My mom shared an article with me by Karris Golden that was published, I believe, in our local newspaper. The article is titled “Motivation is the Key to Achieving Positive Change”. I wasn’t able to find the article in it’s entirety on-line but I’m going to share some parts of it with you:
“One of my favorite quotes by Protestant reformer Martin Luther is, “How soon ‘not now’ becomes ‘never.’”
Motivation is essentially a desire to minimize negative results, such as pain, and achieve and sustain positive results, such as the physical pleasure derived from eating chocolate.
You can want something but you have to make it a priority and remain focused on the goal. It’s easy to revert to past behavior and become unmotivated; “how soon ‘not now’ becomes ‘never.’”
According to “Managing Your Mind: The Mental Fitness Gide” by Gillian Butler and Tony Hope, all roads lead back to motivation. That is if we can train ourselves to want to reap the benefits of self-control more than we want what’s bad for us we’ll usually maintain hard-won good habits. And we won’t allow ourselves to believe all is lost when we slip a bit. The bottom line is, that positive changes are possible if we’re able to determine our motivation. Whatever it takes-Rewards, avoiding “bad” triggers, sheer determination of will-each of us has the ability to be and do better.”
So there is a lot of things this article made me think about but specifically about autism it made me think of a couple things.
#1-It made me realize I have the motivation to help advocate for Adrian and other people with autism. Even if we all have our different causes that we’re interested in and even when I feel like nobody else cares…I have the ultimate motivation to keep going and that’s my special boy Adrian.
I wanted to say that there are times when I get frustrated and angry. We all have our “causes” that we’re passionate about and it’s usually something that you personally, or someone you love is dealing with or has dealt with. I understand that and there is nothing wrong with that. I am obviously passionate about autism and things that go with it because Adrian has autism and I love him. If Adrian didn’t have autism would that be a cause that I’m excited about? Probably not. There are times though that I’m writing about autism and other special needs and I start thinking, “I’m preaching to the choir here” & when I’m in an especially bad mood, frankly, I’m thinking “Nobody who doesn’t deal with autism day to day gives a crap about autism and what we’re dealing with” When I’m in my right frame of mind though I know that’s not true. I know there are people who do care.
#2-It’s hard to keep going sometimes. Working with Adrian day after day and seeing little fruits from my labor is difficult. Again, I have the ultimate motivation, Adrian. And he’s worth it, he’s worth 100% of my effort 100% of the time.
We can all do better, we can all do more.
With that I’ll end with quote from another “Martin”
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
