Or hell.
At least it feels like hell.
But what is motivation?
Of what stuff is it made?
Can I have some please?
Looking at past experience I have concluded:
All the people who are doing stuff have motivation.
I do not.
How do I know this?
I am not doing stuff.
Ergo, I must not have motivation.
A number of creatives I know have this selfsame problem:
Lack of motivation.
We call it by many names:
Laziness, lack of skill, lack of connections, lack of...you see what I am getting at yet?
We all lack something.
We must; we are human.
At least I pretend to be.
But we mourn what it is we do not have: an agent, a book deal, a Broadway gig, ad nauseum.
Why do we do this?
Because it can be very painful to realize one's limitations.
But why are they limits?
Do we not possess this mythical stuff of which others are made?
Decathalon runners have it. Shakespeare had it. Isaac Newton had it.
You beautiful bastard.
What makes them so special?In truth. Not very much.
Motivation is a myth.
One we all buy into.
We say terribly weighted adages like: "Get MOTIVATED!"
In really high-pitched voices early in the morning when everyone should still be asleep.
Why do we say this?
Why do we treat motivation like a commodity?
Because that is how we have been trained to perceive it.
The thing that unites all the gifted in our society is that they were doing something else, they 'got' motivated, and then did something else.
My contention is the joy is in the doing.
We simply haven't found something to be joyful about.
I did yoga for years.
Practiced little, cared less.
I thought it was me, and technically it was.
When suddenly I had a stark realization: I. Hate. YOGA.
Fuck you, kindly.
Simply loathe it.And it has nothing to do with me, it has nothing to do with my teachers, but it has everything to do with Yoga.
(static, unmoving postures, that you simply hold and breathe, oh and meditate, still the mind, but don't think about anything as your joints scream in protest and gasp, gasp like a fish out of water, and namaste)
Why did I do that?
Why did I pursue something that for years made me unhappy?
Because people told me I just had to get into it, get motivated, practice daily.
The reverse is true:
If you love something, you can practice daily.
Now, this is not a get out of jail free card.
You still need to practice.
But look at your daily practice.
Are you reliably exercising?
Are you practicing your craft?
If no, why not?
I hated movement for years, couldn't stand the terminology used, the exercise regimen (mostly yoga, but also Pilates: for those who don't know Pilates was a German man interred in a Nazi PoW camp who came up with a series of exercises to do in his prison cell and with hospital equipment...and I wondered why I didn't like it).
So I had to find my own practice.
I have been studying Jerzy Grotowski's work for a little over a year now.
I have never exercised/practiced my technique as reliably.
Looking at movement as an expression of internal stimuli, overcoming mental bias, and most importantly: as research has really allowed me to flourish.
But I didn't need to get motivated, I enjoy the work, I aspire to it, I revel in my accomplishments.
So screw getting motivated.
Find something that you genuinely want to do and do that.
Nobody can force you to do anything you don't wish to do:
Horse, water, drink, adage.
I hate the gym mentality, I hate the gym atmosphere, you could not pay me to step inside a gym.
Now, I practice my movement outside on the grass.
I get spectators.
I work in such a way that augments my creativity and my acting and doesn't hinder it:
e.g. sitting/standing, squatting on a workbench.
As a final note, this is not to say that my way is the only way to practice; I focused a great deal on physical movement because that is what I have found the most joy in recently.
But finding your own effective route to practicing is the most important secret to defying the motivation myth.
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