When Motivation Wanes

I’m going to draw a lot from my husband’s words and conversations for this blog because in his 28 + years of kung fu, he’s seen many ebbs and flows of motivation and interest among students of all levels. These fluctuations are very typical and result from many things, how one deals with them however, can mean the difference between fulfillment and lifelong discontent!

When someone enters into any new activity, the newness is often the greatest motivator. The excitement of the new activity, the purchase of new equipment, the new effects on your body and energy level and the new atmosphere (from the physical surroundings to the people in it) are sufficient to keep you motivated until….well, until the “newness” wears off. The length of time for this “honeymoon” phase depends on the richness of the experience, the amount of actual new material to be gleaned and on the individual response. But even in a system like ours where the over 900 forms make it virtually impossible to run out of “new” material, the newness of the experience becomes more routine after a while. And once this excitement wears off, the student might begin to notice, perhaps subconsciously, that now going to class also means a hard workout, a challenging mental experience and they feel kind of tired today. Also the class seems to have changed for them – it’s not as exciting as it was initially and they might put this down to a change in the class itself, rather than in their perception of the class. Now they must draw upon inner strength to motivate themselves. Some people just don’t have it in them to do that. The ones who do (and there are MANY) continue on to their class and continue to grow, learn and evolve and the people who can’t get over that hump, often move on to something “new”. They decide the old activity or hobby was deficient in some way, had let them down, was lacking in some quality or other and off they go to a “new” activity with new equipment, new effects on their body and energy level, new building, new people,… until eventually that activity lets them down too. They dig many shallow wells, as our Grandmaster has said, never digging deep enough to find water.

The student that can climb over these humps will have to do it repeatedly. Over the years, challenges periodically rear their heads. Sometimes it’s something physically or mentally difficult, sometimes it’s just a level of fatigue or a lack of confidence. And sometimes the student must work without motivation until that “wall” has been scaled, much like a runner’s “wall” that once has been busted through, results in a fresh, second wind and renewed motivation. Sometimes the student must ask themselves some questions like “Why am I doing this and what do I want out of it?” to remind themselves of the goal and the prize. But the successful student perseveres and eventually finds their inner peace, their love of every moment of their classes and their lives outside the class. The training to become a black belt that you started the day you joined the school, becomes training for lifelong fulfillment. The obstacles you encounter along the path are the training and how you deal with them, determines your future.