self motivation

I've been thinking a lot lately about motivation, gratification and feedback. Something that's very different for me about my job right now is that I get almost no feedback unless I do something wrong. I figure this is pretty normal, it's just that after so many years of being a student, I'm used to getting good feedback (what can I say, I was a good student). It's part of growing up I guess, there's no longer anyone praising me and giving me positive feedback. SO, I have to provide that for myself and remind myself when I'm doing a good job at things as well as acknowledge when I'm not.

On the other hand, I tend to give tons of positive feedback to people when I'm shift manager. I don't do it on purpose either, I guess it's just who I am. I like to tell people when they do a good job, especially under difficult circumstances. I like to reassure people that they'll catch on, or get better at it or whatever. I certainly don't sit down and consciously remind myself to do this it just flows naturally out of me... something interesting to note about my leadership style I guess.

So why is there a yoga picture? Well, as I've talked about before, yoga is really helping me learn more about myself, and this concept comes up for me very often there too. Yoga is a very self directed thing "you're your own best teacher". There's one instructor guiding the practice of up to fifty people and so you generally don't get a lot of feedback. Especially now that I've been going for a while and don't have any horrible issues with most of the poses we do, I'm pretty much on my own... and I think it's good for me. It's good for me to have to be my own teacher, to have to think through what's going on in my body and work on changing it. It's good for me to have to find my own motivation to push myself...it's just different.

When I was in gymnastics, which seems forever ago but really isn't, we got TONS of feedback both good and bad. There was always someone watching, someone critiquing, someone pushing you to try harder, go again etc... and there was lots of rewards for doing things well. There were competitions to work towards, that perfect 10 to aim for, that new move to learn, always something to motivate you. With yoga it's not the same at all, and like I said, it's good for me. It's forcing me to slow down and just accept things for what they are not race off to the next thing. As I said to bestest bud yesterday night, it's about the journey, not the destination.

I've always been a destination type girl...