Traditional beliefs and treatment programs think of recovery as having a clear beginning and ending. Often, traditional ideas of sobriety view getting sober as recovery. Although sobriety is an important part of the journey, recovery is much more than abstinence. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), recovery is a holistic process that emerges from hope. Believing recovery is real provides the essential ingredient in the power of motivation so that you can lead a fulfilling life. Thus, understanding the power of motivation can be an invaluable part of your treatment and sustained recovery.
Furthermore, the process of recovery is a holistic approach that acknowledges the interconnected relationship between your experiences and substance use. Through the power of motivation in holistic care, you are recognized as an individual and a member of the community. With holistic support, your specific needs in every part of life are addressed. Thus, recovery is a commitment to giving you tools for motivation to thrive as an individual, peer, friend, family member, and community member.
At Rancho Recovery, we know addiction and recovery is a deeply personal journey. Therefore, we are committed to providing tailored treatment programs at a substance abuse treatment center to support your individual needs for healing. We are with you on every step of the journey to support building and fostering the power of motivation for lasting recovery.
In our luxury rehab, you have access to a comprehensive range of support services to support the power of motivation in your recovery. From evidence-based therapies and holistic activities to aftercare and alumni services, you are supported in and beyond treatment. With our transformational care, you have the support and guidance you need to stay motivated and heal as a whole person.
Yet, you may worry about how to maintain your motivation in recovery. If motivation can be eroded, what is stopping your motivation from being eroded again? How has addiction impacted your ability to find and maintain motivation? There are many questions that can leave you feeling anxious about your ability to recover and remain in recovery. Although it can feel daunting, understanding the power of motivation can be invaluable to your recovery journey. Understanding motivation can give you the insight you need to heal and thrive in recovery.
What Is Motivation?
The power of motivation clearly has an important impact on multiple areas of life. From the motivation to learn to the motivation to work out or stop abusing substances, motivation is integral to making healthy life choices and growing as a person. Yet, the power of motivation is often overlooked or discussed less as an important factor for growth. However, the overlooked nature of motivation, as the Center on Education Policy (CEP) states, may be its nature as an amorphous and difficult subject. The power of motivation can be difficult to define and measure as it affects every area of life.
Despite its complex and difficult-to-define nature, building a working definition of the power of motivation is important for effecting change. According to Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences, motivation is the process of behavior in pursuit of a goal. Motivation is the why behind the things you want and need to do to achieve your goals. Moreover, motivation can typically be broken into two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. In addition, some research suggests that family is a third form of motivation that can impact your goals and behaviors.
Listed below are the types of motivation that impact you and your daily life:
- Intrinsic motivation: This is your desire to do or achieve something because you truly want to
- You derive pleasure from doing it or see the value in doing it
- This type of motivation arises from within you
- Learning a new skill like crochet or knitting for the pleasure of learning
- Finding joy in solving a difficult crossword or Sudoku
- Attending college to get a degree in a field of study that interests you
- Participating in a sport because you love and enjoy it
- Volunteering at your local shelter or tutoring underserved youth because you enjoy helping others better their lives
- Extrinsic motivation: This is your desire to do or achieve something not for enjoyment, but because doing it will lead to a desired goal or outcome
- You diligently do it because you recognize the value of its outcome or reward
- This type of motivation arises from outside of yourself
- Working a job you do not particularly enjoy because it pays well
- Entering sports competitions to win a trophy, money, and or the social recognition and praise of others
- Study and doing extra credit work to get a good grade
- Doing extracurricular activities and advanced placement (AP) classes to look good on your college application
- Volunteering to look good on your resume and receive social recognition and praise
- Family motivation: This is your desire to serve and support your family because they are a prime facet in the fundamental sources of the meaning of life
- Your family is an essential component of social relationships in all cultures
- Family is often a source of healing, growth, and a sense of belonging
- Each member of a family plays an important role in supporting each other’s needs, safety, desires, and goals that protect their future
- Going to work to support your family financially when you do not feel intrinsic or extrinsic motivation to be there
Although there are different types of motivation, they do not happen in isolation from each other. Rather, motivation is a spectrum where any action can be motivated by a combination of intrinsic, extrinsic, and family factors. Thus, the power of motivation drives you to do difficult things and encourages you to improve your well-being and happiness. However, addiction can be disruptive and destructive to your motivation. Understanding how addiction impairs your motivation can provide insight into how to regain motivation for long-term healing.
Motivational Deregulation and Addiction
Addiction can have a profound impact on your brain function. Abusing substances can make changes to the brain that overwhelm and subvert the way you register the pleasure circuits in your brain. Drug use causes the release of large amounts of dopamine that encourage you to repeat the behavior of use over and over again. Thus, the reward circuits learning system in your brain is taken over as substances reinforce substance use as pleasurable. Not only are the brain’s reward circuits connected to pleasure, but motivation and memory as well.
As a result, addiction corrupts the connections in your brain that support functions like learning and motivation. The nature of addiction creates a cycle of motivation and motivational deregulation. Through repeated exposure to substances, you are motivated to like, want, and seek out using substances. At the same time, the overwhelming craving for the addictive substance impairs your motivation to not use or stop using substances.
Therefore, addiction turns motivation into a maladaptive process where the specific goal of use becomes the dominant action. In addition, a rapid and strong learning process toward reward develops as it narrows the diversity in motives you experience. Looking at the brain changes that occur with addiction highlights addiction’s disruption of your motivational processes. With more insight, you can explore the benefits of the power of motivation for lasting recovery.
The Power of Motivation: How Motivation Supports Recovery
According to “Enhancing Motivation for Change in Substance Use Disorder Treatment” from SAMHSA, motivation is a critical key for substance use behavior change. Without motivation, it is challenging or impossible to make difficult life changes to health-risk behavior. Change in and of itself, much like motivation, is a complex construct with evolving meanings.
However, at its core, change and motivation are deeply interconnected with self-determination. For example, on the one hand, an employer can make organizational changes that increase employees motivation to work. On the other hand, wanting a healthy life can motivate you to change your eating habits. Self-determination connects to motivation and behavioral changes because of self-determination theory (SDT).
The SDT suggests that people inherently want to engage in activities that meet their needs for:
- Autonomy: You feel like you have the power of choice and are willing to engage in self-determined behavior
- Is supported when others grasp and acknowledge your wishes, preferences, and perspective
- Your point of view is understood, and you are provided with a choice in how you behave
- You are not being controlled or pressured to act in a certain way
- Competency: Experience has allowed you to master and be effective in your goals
- Is supported when you are presented with optimal challenges and opportunities
- You engage in specific goals that are challenging but not overwhelming
- Your sense of initiation is encouraged
- You are provided structure with evidence-based interventions and helpful feedback that encourages healthy behaviors
- Is supported when you are presented with optimal challenges and opportunities
- Relatedness: You feel connected and a sense of belonging with others
- Is supported when you have trusted loved ones who are involved and interested in your goals
- Your loved ones are empathetic to your feelings
- You know you are significant, cared for, and loved
Thus, through the desire for self-determination, you are motivated to make changes in your life. Further, with self-motivation in addiction treatment and recovery, true healing can happen. Listed below are some of the benefits of motivation for treatment and recovery:
- Increases your desire to change your unhealthy behaviors
- You are more prepared to engage in and stay in treatment
- Increases your participation and involvement in treatment
- Helps you prioritize your recovery
- You are better able to reduce your substance use
- Increases your abstinence from using substances
- Supports dismantling negative thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about yourself
- Encourages recognizing your strengths, abilities, and competencies
- Improves your treatment outcomes
- Supports maintaining your recovery after treatment
- Encourage a rapid return to treatment and or support if you experience emotional, mental, or physical relapse
- Empowers you to overcome challenges in treatment and recovery to achieve your long-term goals
- Helps you stay on track on your recovery journey
- Improves mental strength, confidence to keep going, and a growth mindset
- Supports your sense of purpose in your recovery to overcome roadblocks and distractions
- Encourages personal autonomy, support, and self-efficacy
- Reinforces the idea that change is possible
Thus, the power of motivation is clear in the many ways it benefits your treatment and recovery. Yet, in the throes of addiction, it can be difficult to find the motivation to change. The thought of maintaining your motivation without structured support after treatment can also feel daunting. Therefore, insight into how to engage the power of motivation can help you foster the tools you need to heal and sustain recovery.
Ways to Engage the Power of Motivation
It is important to remember that motivation is not a static but dynamic process. Your motivation levels change based on a variety of factors, so you should not be discouraged in moments of low motivation. Rather than being overwhelmed in times of low motivation and or challenges, you can overcome those obstacles with support tools.
As the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notes, you can influence your levels of motivation and self-control by setting meaningful goals. Building goals that support what you need and want and help you overcome challenges are invaluable to recovery. Listed below are some of the ways you can engage and maintain the power of motivation in recovery:
- Keep a journal of your recovery journey
- Reflect on the positive things that have come from your sobriety
- Set goals and break them into smaller manageable chunks
- Keep track of your progress toward your goals
- Write a list of people and things you are grateful for and why
- List potential obstacles to your goals and how you can overcome them
- Read your earlier journal entries to remind yourself how much you have grown
- Build a strong support network
- Family, friends, co-workers, clinicians, and your sober community
- Seek support from your support network
- Trusted loved ones
- Peers
- Mentors
- Attend group therapy and or other support groups
- Engage in alumni services
- Make time for self-care
- Engage in exercise like yoga, walking, and jogging
- Start a daily or weekly meditation routine
- Participate in activities and hobbies you enjoy, like reading and painting
- Spend quality time with your loved ones
- Eat nutritious food and stay hydrated
- Keep a schedule to help you organize and maintain your goals and self-care
- Find ways to stay accountable
- Reach out to others who have the same goal so you can work together
- Talk to individuals who have achieved similar goals to learn from their insight
- Reward yourself when you make progress and accomplish your goals
- Make time to celebrate your recovery and your recovery milestones
- Engage in positive self-talk
- Rather than “I can’t do it,” say “I can try to do it”
- Write down and or say affirmations to yourself
- “I am worthy,” “Doing my best is enough,” “Rest is productive”
- Put sticky notes on your mirror to engage with and remind yourself to be kind to yourself
- Practice mindfulness
- Remember to take things one day at a time
The many ways you can maintain motivation in recovery showcase the value of support, setting goals, and self-care for healing.
Fostering the Power of Motivation at Rancho Recovery
At Rancho Recovery, we know how important individualized care is in supporting the power of motivation in addiction recovery for long-term well-being. There is no cookie-cutter treatment program because recovery is a deeply personal experience. Therefore, we are committed to providing tailored holistic care to address your individual needs for motivation. Through a luxury drug rehab, you are treated as a whole person to heal in mind, body, and spirit.
When you heal as a whole person, you can continue to build upon the tools you learned in treatment to thrive. With a wide variety of therapeutic modalities, you can find the support and guidance you need to foster the power of motivation and heal. Moreover, as a Christian rehab center, we provide a community dedicated to uplifting and celebrating you in treatment and beyond. Even when your motivation falters, at Rancho Recovery, we are your rock, here to support you with compassion no matter where you are on your recovery journey.
Motivation is integral to healthy life choices and growth. Moreover, motivation is a key element for building the desire and strength to seek treatment. Yet, addiction, coupled with other maladaptive factors like low social support, can impair motivation. The changes to the brain caused by substance use disrupt your ability to diversify your motives, as the motive to consume substances overrides everything else. However, with holistic support, you can build the tools you need to foster motivation. Through the power of motivation, you can be empowered to set goals that support you throughout your recovery journey. Therefore, at Rancho Recovery, we are committed to providing individualized holistic care to support your long-term well-being. Call us at (877) 484-1447 today.