Finding Proper Motivation

I felt really brilliant when I thought of a way to encourage myself to do the daily exercising and scripture study I have been so lax at. Exercising was just every now and again and the scripture study hasn't been so much of a study as it has been a let's-just-read-this-chapter-together-before-we-fall-asleep kind of situation. A brainwave came to me about how to get the motivation to do both of these things. Money.

Money is one of my best motivators. I get to plan what things I want to buy and what I will do with them. When I get money I feel rewarded for a job well done. When money is taken out of the equation I have much less motivation to do what is asked of me. That's the real reason I quit my job (I understand the reasoning on that sounds faulty, but if you knew the whole story you would completely understand why I thought it was time to go).

The problem with money as a motivator is when you don't have it. This is also a beautiful part of my plan. For every day I can earn a possible $1.50 in personal spending money that I don't have to feel guilty about. I get 75 cents for each half hour of exercise and personal scripture study. As it is now, I have a tendency to just spend whenever I feel like there is something I want enough to justify pulling out the debit card. And then I wonder why the money runs out before the month does. With this new system, I have to earn the money that will be spent on things other than necessities. So I curb my spending while earning the money to spend guilt free. It's the perfect plan! Unless I don't have the willpower to cut the spending, but I've been doing really well.

Eric liked the idea and even helped me improve it. We don't exercise on Sunday, so half of the day's $1.50 is lost. He suggested we get the other 75 cents by doing an extra half hour of scripture study in our mission language. Works for me! I haven't done it yet, but I think it's a brilliant idea. So now if I skip out on my two goals I'm only losing money. That works pretty well...except when the baby waked up early or I have too rough a time getting out of bed on time. We're working on that.