Motivation: from where and how to get it

First of all, we need to know why and when we need motivation. Many times we are not happy with our jobs, our relationships, and our life in general sucks. This all makes us lethargic, and dull and we lose interest in almost everything. Fierce competition in every field, our disappointments and failures make this situation more complicated. This situation leads to a lack of interest, depression, and a pessimistic attitude towards life.  Sometimes we don’t even realize that we are going through this phase, we suffer, and people around us also suffer because of this. In today’s competitive, fast-moving world people don’t have time for each other, they are fighting for their survival. Our needs are limited but desires are huge, unlimited, endless. To get out of this hopeless situation we need some motivation and positive thinking. 

According to me the best way to get out of this mess is to learn to motivate ourselves without any external help. Everyone can’t afford to attend those motivational speeches, courses, or classes, at least I didn’t get a chance to attend them. The neighborhood where I spent my first 30 years of life exposed me to many different situations of life. I consider myself lucky in that aspect, I became very rich in experience. But my problem was I didn’t have anybody to guide me, to motivate me (unless you call your parents heavy expectations about you as a motivation). So, I searched for it in books and made many friends and it helped me a lot, I got motivation from my friends and books, and that’s how I learned to motivate myself. That's why according to me best way to get motivated is to motivate yourself, it’s not that easy but trust me it’s not that difficult either. 

In my research field of drug discovery, there is a very high failure rate, the success rate to get a suitable drug candidate is less than 0.5%, so, it looks quite a gloomy situation. But I enjoy my work and cherish all aspects of it. I am not worried about my final destination as I want to enjoy my journey. I believe that there can be many people whose destination might be the same but everybody’s journey is unique and special. We worry a lot about results, our targets, and achievements. Because of all these worries and concerns, we don't enjoy our journey. In my case, I believe that every molecule I am making might be the next blockbuster drug to cure that disease and it gives me immense pleasure to put all the efforts and hard work towards its synthesis. I am not worried about its fate once it’s synthesized because that’s not in my hands. I believe that it may not be possible for everyone to get the best job in the world but it’s in our hands to give the best possible effort to whatever job we have. I also try to exercise on a fairly regular basis, but I just don’t exercise because I am scared of getting fat or having high cholesterol. I do it because I enjoy my workout, I like the environment of the gym, and seeing people in action, that spirit motivates me, my workout makes me tired but also makes me feel good.

If we look around we can get motivation from many small things. The problem is that we worry too much about the future, failures, fear of competition and so many other things that mess up our minds and consume our energy. So, cheer up and be happy because happy people are always motivated.

Thanks for reading, please share your comments. 

(Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing)