Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.
Dr. Stephen R. Covey
In my entire life, I have searched for some motivational sources, yes, I had been around people who always tried to demotivate me by calling my plans/actions stupid and crazy. Being an immature and a hyper person till 25, I, instead of taking out some positive things out of this criticism always argued and called their actions stupid. However, with the passage of time, I realized that this is not the right way to handle this situation and changed the direction a bit. Now, instead of getting angry and storing different kinds of negative thoughts in my mind, I try to prove that person wrong through my actions and execution of my plans. The recent example is of working on Steemit, as soon as I joined this wonderful platform, I started advertising it and told my friends about it who have some nice paying jobs. They all laughed at me by saying that this isn’t possible. Some believed what I told them about this platform and signed up immediately. Now, when I cashed out some SBD’s which were more than their one month salary, I feel relaxed and comfortable!
Anyways, let’s get back to the point. So what I have learned so far by reading different blogs (Yes, I bought a book 3 months ago for PKR 160 ($1.6) and never read a single page) that there are two types of motivation. Extrinsic, motivation that is derived from outside source such as a friend, relatives, colleagues etc. and Intrinsic, motivation that comes from within ourselves, a person living inside you.
Let’s make it simple and call them internal and external motivation. Have you ever had this experience of motivating yourself or someone else motivating you? I recently got motivated by just playing a simple 8 ball pool game (Internal) but I remember how I motivated myself as a result of a taunt I received from one of my class fellows.
External (Extrinsic) Motivation
So let me make this story short, I wasn’t a good student till grade 5. I was like a say-no-to-study child and used to play cricket and table tennis 7 days a week.
Me, playing TT at office!
Being a careless child, I even wasted my 2 years, applied to almost 13 schools and everyone rejected based on my previous reports and test results. I was happy but parents weren’t and luckily, they found a school who agreed to give me an admission. It was a new school so I didn’t have a single friend. As soon as I joined, first term exams were going to be held and I had only 14 days to prepare. As usual, I didn’t pay any attention to the study thing and focused on becoming a good cricket and TT player. I somehow achieved this objective but after two or three weeks, I received my result sheet and got 54% with a D grade I guess. I was happy, yes, I passed in every subject but when I saw the grades of some other class mates, they were like 99%, 98%, 91%, the second lowest grade was of a fellow named Raheel, he got 85% :|
Honestly, I didn’t care about the grades of others and went to my coach for some bowling suggestions. There, one of class fellows, Bilal Haider with his gang came to me. He scored 86% and asked for mine. I gave the answer and they all laughed at me
Hehehehehehehe, like WTF, only 54%, what you are going to do with these grades? You can surely get a security guard job after scoring low grades.Stuff like that!
A person inside me just grabbed me by the collar and asked me to challenge him immediately. I did the same and said
I’ll be the topper in the next term, just wait and watch!
And as soon as these words slipped from my tongue, people around me including my coach laughed out loudly. I was alone there, so I thought to leave and then, started working hard, hard and so hard. Even my parents started worrying about me that what happened to their child, I started studying 10 hours a day excluding school hours and long story short, I won. Got first position in the second term and my result was enough to prove that gang of bastards that I could do anything I wanted to. We all then became friends and everything in school was closed with a happy ending.
Internal (Intrinsic) Motivation
I have been working on some coding stuff, decided to dive into another world 6 months ago and currently I am learning PHP. Those who are from this world know how it sometimes gets difficult to find a bug in a program, playing with loops, functions and things like that. So this Sunday, I was trying to make a simple drop down menu of last 50 years and probably if I am not wrong, I spent 5 hours trying to make it and yes, I failed. I had to search the internet to know exactly where I was making a mistake. With a lot of frustration, I started thinking and evaluating myself.
Will I ever be able to write a simple program?
You just love this field, you don’t have an IT background, maybe you should leave it.
Random Thoughts!
So along with this depression, I started playing 8 Ball Pool, the only game I have been playing consistently since 2012. Lost around 8 games in a row and frustration overloaded.
Suddenly, another thought came in my mind, how I started playing this game, how I learned each and every shot to play, how to rotate the ball correctly, how I used to play small 50 coin and 100 coin games and now the situation is completely different, I play a minimum of 10 million game!
Level – 157
Coins – 178 932 889
Total Earnings till today – 5.9 Billion
Winning Percentage – 53.6%
So if I can learn a game from scratch and become a pool emperor, I can certainly learn this coding thing by putting the same effort in the same number of years, so don’t give up. That’s how I motivated myself and its working fine! Though the progress is slow but yes, there is a progress and things will get better in the future!
Contest
I would love to hear your stories, how you get motivated, what sources give you the maximum power of motivation and how do you feel after that? You can post your stories in the comment section and the winner will get 5 SBD’s from my account soon after the expiry of this post!
Rules
No rules, you aren’t required to upvote or resteem this post, just share your thoughts and I am right here waiting to read your story!
Love!