Days Since Last Betting: 118
I attended the topic group on here last night and as usual, found it very useful. We had a useful and educational discussion on Motivation looking from 3 main questionds
- What is your motivation for change
- How do you know you are motivated
- How can you maintain your motivation
For motivation for change, there was a common theme among those in the group, when we first started to seek help, and decided we wanted to stop gambling, the motivation was to stop bad things that were happening in our lives, whether that was financial issues, relationship issues etc. Over time however, as things started to improve however, the motivation shifted to more positives items like staying debt free, saving, keeping up our improved relationships etc.
For knowing that we are motivated, it mostly came down to the actions that we take. If we are putting blockers in place, attending meetings, writing in the forum etc, our motivation will generally be high, if however we start to use the forum less, attending meetings less etc, that can be a sign that our motivation is starting to reduce from where it was.
For maintaining motivation, this links back into the first two parts. First we need to identify good items that will help motivate us, but over time we need to revisit and update these motivations as they are likely to change as we go through the recovery journey, and secondly, we need to be conscious of how motivated we are, and if we notice this motivation reducing, again revisit what we are using for motivation to see if those need updating.