"MOTIVATION": What does it REALLY take?

When people talk about being "motivated" to exercise, they are usually referring to having a sufficient sense of desire to outweigh any reluctance, negative feelings or fatigue that may deter them from doing the activity. This might seem simple on the surface, but there are a lot more layers to "motivation" than there may seem on face value. Today I will break down one of these layers to shed some light on the question of what it really means to be "motivated."

It's easy to forget that our motives to exercise are in competition with all of the other motives that are active in our lives. Whilst we may care deeply about being physically active in order to support our health and longevity, there are also other things we care about and that may feel more immediate - sorting our career or work life, looking after the family, feeling socially supported and accepted, seeking much-needed rest and recovery, etcetera. Furthermore, what we consciously decide are our needs and desires are not always in alignment with what we need and desire at a more emotional or biological level.

So when we struggle to exercise consistently or to get started at all, what this boils down to is that in their current form, the activities in question are not experienced as either sufficiently positive or important to compel engagement in them. This doesn't mean they are not positive or important - just that they are insufficiently so to compete with other activities that reflect other motives. It is an indication that other unmet needs or desires are perceived as further up the hierarchy and therefore demanding priority. Furthermore, we may even consciously think that exercise is just as important and positive, but this isn't necessarily enough.

There are a number of different psychological factors that influence feelings of motivation, but the concept I’m going to focus on today is motivational relevance.

Motivational relevance generally refers to the extent to which something has perceived implications for an individual’s safety, wellbeing and personal goals. But this isn’t just a conscious, rational assessment of how beneficial an activity will be for us - if that was an effective driver alone, everybody would be exercising!

Motivational relevance goes right down to a deep biological and emotional level, rooted in old evolutionary processes. Long before the evolution of the conscious, reflective thinking capacities we have today, we developed ways of assessing situations very rapidly based on their perceived threat or promise - i.e. "it this good or bad for my survival chances?" This is enabled by two fundamental sets of systems that activate in the presence of potentially aversive or appetitive stimuli - in other words, the potential for loss/harm or gain. There are various terms for these different systems (in addition to arguments as to which mechanisms and processes are involved - to be discussed elsewhere) but I'll stick with "avoidance system" (sensitive to threats) and "approach system" (sensitive to potential promise) for now.

Motivational relevance then occurs where a situation has characteristics that activate these fundamental systems - it has the potential to bring us something good or pose a threat. So for an activity to feel “motivating” to us from this perspective, it must be perceived on an emotional level to have a deep sense of personal promise to it, i.e. it activates our approach system. Some people also find activation of the avoidance system to be helpful too - knowing that in doing what they are doing they stave off some negative outcome, but this tends to be less common.

Why does this matter?

When something has real motivational relevance for us, cues that remind us of it or signal its imminent onset activate what neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp identified as the “seeking system”, a neural system in our brains that energises exploration, forward behaviour, the pursuing of rewards and the seeking of new experiences. The phrase "nature doesn't waste energy" comes to mind when reflecting on this - this system only activates when something that is perceived to be truly potentially worthwhile for our being, and therefore worth the energy cost, comes into view.

The benefit of this is that our psychological experience gets organised around pursuing this activity, meaning we can do so with an energy and focus that feels efficient rather than forced. Even if we are tired and a part of us doesn't want to get out of the door, when something has real motivational relevance it feels like a "done deal", like "we're doing this" despite the inner complaints. It's a chore but it also isn't.

How do we create that sense of promise?

This is an interesting question. We have spoken before in our blogs about the biological impetus (what we call "biological magnets") laid down by having repeated feel-good experiences during exercise activities. Activities that feel emotionally positive will become easier to initiate because they catalyse neurochemical and physiological reactions that signal "this is beneficial" to our brains.

But considering some activities do not lend themselves so much to pleasure and enjoyment, and the access to positive moods can be blocked by more negative ones, there needs to be more to the activity than feel-good experiences. Ideally, the activity would not just be desired or something to look forward to, but awarded a sense of profundity which comes with doing something that will improve your life in deeply meaningful ways. So it isn't just about looking better or feeling good in oneself for feeling fit - these are good starts, but to endow the activity with sufficient significance to give it a higher chance to win out against competing motives, it has to have broader benefits for you as a whole. In all honesty there is no quick fix or strategy to help you access this - it is something that takes time and a good deal of self-enquiry to get a hold of.

Despite the focus on positivity though, one way of paradoxically getting at this can be through reflection on anticipated regret, which basically involves connecting with the regret you will experience if you don't exercise. This shouldn't be done from a doom-and-gloom, self-critical "you'll feel terrible if you don't" stance, but rather from a calm and balanced stance in which you reflect on what you'll miss out on.

I will use an example to illustrate. If I don't feel like doing a strength training session, first I might consider the benefits I typically experience during such sessions - the sense that I am doing something morally good for myself, honouring my body and its capacities, making gains in strength and muscle mass, enjoying the feeling of activating my muscles and taking some time

out to just be present, focus on movement and listen to music. Second, I might then reflect on how I will feel having chosen not to provide myself with those things and to miss out on that experience. The key here is to really notice and sit with the feelings that emerge in response to this reflection, despite their potentially uncomfortable nature - not to just brush over them, as we often do. The experiencing of and mulling over them is absolutely key to the impact of this. Such feelings may be feelings of loss, sadness, disappointment, frustration, apathy - they tend to be negative feelings that signal the withdrawal of something beneficial.

The third and final aspect to this is to consider that you owe this to yourself. It is an act of respect for yourself to continue to engage in an exercise activity, even if it's a smaller, "lesser-than" version of the activity. It helps to also commit to pursuing the activity in a way that is not tyrannical and self-critical, but instead with the view to making the experience a good experience. So in this way, following through on the activity is not just avoidance of a negative (e.g. "if I do it I won't feel guilty"), but prevention of a loss to the self.

This is just one idea. The reality is that if we want to truly understand what "makes us tick" - what will bring us that sense of motivational relevance - we need to understand ourselves better than we currently do, which involves a commitment to observing and seeking to understand our psychological experiences around exercise over time.

Chloe

Psychology of Movement