No Motivation Required

Who are you?

No, I'm not asking for your name or your age or any information about you. I'm asking you who you are or rather who you identify yourself as. I guess a better question would be

What kind of a person are you?

I ask this because I want to dive into something that is not talked about often. Before I divulge what this is, I'm going to tell you what pushed me to talk about this in the first place. I got a lot of responses to my

"The Perfect Student" article, which I am grateful for. Many people talked about how the article helped motivate them or inspire them to find the motivation to study. I noticed many people, including Rishabh, who contributed to "The Perfect Student" (read it for more context), said they require motivation, to do what they do. Naturally, it beckoned me to ask myself what my reason was. I define motivation as that sense of drive and passion to accomplish a task and you need a reason to be motivated. Obviously, I've asked myself this question before but I always thought the answer was exceedingly simple and obvious and so I never answered it or attempted to, until now. I couldn't have been any more wrong. I sat and I thought and I thought and could not for the life of me understand why I worked so hard or pushed through difficult times. Some answers that came to my mind were "competition" or to make my parents proud but I knew I didn't do it for them. The competition was fun and sure it helped but not to the point of getting me to sit down and study for 10 hours a day. During this thought process, a concept from a book came racing through my mind.

Identity.

My father works from home thanks to the global wide pandemic. This gives me the freedom to talk to him on any matter, whenever I want to. So, I went to him one morning and I asked him,

What motivates you to work so hard?

There were a few answers I was expecting. The two main answers I was expecting him to say were, "the idea of leading a more comfortable and successful life" or a snarky response like, "you call this working hard?" But what I heard was simply, "nothing". He shook his head and said "nothing". The reason why I find this surprising was because my father did not have the luxuries that he provided me with when he was growing up.

My father grew up in a small house in Ernakulam, India with a modest household income. By the time he graduated from college in India, he knew very little English and he decided to move to Singapore. I can only imagine how scary this experience must have been - to be in a different country, barely knowing the language and the culture. (Just like Tom Hanks in 'The Terminal' - a very good movie indeed). It didn't stop there. He was then reallocated to West Virginia, America, where my family followed him and where I had the first part of my childhood. From this point, we led a comfortable life without too much of a struggle.

Returning to the article, one would think after watching many motivational videos on YouTube and reading about how people born into poverty became very successful, that his poverty was the fuel that drove him to work hard. If this were true, I personally would have no reason to work very hard. I could find a job as a high school dropout and still lead a moderately comfortable life but even I had a sense of drive and felt compelled to work hard. After my father answered my question, I told him what I thought his motivation would be and he laughed. He simply explained that the life he was living in India was his normal - living standards that he was already accustomed to and he was fine with that. From the cluster of expressions on my face, my father judged that I was not convinced with what he had just told me. He told me that he was just a hard worker and that he just wanted to be the best at what he wanted to do.

That was just who he was

It was all coming together now.

Ok. Enough beating around the bush. I don't think it was any sort of motivation that allowed me to do what I did or that pushed me even when I wanted to give up and I just didn't realize it. It was my identity that caused all of this as it is simply what I would do because that is who I am. Sounds bizarre? Allow me to share a few different aspects of my life where this concept of identity prevailed.

I have never been a runner. The thought of running, panting and breaking down with exhaustion was simply enough reason for me to not run. That's who I was - somebody who does not run. Why would I tell myself I was? I did nothing to show I am. So every time my parents told me to go for a run as exercise, my rejection of that idea simply reinforced my identity as someone who does not run. When my 12th-grade exams finished and I returned to Singapore, I needed some form of exercise but public basketball courts were closed ( I like basketball ) and so running was my only option. But as mentioned earlier, I resented running. So I started slow, running short distances and taking it easy, thinking to myself that I don't have to do this again if I didn't want to. However, every time I decided to put on my shoes and go for a run, I was giving my mind more and more evidence of the fact that I am a runner. The more I run, the more I convince myself that I am a runner. Hence, I start making decisions that a runner would make like how I choose my diet and how I take care of my body. Now that I feel like a runner, going on longer and faster runs has never been easier.

We can use the same concept in a negative example. If you spend your online classes watching YouTube regularly, you have identified yourself as someone who does not pay attention in class and you might have a ton of evidence for thinking that and a lot of thoughts such as "I just can't concentrate" and "I don't like this subject" to convince yourself. You may just be doing this unconsciously, which will have negative effects on your grades. If you slowly, just try or attempt to start paying attention in class, you will slowly start to convince yourself that you are someone who pays attention in class and that makes it easier to eventually tune out distractions and stop watching YouTube during online classes ( sorry teachers if you're reading hehe )

So I think the reason I worked so hard is that I identified myself as someone who works very hard and I enjoyed doing it. I guess the point at which my identity changed from "I can't do well in school" and "I'm just not smart enough" to "I enjoy learning" is when I asked myself "Can I score A*'s for all my subjects?" in my 10th grade and I said no. I was convinced I couldn't. Heck, my friends had more faith in me than I did in myself. I found myself asking the same question when I was in 11th grade, "Can I actually get a 45?". I decided to try and answer differently from the last time. So, I told myself it was possible and naturally, I asked myself a follow-up question. "What do I have to do to get from where I am now to where I want to be?". This took a lot of thought and planning and my identity had a fundamental change from "a student that tries to get a decent score" to "a student aiming for the best", which pushed me to work harder.

Now, I know you might be sceptical of what I am telling you because the way people usually go about things is to find the motivation to actually do something. But I feel this is very ineffective because when you are tired, you're not going to find motivation and hence, you won't be able to stick to what you need to do. You need to depend on another system to get stuff done and I have been doing this unconsciously over the past few years and now that I have become aware of it, it becomes easy to apply this to different areas of my life as shared earlier, allowing myself to become disciplined with no motivation required. If you know anyone that is having difficulty sticking with something or having a "lack of motivation" to study, share this article with them, or rather, ask them to contact me and share their side of the story!