Motivation

Motivation is the driving force that inspires and guides behavior.

It is the reason why we do things and the energy that keeps us going.

Motivation can come from many different sources, including personal goals, incentives, and rewards, social influences, and emotional states.

The law of the Conservation of mass:

"Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed" - Antoine Lavoisier

I would like to believe that this applies to motivation as well.

Motivation exists in a quasi state between tangibility (physical) and intangibility (ideas) in the sense that it is intrinsic in nature but can be employed via the use of physical real world paraphernalia

The basic phenomenon of moral motivation might be given a more systematic depiction as follows, using ‘P’ to stand for some person or individual and ‘φ’ and ‘ψ’ each to stand for some action:

When P judges that it would be morally right to φ, she is ordinarily motivated to φ; should P later become convinced that it would be wrong to φ and right to ψ instead, she ordinarily ceases to be motivated to φ and comes to be motivated to ψ.

This depiction aims to capture features of our common experience. As observation suggests, people generally feel moved to do what they judge it right to do; what is more, their motivation ordinarily shifts to match or “track” changes in their moral judgments. If an individual judges it right to keep a promise rather than to aid a stranger in need, she will ordinarily feel moved, at least to some degree, to act so as to fulfill the promise. If she comes to change her mind about the priority of her promise, she will ordinarily no longer be moved to keep the promise and will be moved instead to provide aid.

Motivating yourself is hard. In fact, I often compare it to one of the exploits of the fictional German hero Baron Munchausen: Trying to sustain your drive through a task, a project, or even a career can sometimes feel like pulling yourself out of a swamp by your own hair. We seem to have a natural aversion to persistent effort that no amount of caffeine or inspirational posters can fix.

This moment when you don’t feel like doing the work? This is not a moment to be thrown away. This is not a dress rehearsal. This moment is your life as much as any other moment. Spend it in a way that will make you proud.

There is struggle in the meaning of life and there is motivation there.

There is most likely a root cause that has to be addressed in order to reclaim your motivation. Getting clear on what that is will prevent you from running around trying to fix every aspect of your life and allow you to simply focus on the one or two things that are really the reason everything’s feeling so hard.