Motivation

Jan 19, 2013

My husband and I are watching Avatar. We've reached the part of the movie (spoiler alert) where the arrogant jerk general dude decides to go bomb the heck out of the natives because of Jake's video log entry where he says, "there's nothing we can offer these people to make them give up their home". The core mission of the exploration team was to find a way to motivate the natives into moving from their home so the land underneath it could be mined for a vast deposit of a rare element.

We always have motivation -- but we don't always enjoy it. For example, most of us have bills to pay, so we are motivated to go to work whether we want to or not. Our kids can't go to school naked, so we are motivated to do laundry. The "Maintenance Required" light is flashing, so we get the oil changed in the car.

Unfortunately, people don't come equipped with a "maintenance required" light. We have to make an effort to ensure that we are taking care of ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Being a healthy weight is great, but our goal should always be to be healthy in all aspects of our lives. We cannot sacrifice our psychological health for a magic number on a scale or an idealized image of how we should look. Allowing ourselves to become obsessed about our bodies is every bit as unhealthy as the excess weight we're working so hard to rid ourselves up.

How does this tie into motivation? It's simple -- our motivation must be to be healthy as whole people. Sound minds, sound bodies, sound hearts. We must be motivated not just to live day-to-day, but to thrive. We've all been given a second chance to be healthy; shouldn't we make the very most of it?

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