Thought For The Week October 12, 2009

"The whole idea of motivation is a trap. Forget motivation. Just do it. Exercise, lose weight, test your blood sugar, or whatever. Do it without motivation. And then, guess what? After you start doing the thing, that's when the motivation comes and makes it easy for you to keep on doing it." -- John C. Maxwell

We tend to think of motivation as the reason for doing something. We don't begin until we think we have discovered a reason. However, that is backwards. You don't really discover the reason for doing something until you have experienced the results.

It had been a while since I had practiced juggling on a regular basis. I decided that I wanted to put two new juggling tricks into my Staff on Stage show at the 2009 Clown Camp. I had been working on those tricks off and on over the years. That was my motivation to start practicing daily. It turned out that was not the true reason for doing it. I didn't perform either trick in my show. However, I did continue practicing when I had time in my schedule because I discovered that the physical movement felt good and I just enjoyed having the props in my hands and manipulating them. Even after my original motivation was past, I continued because the fun I was having became my true motivation.

Because I am involved in clown ministry I believe that reading the Bible is an important part of my education. I found it was often hard to motivate myself to read other than guilt at not doing something that I knew I should be doing. The first time somebody challenged me to read the entire Bible during a year I kind of slogged through it just to be able to say I had succeeded. I have discovered though that the more that I read the Bible, the more I get out of it, especially when I take the time to actually study it. I knew that the city of Jericho was destroyed by the Israelites under the command of Joshua. When attending Sunday School as a child I often sang, "Joshua fought the battle of Jericho and the walls came a tumbling down." This year while reading the book of Mark I found a passage about Jesus and his disciples going to Jericho. That aroused my curiosity about when Jericho was rebuilt. I discovered from I Kings 16: 34 that Jericho was rebuilt during the reign of King Ahab which was about 850 B.C. What I found really interesting was that when it was restored a curse that had been placed upon it by Joshua (Joshua 6: 26) came true. Now I enjoy reading the Bible and miss it when I don't make time to do it.

Sometimes false motivation can prevent progress. I know somebody who was motivated to practice juggling by the goal of increasing the number of throws they could do without dropping. They got frustrated by not being able to pass the 300 throw plateau. I pointed out that you would never do that many throws in a performance, and suggested some simple ways to incorporate their jugging into a show. They did that and were thrilled with the audience response. Now they are working on how to make their juggling entertaining. They told me that practicing is now fun instead of frustrating.

Psychologists have discovered that emotion follows action. This is expressed in the song "Whistle a Happy Tune" from the musical The King and I. I don't always feel like clowning when I have a performance scheduled. However, I have found that if I pretend that I want to clown and act like I am having a good time, I begin enjoying myself. If you wait for the emotion, you may never take action. If you take action, the emotion will come.

What would you like to do? What are the first steps? Don't wait for motivation. Take that first step. What results do you experience? Are the results worth while? If they are, then continue taking action.