when we don't understand why we keep making the opposite choice. It is difficult to break free of conditioning when we don't know it is there, or what that conditioning is.
But in the awareness of where our motivation has truly come from all this time, we can release those shackles and make a choice from within, maybe for the first time in our lives. This awareness has freed you to do what you will, to be self-motivated and self-inspired.
In January 2021, I will be launching my Wolf Mystery School, where we will break down more of these shackles and conditioning. In the first of four modules, we will release the conditioning that causes us to dream small, so we can rise to the levels our souls intended for us. We will, of course, release MANY other shackles throughout the 4 modules.
This is the year to make your dreams and goals come true, and to realize your own power within. And it will be the first of many!
I know it can be hard to believe, but the power really is within you. It is simply waiting to be unleashed.