What motivates you?

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What do you use for motivation?I use emotional pain. It motivates me a lot! I think about all my struggles and what has happened to my over my life time. The things people have done to me... just all of it and it is the biggest motivator ever. Makes me push harder, faster, and longer. I feel like I want to prove them all wrong, like I am not a piece of s**t. That I am better than all of them. That I can have something more than this. Add an iPod with metal in the mix and I am unstoppable!! Nothing can motivate me to do abs, sorry lol

How about you? What motivates you?

being cold (it's maybe 10 degrees c in my house and i don't use heating much)
anticipating progress
trying to remain injury free when doing sports
confidence boost
better mood etc etc
boredom

The same as the OP, relatively speaking.

Poverty motivates me like nothing else. I hated being homeless and living in cars in parks.

Yeah, i agree with you that those thoughts can really motivate peoples for achieving anything in life. There are many individuals who use it as a motivation for themselves. Well. i get motivate from good looking as well as rich peoples. Also motivation comes from within.

I understand the use of emotional pain as motivation, but if that is your only motivation I'm afraid you are setting yourself up for frustration. I'm not saying you won't achieve your physical goals by using it, but how are you going to achieve your psychological goals of proving them wrong, showing them you are better, etc?

It sounds like your motivation is all negative. If you don't at least balance it with something positive then you make your achievements all about them, not you. Instead of only "I'll show them, they did this to me, I can do this better than them" etc, could you break that up with focus on some kind of positive that will be about you? Something like seeing yourself achieve your goals and only being pleased with yourself or seeing others being pleased for you and admiring you, rather than seeing yourself look down on others?

What I'm saying is that if you are only doing this to mentally get back at someone, you'll get frustrated because there is no way to actually get them back by doing that. It's good to use it to motivate you to do better, but I'm saying use the prospect of your own happiness for working on and achieving the goals, as much as the negative emotions.

Living well is the best revengs, that's true. I think about it sometimes and it's nice to see my life is better than some douchebags from the past, but if I only try to live my life to have a better one than them, it's a hollow victory because I'd end up living a life based more on them than I would have if they had followed me from high school and hung around all my life.

I am willing to deal with frustration but that's not the case. Fueling my exercise, competitions, etc., on pain, is actually a release of those feelings. Instead of them being bottled up, using them in the way i do releases me from those feelings. I actually feel so much better in general and better than them!


How am i not showing them I am better? I don't smoke, drink or do drugs because of the training. Nothing for 7 years. I doing 5k's, half marathons, boxing in amatuer competitions. I dont have time for people who are not involved in exercise, sports or that do drugs, etc. Meanwhile my mother just got out of prison and is drinking and probably going to start using heroin again. My brothers in prison, my sister is in county waiting to go to prison. Even if they weren't in locked up, I would still be doing more than they ever would. I mean how many people can say they have completed a 5k? or won fights? or are drug free...Picks up trash to better the environment on their own time... just to be better than his family. Hey my pain makes me a better person!


I can tell you do not run or compete in any competitive sport. You have no idea what your saying lol Anyone who decides to back you has no experience in this area. This has worked for me, for the last 7 years. Again, the fuel off of pain is not only a way to drive me but a way to relieve that pain. An outlet. I feel like your trying to give me advice when you have no idea what its like to be in my shoes. Like when someone who never boxed a day in their life tries to tell you, yo you should have ducked under then hit em wit a right cross. I just wanna tell them to shut the ef up and if they can do it better get in there themselves. I just no and say yeah i shoulda lol


What I'm saying is keep your advice to yourself! I am kind of offended if you can't tell. I have put in hours of work on the road. sometimes as far as 13 miles in one run. Countless hours of fighting. Broken fingers, ribs, fractured jaw. I'll say it again, my pain makes me a better person! My pain led me to boxing to release the pain, which led to competitive running. Which lead to becoming drug, smoke, alcohol free. Which led to a clrearer mind. Which lead to realizing I had Aspergers. Which also led to helping the environment and which led to many other positive things.


It is not a hollow victory, I have gained so much out of it all from fueling everything from the pain i have. I think you should keep your opinion to yourself! I feel like you're saying the last 7 years have been for nothing and it was wrong of me to do. That it was a pointless endevour. Your telling me that who i am is fake.... Kick rocks!

FURTHERMORE, I am not privileged enough to have loving parents that support my Aspergers and have taught me how to cope in everyday life. So my life is nothing but struggling everyday and dealing with pain. At least i am doing something with that pain! Most guys/kids my age, in my shoes are in prison, in a gang, on drugs or dead.

This thread was what motivates you, not reply to the OP's post.

Last edited by amboxer21 on 06 Nov 2012, 4:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I initially couldn't answer this when I sat down to write in this thread. Then someone said something to me, and I had to sort of contemplate my entire existence.

I guess it stems from, as a child, I was always bad at sports. As a kid, I'd like, go spend like 2 hours or more at a time, just like, throwing a baseball at a wall or something, just to get better at pitching a baseball. I never got to be pitcher, despite that. I'd also do things like kick a soccer ball or a football over a tree for hours on end, too. Just to be better. Despite my like, devoting almost professional amounts of practice to things by myself, I pretty much could only get myself on the level of being barely competitive at schoolyard soccer.

So as an adult, I guess because I was so crappy athletically as a kid, I'm insecure about it. Now as an adult, I know I have neurological problems that explain my lack of athletic prowess as a kid, but now with the advent of the internet, I can use those neurological problems to my advantage in finding research and stuff. So I can't say it's so much pent up anger or whatever towards others, just my own inadequacies I feel bad about, and athleticism was one of the bigger inadequacies. I probably disappointed my father, for example, with how bad I was at sports. So now it's like, I'm devoting my 20s to solving my problem of inadequacy.

I guess it fixes some of the self esteem problems, as probably a good deal of my childhood self esteem was wrecked by being bad at athletics. I feel like, too, without my NVLD, I'd have been a "natural" athlete, too. I'd have been a "jock" and "cool" in high school. So in some ways, it's me chasing after my "natural" state that's ruined by my NVLD, it's hard to describe. It's weird, there's the "natural" state of me, that would have been cool quarterback bro, and then there's the NVLD, which makes me a "nerd" and the two sides sorta fight with eachother.

I dunno. Maybe I just like it, too, and have had enough caffeine today to psychoanalyze myself.

Stubbornness and the will to gain a bit more strength as well as I want to be able to run long distances. Preferably off road, like trail running.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK3x2DOoJIc[/youtube]

I find this -really- Motivating, Seriously I've no idea why. But I'd love to be half the guy Gaston is lmao

I'm ignoring the rest of your temper fit, simply because I see you didn't understand what I was saying when you asked the question that begins this paragraph.

To "show them you are better than them" there would have to be several factors present for it to involve someone else's belief in your superiority. 1. They would have to be aware of what you are doing. 2. They would have to feel that what you are achieving is a worthwhile goal. 3. They would have to feel bad about themselves for not pursuing exercise in the same way you do. 4. They would have to conclude that you are achieving your goals because of some greater intrinsic worth, rather than consistantly following a program of physical training and health awareness.

People in prison and on serious drugs usually don't attach a lot of worth to things like that, other than in professional athletes. I'm not saying that they would be right in their point of view. I think it's admirable to persist in something that difficult. In my late teens and early 20's I was into building, but I'm not here to blow my own horn or put in somebody's face that I did something. That isn't my point. My point was that your concept of "showing them you are better" isn't valid because in all probability they don't feel you are better, nor care about what you're doing. You are the only one aware of this comuppance they are apparantly receiving by your exercise program.

That was my point. Once you realize that you aren't showing anyone but yourself, and all this time you have been doing it to show others, I think you may feel some frustration. Of course I also think that you proving to yourself that you are doing something that you believe makes you better than them, should be enough. If you are so much better than them, then why do you even bother spending all this emotional energy to "show them"? I usually just walk away from people I feel I'm better than and ignore them.

Show yourself you're better than them, because if you really are better than them on all levels and not just physical ability and lack of drug use, then proving it to yourself will be enough. It should be enough if you really don't care about them anymore. The fact that you still feel such a need to prove to them that you are better, indicates that they still have some sort of emotional hold over you. People don't put themselves through that kind of pain to prove a point to somebody they don't care about.

They usually just walk away, live their own life, and ignore them.

..

Last edited by lostmyself on 07 Nov 2012, 9:28 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm not even going to read or reply to your dumb ass. You have no idea what the F**k your talking about. Period! Kick rocks.

OOM probably has a good idea of what you're experiencing. She's been in jail and arrested a couple times, even her ex-husband is on death row. She's definitely had lots of pain and suffering in her life and craziness all around her on a daily basis.

Eh, if it motivates you, good I guess, but a time will come where you must forgive others. Maybe the time isn't yet. God knows I have lots of unforgiveness burning in my heart as I speak, and part of my motivation is that, to "show everyone" over the wrongs done to me. That said, you know, the most that's ever happened is probably people seeing me now is possibly them going "Oh wow, he's jacked now." Or something. But even people's perceptions changing like that is fun.

In order from most important to least important:
Strength
Confidence/self-esteem
the positive chemicals/the exercise feeling
Looks/women/chicks
What the OP said: the crap I've taken all my life, though I blame it on my childhood, not others. It's more positive and I am my own man, I don't complain about others, I just don't deal with them.

Honestly, I don't care what OOM has been through. I spent 7 straight years locked up a kid and the first 2 years of my adult life locked up. What happened in between, is another story! I'm not trying to hear this BS. Why is this even being discussed. So, because one person decides to write a book of a reply, I am just supposed to see the light and change 7 years of routine and life....What did you expect to hear OOM? Oh your right, why didn't I see it that way? or OK, I'll change up what I use as my motivation because your point was so great. I asked what "YOU" use as motivation. Not what you think about what I use as my motivation.

I hope I didn't offend you 1000Knives. I didn't mean too and if I did, I am sorry. I'm just a bit frustrated!