Why does motivation fail? How to be constantly motivated? || Acharya Prashant, at LIT-Nagpur (2022)
Questioner (Q): How can we remain constantly motivated throughout the academic year and throughout our life also? There are a lot of motivational videos out there, but their effect is short-lived; we remain motivated for a while and then go back to feeling demotivated. But we want to remain constantly motivated. So, can you tell us something that will help us achieve that?
Acharya Prashant (AP): If you want to feel motivated for one hour, watch your usual motivation videos. If you want to stay motivated constantly, stop watching those videos.
What would you want? The car is not moving, so you keep pushing it from behind, apply a lot of force, push it from behind—how far will it go? Or would you rather turn on the ignition? The car has an internal engine. Do you want to run it on external force? Please, tell me. Which car am I talking of? Who is the car here? We. You want to live by your internal engine or by external stimulus? Internal engine.
Motivation is always external; therefore it cannot last long. But it gives immediate effects, like steroids, so people feel attracted. You will feel enthused for one hour: “Yes! I can do it!” After one hour, you will again say, “There is no way I can do it.”
And now you know why those motivation videos get so many views—because you have to return to them again and again. So, one person has to watch them two hundred times. First time he watched it, worked for one hour, so again he has to go and again watch it; one more hour, and he has to again return to that. That’s how the views keep increasing.
