During my time in high school, I was very involved in extracurriculars. Two of those extracurriculars included Cross Country and Track. I really enjoyed both of them because of the way that they challenged me to become a better version of myself. I have always been driven by a feeling of being needed/ wanted. As long as I felt that what I was doing was important to someone, I would strive to get it done as fast as possible. For example, I felt that I would be letting down the coaches if I didn't try and run. I would be letting down my teachers if I didn't try my hardest in my studies (although some studies I truly did enjoy). I would be letting down my livestream sponsor and anyone who watched the livestreams if I didn't try hard at live streaming. I really enjoyed participating, interacting with the amazing people I got to interact with, and helping represent the school in these various fashions. The problem came instead from where I was getting my motivation from. With my motivation was that when I was no longer letting these people down, I had motivation to continue with it. The most obvious of this is with my running. When I had Track season to look forward to (pre-COVID), I was running like crazy because I felt I would let the coach down. But when I had found out that track season was cancelled, I stopped running entirely. I was depressed and didn't do anything. I started to run again with some friends over the summer, but the only reason I was running with them was because I felt that I was going to let them down if I didn't run, but the next thing I knew, I was in college in the Early Start program, and I had to find the motivation to run. I wasn't able to find it and ended up not running but maybe once or twice a month. I had lost the motivation and the priorities for the ways that I spend my free time became dominated by entertainment instead of running. Trying to switch motivation is hard to do. It is something deeper than the surface. I have habitually made that my motivation. I am still trying to fix this, but it becomes harder and harder every day. The changes that have been going on in my life have rendered my motivations useless.
I have never been comfortable with change. I have always feared the uncertain. I like to know what I am getting myself into before I get myself into it. In high school, I built my motivations on the wrong things. Competition is something that I have used almost all of my life to motivate me. Cross Country, Track, and Academics were the only things that had both motivation from fear of letting others down, but also motivation from competition. Unfortunately, both of these motivations are not near as present after I went to college.
Through the experiences that I have had recently, I noticed that I need to change my motivation. I need to change it to something that doesn't care about changes or time. I need to have motivation just from that fact that I am bettering myself and be able to use that as my sole motivation. It's not easy. It has taken me a really long time of trying to change where my motivation comes from, and I'm still not done. But I am miles ahead of where I was. I would argue that my biggest regret from my years in high school was not setting my motivations correctly to make sure that my priorities stayed in the right order.
Thanks,
Seth Pohle