Motivation.

I once saw a cartoon of a guy laying on the couch with a little thought bubble above his head the read: I'm desperately looking for the motivation to get motivated...

If there is something that you've been wanting to do, or change about yourself, but you're just not "feeling it", consider what your motivation is. To me, motivation is that drive we have to do things... I go to work because I like a paycheck... I pay my bills because I really like my air conditioning and internet... I take a shower every day because I don't want to smell. 

Motivation comes in two forms: internal and external. External motivation means that something outside of me is driving the behaviors that I do. (I drive the speed limit -- for the most part -- because I don't want to get pulled over and get a speeding ticket. Internal motivation means that something within me is driving the behaviors that I do. (I drive the speed limit -- for the most part -- because I want to be safe and don't want to cause harm to others.) Sometimes motivation is really high and we are excited about making changes, while other times our motivation is in the gutter and barely visible. External sources (family, friends, work, legal) are good at the beginning of change, but lasting behaviors occur when we have internal motivation to keep us going (believing in yourself, wanting to be proud of yourself, improving your self-esteem, enjoying your own company).

I remember in college I took a behavior modification class. We talked a lot about positive and negative reinforcement, a teeny bit about motivation, and how punishment doesn't work well (with children or with adults).

The best lesson I learned in that class was the Premack Principle, which essentially means that in order to get something that I want I need to do something that I don't really like. For example, if I want to read my new favorite book, I need to fold the laundry first. If I want to float around in my pool for the afternoon, I need to first finish my therapy notes from yesterday. The Premack Principle helped me during college when we had to do our own behavior modification experiment on ourselves, and it's worked time and time again through more real-life situations since then as a motivating factor to get me to do things I don't really enjoy.

Motivation is a constant force in our lives. Sometimes we need little rewards along the way, helping us see progress or making the load a little bit lighter to carry.