The Science of Deep Motivation: Tips to Get and Stay Motivated

“The starting point of all achievement is DESIRE. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desire brings weak results, just as a small fire makes a small amount of heat.” – Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich

We all know that feeling we get when we’re deeply motivated.

We feel that fire in the belly, that whirlwind of excitement.

We feel like we have the strength of 10 men.

In our highly competitive world, someone who doesn’t have motivation is at a major disadvantage.

Where does this feeling come from? Why does it feel so fleeting? Why is it not able to get us through long-term goals?

This topic is one I am fascinated by because I am always looking for ways to motivate myself and others.

I’m going to take a slightly different turn in this article and look at intrinsic and some extrinsic sources of motivation, addressing it at its root.

You’re also going to learn:

• The neurochemical basis for motivation
• What motivation is good for and what it isn’t
• Major killers of motivation
• How to motivate yourself and how to use motivation effectively

This is a long one, so you might want to take some notes.

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Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivation: What it is and Where It Comes From

Motivation (extrinsic or intrinsic) can be defined as:

the willingness to take action in order to produce an end-result.

It works on a spectrum. You can be “sorta” motivated or you can be “all out, pedal to the medal” motivated…or anything in between.

Think of motivation as latent fuel. Fuel can be used to start a car or start a bomb.

It’s something that has the potential to push you through a massive amount of resistance and procrastination.

Here’s some examples of it that you’ve inevitably seen:

• The team that’s down after halftime comes back to win the game
• The man who decides to stop being a couch potato and get in shape
• The runner who somehow gets a “second wind” during the last mile of a race
• The student who stays up late finishing their homework after coming home from sports practice
• The person who loses their job and does whatever it takes to get a new one or become an entrepreneur

There’s obviously many more, but if you look closely there’s a shared element among all of them.

The Upside of Motivation

Motivation is very combustible. It propels because it naturally has a lot of energy behind it. As a result, it makes you feel more energy.

This makes motivation very enjoyable if you’ve ever been under its heady influence for a good amount of time.

Motivation like this is very useful for accomplishing short-term goals like studying for a test or getting through a Friday at work. Motivation can take you very high, but unfortunately, it can also take you very low.

The Downside of Motivation

Motivation has three major obstacles that prevent it from being entirely useful.

1. It is transitory and hard to sustain long-term
2. It isn’t fixed by a solid plan
3. It does not enact action on its own

It is transitory and hard to sustain long-term

Getting pumped up, fired up, and whatever else feels amazing. But that feeling will fade because the body and brain will dial down that full-blast intensity.

Your body likes to maintain a state of homeostasis, which means it likes to stay at an even set-point.

Think of your body like a self-regulatory thermostat.

Your body uses up a certain amount of energy, calories, nutrients, etc, per day. It doesn’t like to go above or below that range for too long a time because it will cause the body to use up more energy than it likes to.

If you feel a certain emotion or exist in a certain state for a period of time, your body will make that state your “new normal”, which means it adjusts itself to that state.

Translation: you will not feel pumped up, i.e. motivated anymore.

It isn’t fixed by a solid plan

Motivation often occurs sort of spontaneously as a result of seeing, hearing, or experiencing something stimulating.

This contributes even more to its transitory nature. Motivation only starts, it never finishes.

You need a blueprint if you want to achieve your goals. Motivation on its own doesn’t provide that.

It does not enact action on its own

This is the biggest downside to motivation.

Motivation is often used to help create plans, but it isn’t really used to execute them to full completion (unless they’re super-short term).

You can’t always control when you’re motivated. That’s why professionals and amateurs rely on different approaches.

In addition, motivation induces a drug-like effect making you feel a certain way on one day and an entirely different way on another.

You may be motivated to go improve your skills and search for a new job after you get yelled at by your boss, but when you get home and are tired after a long day, it’s a different story.

I just called motivation a “drug”. Why is that? There’s a neurochemical basis for motivation that you need to understand, that produces this drug-like effect.

Dopamine: The Intrinsic Motivation Molecule

This part is very important to motivation, so it’s crucial that you read it and understand it.

Several years ago, I found myself feeling consistently unmotivated and I simply couldn’t figure out why.

It was only until I started researching what causes motivation and the psychology behind motivation that I was able to see that I was doing several things that were shooting me in the foot – mentally.

Here’s what it comes down to:

Every time you do something that is beneficial to your survival or that your brain has marked as “good”, you receive a hit of dopamine.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain responsible for motivation, not pleasure as many people mistakenly believe.

Dopamine attaches to D1 or D2 receptors in the brain. The latter is mainly used to help stimulate action.

L-tyrosine (a very important chemical) is the precursor to dopamine, which is then the precursor to lots of other chemical reactions.

Dopamine is responsible for a whole cascade of things such as concentration, movement, pain tolerance, working memory, and a ridiculous amount of other functions.

It is also responsible for conditions such as ADD (low dopamine response) and schizophrenia (high dopamine response).

As a result, dopamine has a lot of inherent energy.

Dopamine is the reason why we have advanced as a species.

How Dopamine Works In the Brain

Your brain has specific areas that are responsible for stimulating craving in response to a cue.

Taken as a whole, this is called your reward system.

It’s much more complicated than that, but dopamine is the key neurotransmitter behind reward-oriented psychology.

Your reward system is biologically programmed to pursue intrinsic rewards that are biologically beneficial to ones survival.

Dopamine is spiked when you notice a cue, which leads to a craving because your brain is telling you to pay attention to that cue.

Once you follow that cue and attain the reward (eating after you smell food), your brain releases another round of dopamine, triggering your brain to store that whole habit loop for later.

Dopamine is inherently good. But there’s a problem.

“False Metrics” and the Psychology Behind Extrinsic Motivation

We get one of these little pings on our smartphones, and we get a little hit of dopamine as well. We get excited. We feel anticipation. As we feel this, we want it more and more. So we spend more and more time looking at our phones. – Kim Stolz

Your brain is terrible at telling what is beneficial for your survival vs. things that only stimulate you.

These create what I term “false metrics” or “vanity metrics”, things that make you feel like you’re doing better than you actually are in life. I call them false because they can muddy your data and interfere with your life optimization efforts.

From an evolutionary perspective, the human brain thrives on novelty or intermittent, variable rewards.

If you see a new opportunity to increase your status, your brain will release dopamine. It may not work. Or it might. But you won’t know until you get in action and that’s what dopamine does. It makes you take that chance over and over again, even if the odds of success are low.

If you do this consistently over a period of time in the presence of enough stimulus, your brain reduces the number of overall dopamine receptors that the neurotransmitter can attach to, creating a new baseline.

You then need more of the same stimulus to produce the same feeling as before. This is how you pursue new goals and this is also how addiction starts in a nutshell.

Here’s some things can contribute to these “vanity metrics” and eventually addiction:

• Excessive video game playing
• Gambling
• Mindless Internet browsing
• Fast food including foods high in fat and sugar
• Drugs, including weed and other “soft” drugs
• Pornography
• The majority of electronic media

This is how it manifests behaviorally:

• Eating junk food filled with artificial calories, making you feel full
• Browsing for hours on the Internet, making you believe you accomplished something of value
• Getting likes on social media, making you believe you have tons of friends
• Mindless shopping, usually with a credit card, making you believe you actually have money

You’ll notice that most of these are based on some form of artificial stimulation that does not produce value. These have a very frenetic, static energy surrounding them, producing again, a drug-like effect.

Many people do not do hard drugs. But many people do engage in activities which can flood the brain with dopamine almost similar to drugs. These are known as behavioral addictions.

Behavioral addictions are dangerous because there is no cue to stop. Once you’ve finished the drug, you need to go back to whoever supplied you with the drug. Not so with a behavior.

Taken as a whole, these things that create a greater dopamine response than would be seen in the natural world are called “supernormal stimuli” and our world is flooded with them.

Because of supernormal stimuli, we then run into another problem.

Masculine Motivation and the Coolidge Effect

A discussion about motivation isn’t complete with what motivates humans at their core, especially men.

If you’re a man and you’re reading this, this is an important facet of your motivation, so you definitely need to understand this.

Since dopamine is a chemical of motivation, it is partly responsible for the natural sense of expansion that comes to male psychology. The men of the past had to build our current world from scratch and they needed a shit ton of motivation to do it.

Because of dopamine, you can cut to the chase and assume that all human beings operate best in an environment of relative scarcity and restriction. This is what prevents an adaptation response and/or “the Coolidge Effect”.

The Coolidge effect is a biological phenomenon seen in animals, whereby males exhibit renewed sexual interest whenever a new female is introduced to have sex with, even after cessation of sex with prior but still available sexual partners. To a lesser extent, the effect is also seen among females with regard to their mates. – Wikipedia

Men and women suffer from the Coolidge Effect. It is partly responsible for the breakdown in interpersonal romantic relationships.

This is why apps like Tinder are so popular because they suggest the possibility of novel partners.

This is why your new girlfriend kisses better than your old girlfriend.

In ancient times, a man, especially a young man, wasn’t guaranteed to reproduce.

This is seen in how women tend to have a “quality” problem when it comes to romance and men have a “quantity” problem.

Women can easily get “quantity”, which means of course – dopamine response. Men usually have more barriers to jump.

This lack of access to “quantity” naturally puts a man in a state of sexual scarcity. Without another outlet, it makes a man want to achieve more, press harder, and expand in order to attract a new mate.

Think of it as a form of fasting.

Taken as a whole, this process is known as “sexual transmutation“, which means literally changing and redirecting your thoughts, energy, and attention from something of a lower nature (sex) to that of a higher nature (achievement, passion, insert good thing here).

This is detailed in Chapter 11 of Napoleon Hill’s landmark book, Think and Grow Rich.

In the modern world, however, there’s a barrier that needs to be crossed before someone takes ready advantage of this source of motivation.

Namely, the massive deluge of sexually explicit content in every nook and cranny.

Nothing is standing between a man and erotic content but a simple Google search. Soft-core pornography exists to a large degree on all of the major social media channels, especially Instagram and Snapchat.

In a couple of minutes, an aroused young man can get access. This can turn into a habit and effectively rewires the brain over a period of time.

Sexually suggestive content is unique because there’s no limit. With physical substances, you’ll run out eventually – that’s your stopping cue. With pornography, there is no such cue.

“During our research, a lot of young men told us about how porn has given them a ‘twisted’ or unrealistic view of what sex and intimacy are supposed to be…Other young men told us about how other areas of their life are affected such as concentration and emotional well-being by watching excessive amounts of porn.” – Philip Zimbardo, Man Interrupted

As a result of your indulgence, you’ll experience all of the symptoms of low dopamine levels such:

• low motivation
• social anxiety
• memory problems
• lower energy
• and even depression due to low dopamine receptor availability

Worst of all, you when you’re with a chick you’re attracted to, you’re not going to be able to get that wood, son.

You don’t want that.

Your best solution is to just quit, to just stop doing whatever activities that get in the way of you and your basic motivational impulse. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Just drop it.

Easier said than done, but check out Your Brain on Porn for some pointers.

Why Understanding Motivation Matters

Motivation can be stimulated by external cues, but the baseline comes from the brain.

If your brain is messed up, good luck setting a nice foundation to be motivated from.

You simply won’t have the motivation to compete in this man-to-man contest called “life”. There is massive abundance and opportunity in this world, but everything has a hard limit.

If you want a job, there are at least 10 other people who want the same job. If you want to hook up with a girl, there’s at least 10 other guys who want her too.

Accomplishment only goes to the most motivated. And you will only be motivated by the amount of dopamine you can utilize towards an activity.

If you’re spending hours a day on social media or the Internet, watching porn, eating sugary junk food, and doing things that offer easy pleasure, you need to take a hard look in the mirror and ask yourself some tough questions. Namely, the most important ones:

Am I using these things as cheap thrills or am I actually addicted and require professional assistance?

Because if you are addicted to certain things, that’s a different issue beyond the scope of this article. It’s easy to lie to other people, much harder to lie to yourself.

However, if you just need a spark in the right direction, realize that you need to drastically minimize these pleasures and start using your motivation effectively on things that will produce value and change your life.

How to Use Motivation Effectively

Motivation plays an important role in taking action. Don’t discount it for that. For that reason, it has its place. But you need to know how to use it. Here’s some ways you can use your motivation effectively and get the most for your money.

1. Set a SMART Goal

SMART goals are goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, results-focused and time-bound. An example would be:

“Finish report on market analysis at 3:00 pm on Thursday and hand it to Mike”. This goal is crystal clear because it tells you exactly what you’re going to do and what you expect to happen at a certain time. There is no ambiguity here.

SMART goals guide motivation because they enable you to funnel that energy towards achieving something short-term that inevitably sets up the domino for a long-term win.

2. Get busy

You want to get down to work as soon as possible. You want this motivation to propel your early efforts into something that breaks past the inherent activation energy needed to start any task.

3. Keep A Reminder and Visualize

You want to keep your sources of motivation visible so they can give you a boost when you need it. This is part of the reason why people place pictures of their kids on their desk at work, so they’re reminded of what they’re fighting for.

If you’re overweight, take a picture of who you were and place it somewhere where you can see it every day. That was who you were on Day 1. Say goodbye to him.

If you want to become a millionaire, write a list of what you’ll be able to do once you’re a millionaire, so you’re motivated to take the actions to make that money.

4. Earn your Dopamine

This is a kind of nebulous concept but think of it like rewarding yourself when you’re a good boy.

You should space out rewards as much as possible so that your dopaminergic baseline is extremely low.

You want to make it easier to avoid low hanging fruit so you redirect that energy to healthy sources. Here’s an alternative to the stimulants I listed before:

• Go out and socialize with other human beings instead of stay on the Internet all day
• Drink tea or water instead of soda
• Read a book or learn a skill instead of passively watching Netflix
• Go on a hike instead of sitting inside and smoking weed
• Construct a solid budget with what to do with your money instead of buying things on a credit card

Over time, your brain will rewire and you will experience more enjoyment from things that don’t have a lot of stimulation.

This is the core of something like the dopamine detox.

5. Turn it into Discipline and Inspiration

Again for emphasis: motivation won’t get you 100% of the way to your objective. Maybe 25%, but you’ll have to rely on discipline and consistency to get you to the other side.

Anything you do repeatedly quickly becomes a habit.

Self-discipline can certainly become a habit – or the things can create self-discipline can become a habit.

And as mentioned earlier, that’s what separates professionals from amateurs.

Inspiration is the opposite side of motivation. It isn’t as intense, but it is more sustainable. Think of inspiration as the “pull” force when motivation is the “push”.

This form of action is only accessible at higher levels of a paradigm, when you’ve pushed past the early stages.

Conclusion + Wrapping Up

“Understanding motivation is one of the most important things we can do in our lives, because it has such a bearing on why we do the things we do and whether we enjoy them or not.” – Clayton Christensen

So to wrap up: motivation is an important part of taking action. It will press you through the initial inertia that happens when you start something new.

Your motivational baseline is influenced largely by the neurotransmitter dopamine and the effect it has on your brain. There are many things in the world that act on this baseline and artificially raise it, potentially creating addiction. Your best strategy is to avoid and take them out of your life.

Using motivation effectively involves a combination of being strategic about how its employed and using it on important tasks.

So the question is: are you motivated or not? We now know it’s not completely your decision. It’s a question of your neurochemical hormone balance. That neurochemical hormone balance provides the baseline for all of your other efforts. You can read a ton of motivational books, watch a ton of motivational videos, but in the end, it won’t be as effective if you don’t have your brain sorted out.

Do you have a problem or issue with motivation or are you always motivated? Let me know in the comments.