motivation wave

with health and exercise being the focus of my education and desired profession, this keynote address given by bj fogg to people working in the health and exercise industry was naturally interesting to me. but as i watched and listened i realized how this behavior model could be applied to recovery as well. the audio is a little soft, but i think its worth your 23 minutes.

when we are highly motivated we are able to do more difficult things and resist more difficult temptations. when the motivation is low and we're feeling BLASTED (bored, lonely, angry, stressed, tired, empty, depressed) we're in a weakened state, and its obviously much easier to slip.

its normal to have the peaks and troughs. in fact, the high motivation times he labels as "temporary" periods and the low motivational times are labeled "natural" periods.

its ok to have low motivational periods.

what i love about this model is that the focus is on utilizing those temporary high motivation periods to facilitate our opportunities to accomplish difficult things during the natural low motivational moments. the key is, when our motivation is high, we have an opportunity to do some very difficult things and he gives 3 priorities of what we should do when we are in a highly motivated state.

priority #1: do hard things that structure future behavior

priority #2: do hard things that reduce barriers to behavior (i might modify this to also include increasing barriers to the addictive behavior)

priority #3: do hard things that increase your capability

another thing i really like about this model is that it gives a great perspective, especially during the last 5 minutes, for the loved ones working with and supporting those of us making the effort to overcome our addictions. 

i hope this can help us to be at least a little more aware and take advantage of our temporary high motivational periods to give ourselves a greater opportunity for success during our more "natural" periods.