Motivating yourself

[durron597]

Starting this off with a personal story:

I have always kinda vaguely wanted to get myself in shape and lose my gut for the last 5+ years. I would go on "health kicks" where I would diet for a month but not exercise or alternately I would lift weights maybe 6 times in 2 weeks and then stop. Reasons for stopping would be various "oh I'm tired today", or "I feel sick". One time I started going swimming and got swimmers ear the 2nd time out, bought swimming earplugs, they kept falling out because I suck at life, then I just felt like crap for awhile and got busy at my job and just stopped again.

However, I have now lifted weights 3 times a day and spent 45 minutes on the treadmill 6 times a week for a month straight. I have also completely restructured my diet, I eat breakfast every morning now and do the whole "lots of small meals" thing. I see no signs of me stopping any time soon. What's keeping me going? I paid $540 for 10 sessions with a personal trainer and I'll be damned if I waste all that money.

I wasn't going to post this thread because I have pretty high standards for threads I start in this forum but then I read this post in STTF. A pretty standard post really (not really important to click on); basically somebody asking "how do you get the discipline to spend enough hours grinding SnGs to make real money at them". Pineapple888 makes a great reply:

[ QUOTE ]


This has been asked 234124513456 times.

Typical answers:

1.) Just do it, you lazy bum.

2.) Work set hours. Although to some that feels too much like a job.

3.) External enforcement, either with someone you know in person, or prop bets/challenges.

If none of those things work, poker may not be the right career.

[/ QUOTE ]

Which got me thinking: I know a lot of the SnG regulars make prop bets about leaderboards and such with each other to keep themselves going in what boils down to, really, a very boring game (SnG poker, not all poker ldo).

I don't know where I'm going with this really. In college it was hard for me to motivate myself to do my schoolwork; except in group projects where other people were depending on me, and I had a much easier time. I guess the question I ask is - what do you all do to motivate yourself? I suppose many people (especially in this forum) have enough strength of character that they are just go-getters; doing what they need to do because that's the type of person they are. But if you're not that type of person - what do you do to achieve the same results?

[El Diablo]

durron,

One big motivator is having other people count on me. So, for work, it's having employees, investors and partners who count on me getting stuff done. For exercise, it's being on teams or having workout partners who depend on me being there. I definitely find external motivation like this pretty key in most aspects of my personal and professional life.

[amplify]

This has to do with the inherent disconnect between human beings and their perceptions of what will make them happy versus what actually does. Maybe I would be happy if I was 30 pounds lighter, but in the meantime I might really enjoy cookies and ice cream more than watching my diet. So this thing called "will power" goes away and another thing called "yummy donuts" arrives. The immediate pleasure is so much greater than the assumed future benefit that we have no chance. Or we can hold out for a week or a month or a year but eventually we cave. And we never just miss one workout or eat one donut, we miss a month and eat a box.

So the key seems to be getting the focus off of future results and putting it on the pleasure obtained immediately. Running a little faster today. Eating really tasty 300 calorie meals. Otherwise you face some dreary trudge on a stupid machine and rice cakes every day and it's not long before all that mess goes out the window.

So I keep myself motivated by setting a long-term goal and breaking that into smaller short-term goals and then breaking those into daily tasks that are at the least acceptable and at best enjoyable.

[tpir]

Good call on the other people factor. I tried for years and years to get back into shape but didn't break through until I joined a running program with a bunch of friends. Knowing I would be loled at for not showing was a huge boost to get my ass in gear for a change. Your milage my vary.

[Point Point]

[kurosh]

I've always found I need some sort of nemesis or competition to get myself motivated for something. With poker, if I just don't give a [censored] about the people who are better than me/making more money, I'm not going to care about playing or getting better.

It boils down to: I need to care about beating someone to get better at something. I try to build up hatred towards people I regularly play with for this reason. Jealousy is a wonderful thing.

[tubasteve]

I think the best way to motivate yourself is to surround yourself with others who already have that motivation.

For example, the most hands I'd ever played in a month was about 15k, until recently. What happened? I moved in with 3 other online poker semi-pros at my school, two of which are 2p2ers.

For the last couple weeks I've been here with ManChild while we wait for school to start, and watching him grind out 50k or more hands a month and make a ton of cash has really encouraged me to start playing more.

This month I'm already up to 17k hands and am hoping to hit at least 30k before school starts up on the 29th.

[GambleGamble]

For work it was always the desire to be the best, but once that happened I definitely slowed down, but I could still use that to drive myself to be the best.

For talking to broads, it was always just the what the hell, Ill probably never see them again

But for weight loss and getting in shape, it obviously has been a struggle for me, but over the last 8 months, I hopefully have figured it out.

1 - set up Fat Off with roommate, that involved a payoff of a all expenses trip to Vegas....plus incorporated a huge party to announce the winner in front of all our friends, worked very well and I pulled out the win and will be in vegas beginning of next month.

2 - Started really looking at pics of me compared to other people etc, and how gross I was physically to them, just a gigantic human being of epic proportions, and how they really started to bother me....never bothered me before though, I used to revel in it actually.

3 - Thought of my parents, my mom specifically who just had major heart surgery etc, and how that would be me someday and a lot sooner if I didnt stop.

4 - and of course I thought of banging much much hotter women.

....theres always highs and lows in it, where I dont wanna take the effort especially when my roommate starts to tail off and not care, but we have actually just figured that out by deciding to work together, between the same diet plan and eating the same foods and being just as hungry as the other guy, and having someone to push each other when we work out its only been 2 weeks doing it this way but its definitely much easier to do...and to be honest looking down at the scale and watching in plummet from 428 in Dec to 352.6 this morning is beginning to be motivation in itself and think will become one of the new driving forces in my life, and to see my body start to reshape itself into some semblence of where it should be it keeping me pushing....

GG

[JaBlue]

I never understood why people who are not fit aren't motivated to be. I was always athletic and loved running around, so maybe I assume everyone should like that stuff. What possible justification do you have for being unhealthy? Same goes for constantly eating [censored] like McDonalds, and to a lesser extent HFSC, white flour, etc.

---
A typical pattern I have is:
a) get really excited about something --> b) research it, try it a bit --> c) buy a whole bunch of crap for it --> d) do it!

lately this has been for mountain biking:
a) bike with uncle a year ago, got excited
b) started reading magazines, reading mtbr.com, ride more, etc.
c) bought sweet new Santa Cruz Blur XC with XTR components, pretty much best bike for needs money can buy. 4 grand. Also bought a book on skills.

now a lot of stuff other helps: I'm trying to learn routine maintenance stuff, clean my bike every few rides, etc.

I'm hopefully gonna get into racing when I get back to school, please please please let UCSD have a MTB division in their cycling club.

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One area where I'm chronically searching for motivation is guitar; I'm usually real good about playing and go through long periods of time where I play 2hrs/day learning classical so I can try to play newer music like Brouwer. But if I go on vacation or, in this case, go on vacation then get sick for another week, not having played ina while I rarely feel like playing. Best cure for this is to have a lesson, jam with friends [I have a few who could cut it as professional jazz players], go see someone like John Scofield, and so on.

[Sponger.]

When I lived in Santa Barbara I paid my roommate to make sure I played poker. He would write down my hours on a white board, and we'd set goals for each day and work out a plan on how many hours I'd play. He'd also run errands for me and get me food and stuff to keep me happy. So for example I'd wake up at 8AM, and he'd deliver breakfast to me as long as I played a 4 hour session or something. His salary varied, but one of the more successful ones was that I would give him $20 a week minimum, and then going up to $50 a week if I played over 40 hours. Although I had to fire him because he became too demanding, haha