What Motivates You?

What Motivates You?

I am often asked what motivates me to do the things I do every day, especially what motivates me to climb. These questions often get me thinking and reflecting on what truly inspires me to do what I do, whether it’s everyday things or even climbing mountains. Many people misinterpret what motivation can truly stand for in their life. They look at it as the goal itself when it is more the reason and the movement you take to get there.

Motivation is the determination and drive to get yourself moving towards your goals, no matter how large or small the goal. In a more metaphorical sense, motivation is the gas, engine, and wheels that move a car into motion, in the sense that it is the driving force to go forward. The vehicle will not move without those parts, and if you lack motivation toward any goals, neither will you. Therefore, I want to share with you in this post what motivates me every day and what keeps me motivated even when I fall short of my goals.

Understand Your Reasons Why

Life can get challenging at times, making motivation and staying motivated enormously more complicated to do. If you want to keep yourself driven towards your goals, remind yourself of your reasons why you started in the first place. Your why motivates you to get out of bed every morning even when you don’t feel like it. Also, there doesn’t need to be just one reason why you strive to achieve the things you want to achieve; you can have many reasons for your why. For me, my kids are my greatest blessing and why I keep moving forward with my goals, especially climbing. I climb mountains not only because it’s thrilling for me or because no woman has ever completed the seven-second summits. The reason stretches much deeper than that. It shows to myself, my kids, and countless others that I reach with my journey that we can achieve even challenging things such as climbing mountains if we set our determination to do it.

Keep Going Even After Failure

After I was not able to successfully summit K2, others may have wondered what my motivation is to keep going forward regardless. Failure is fuel to me, and I find it motivates me further than I imagined. If you think about it this way, some of the greatest inventions we use today were perfected after numerous attempts. If the creator gave up after that first attempt, we would not have some of the greatest products that we use every day. I often apply this mindset to my climbing because if I give up after not reaching one summit, I give it the power to invalidate my goal to climb the seven second summits. Failure should motivate you to revisit what went wrong and attempt again to succeed towards your goals. 

Reflect On Your Progress

Reflecting on your progress is another element that will keep you motivated towards your goals. Looking back to see how far you have come is not living in the past yet is reflecting on the past, which is a different perspective. Many of us fail to realize that the little things we do every day contribute to our bigger vision towards our goals. A lot can change in a year or even just a few months, so if you want to stay motivated and on track with your goals, then it is necessary to glance in the rearview mirror from time to time to see how far you’ve come. And if you ever find yourself stuck without motivation, reflecting back to remind you that you didn’t come this far to only come this far.