Silence &Motivation

Photo:cocoparisienne/Pixabay

Making changes in our lives is an exciting thing. When things happen to us in our lives, like being accepted to our school of choice, or perhaps being promoted at work, it ramps up our feelings of fulfillment, achievement, and personal success. Dopamine is released into our bodies and we have enhanced feelings of pleasure. As a result, we feel happy, focused and energized; all feelings we like to have, and that we actually seek when we are not feeling them. When we are seeking to change things in our lives on our own, that, too, is an energizer for us, and anticipating the coming success, we like to tell others about what we are doing and how we are doing it. This is a completely natural feeling and most of us don’t realize that when making changes in our own lives, moving ‘in silence’ through this process is often a better tactic than announcing our plans to our world.

‘Why is this so?’ you might ask, and it’s a great question. When we tell others about our plans to get in the best shape of our lives, or perhaps to finally start that business we’ve flirted with in our past, suddenly things change. Telling others about our plans to start our business, along with where we will be located, our goals for our first year, and how we want to grow, we are releasing ‘cheap’ dopamine into our system, although only the words have been spoken, while no action has been taken. This shot of dopamine into our bloodstream gives us those same happy and satisfied feelings we have when we have already accomplished something, yet in this case, we are feeling those same great feelings though nothing has been accomplished. By telling others our end goals, we have tricked our brains into thinking they already exist, which effectively lowers our own motivation to push ahead because we have already felt the joy of accomplishment.

Conversations with friends and acquaintances about what is happening in our lives is a natural and pleasurable part of the relationships we form as we move through life. As such, it might be completely natural to mention something we are working on, hoping for, or desiring, but the details are often better kept to ourselves. Most of us work very hard to make a good life for ourselves and our families, but the hardest thing can be not allowing ourselves to get trapped into the mental cycle of planning to change our lives, but never actually doing it.

While a kind word from a friend or loved one is sometimes just what we need when life challenges us, it is often the case when doing hard things, extraordinary things, that ‘falling in love’ with those things that make it ‘hard’ is the key to moving through the challenges we face. Moving through difficult times, work, or situations makes us stronger, more mindful and flexible, enabling us to move through these times, to rise and triumph yet again.