As I sat surrounded by the white walls of my new apartment, I pondered the term “motivation.” The white walls in front of me begin to come to life with images of accomplishments I achieved up until this point of my life. 

But when the images I saw on the wall began to slow, I visualized a comparison of those “images” with the boring and more recent years of my life. Soon doubt set in and the feelings of depression began to float into my brain waves. I was on the verge of recognizing that my own motivation was slipping through the cracks. 

It wasn’t that I was unsatisfied with who I was becoming and the new things I was doing; I was just disappointed that I had reached my peak performance and refused to go beyond what I had already come to learn and love. 

I had become way too comfortable with the way things were, and clearly was lacking the decision-making skills to point my future game plan in the right direction. It was time for new and challenging goals. It was time to get my motivation back. It was time to start saying yes to my future.

For a minute, I stared into a moderately oversized glass beer mug I bought from the local 99-cent store, paired on the side with a poorly made English muffin. I laughed hysterically for a moment catching my own college-life humor at its brilliance; not because I was currently broke, but because I was becoming extremely lazy. 

Like the hungry journalist I knew I was becoming, I took another large gulp of poorly filtered water and soaked in the final moment of feeling content with life. Believe me: I wasn’t ecstatic that I was drinking poorly filtered water, nor was I feeling unhappy about it. 

Ironically, I had nothing to complain about, not even the white walls screaming “paint me” in the background. However, I was done with the concept of being content with how things are, because I had the choice: to keep pouring the same old drinking water into my mug, or to simply change the filter for optimal filtration. 

It was so easy to make the decision to switch the old filter for a brand new one, especially after finding out that I stocked multiple clean filters in the cabinet. So then I wondered, “Had I reached a point in life where I could answer all my goals with simple choices and small actions with self-implementation?”

My mug was literally and metaphorically half-full, sitting in front of me with plenty of space to implement new goals and decisions for myself. If I was smack-dab in the middle of the life spectrum—the feeling content was spot on. How could I get to the ideal stage in my life were I was encouraged and motivated to learn from new occurrences? By simply doing it all over again.                

I was able to ground my general goals and allow for flexible adjustments when needed. By reminding myself that I had reached a high level of motivation many times within the last 20 years of my life, I finally felt like I was on a path towards self-success. After seeing accomplishments from my past, what could be more motivating than predicting that of my future? 

Those who are willing to push forward with the internal drive of real motivation and real will power won’t settle for words like “maybe,” “sometimes” and “eventually,” nor will they settle for the feeling of being content when the option of growth is always within reach.