Gabo sent me this article a few days ago and I could not stop thinking about it. Couldn’t thinking about it because I wanted to understand why this happened and how someone get into a level of having unlimited self-generated morale. Let’s talk about motivation first.

For me, motivation comes in different ways and forms. For developers one general source of motivation are conferences. We all gather together, talk about specific topics, get new ideas, new perspectives and more important, new relationships. Usually we all go back from the those wanting to do more and rewrite our apps with the new shiny thing we saw at it.

Then the inevitable happens... a few days later you don’t feel that motivation anymore, and the project you commit to start at the conference, goes back to the end of your TODO list.

External and Internal motivation

In the case of external motivation, what I found is that is always temporal (nothing new here), there’s a scientific explanation about this that I’m not capable of explain, but it’s related with the levels of dopamine we have in our bodies; the more dopamine, the more excited and “motivated” you are. Finding external motivation is easy, but is hard to rely on it for long periods of time. Internal motivation on the other hand, is harder to find (surprisingly) but much more powerful.

For me the combination of both are very important. I’ve been working on a system that helps me “remind” why I’m doing what I’m doing so my motivation speaks again; for that I use external motivators like music, videos. While these things “motivates”, it actually helps me remind my internal motivators; which the most important for me is to teach my family by example.

Unleash your own potential

To have unlimited self-generated morale motivation is not enough. You need something extra that gives you energy to do the hardest things and do what others are not willing to. This is very personal. For example, I’m a very logic person. Emotions rarely change my mindset; but I also good at empathizing with others, that’s why I can understand (for example) my wife, a very emotional person, when things happen on a certain “not-logical” way. My logical mindset helps me to focus and do whatever it takes to achieve my goals, so in my very own and personal context, the combination those two things helps me to keep going. Please don’t take this as I’m bragging about myself, I’m trying to make a point here that, in order for someone to get to a level of unlimited self-generated morale, motivation should come from within yourself. Having external motivators are great, but only when is used as reminders of your internal motivators.

Be kind with yourself

Most people fail and get demotivated because they are trying to do more that they can do, or the expectations they have are not met. The journey to success is not a sprint but a long run, so is more important to keep going on a steady pace rather than finish first. Take care of your yourself, take care of your family, set clear and realistic goals. Peace 🙏🏼.

If you have any questions or any comments/feedback, please send me a tweet and I will be more than happy to help/answer!