It occurred to me today that, sometimes, I’m just not feelin’ it.

I have a board on Pinterest (if you don’t know what Pinterest is, check it out) that is full of running motivation. It has pictures of runners in full stride on beautifully scenic roads or paths, combined with sayings that are supposedly motivational. And, when there is a part of me that wants to run, that part of me –that intrinsic motivation, psychologically speaking– can partner with the motivational phrases and sayings on my Pinterest board and it’s enough to get me “up and at ’em”.

But, there are other times, when I’m just not feelin’ it, when the last thing that I want to do is to get all dressed up in my moisture-wicking workout clothes and to lace up the shoes and to do all of the other stuff that I have to do before a run. The intrinsic motivation is harder to find.

On those days, I think about how I will feel if I skip my run. I think about the regret that I’ll feel for the rest of the day, about how I’ll be beating myself up for being lazy, about how I’ve never regretted a work out but that I’ve often regretted skipping a workout. And, I think about the motivational pin –that’s what you call a piece of interest in Pinterest– that I have that says, “Discipline means doing the thing that you don’t want to do.” That extrinsic motivation, paired with the motivation that is inside me, but is sometimes hard to find, and I have what I need to get “up and at ’em”.

Discipline is something that I’m not good at.

Or, take this post, for example. I don’t really feel like I want to write right now. I got to looking at my other “draft” posts and none of them were “calling my name”, and I thought to myself, “What if I just skip this one?” But, it’s a little bit different with writing, somehow; it’s doubly hard to push myself into writing something when I am lacking the inspiration as to what I should write about.

So, I sat down to write this post, via the discipline that I’m not very good at, and because of the dedication that I have to becoming a better writer –via the practice that I often don’t want to do.

I wrote a post a few days back about pianos, and in that post I talked about piano practice when I was a kid and how much I hated it. Part of the problem with that was that I never wanted to become a better pianist. My mom wanted me to become a better pianist, and my piano teacher wanted me to become a better pianist, but it wasn’t inside me.

What is inside me, at least these days, is a desire to become a better runner and to become a better writer.

I ran my first ever 10K distance on Monday, and I am still jazzed about it. I am still excited about the fact that the past versions of me had always dreamed of being in the place where I could run a 10K distance. The past versions of me wanted to be –with enough conviction and discipline and dedication to run when it was hard for them to run a mile or two miles– who I am today. I don’t know if I can express how it feels to be the person that you used to want to be.

The funny thing is, it’s not going how I imagined.

I imagined, all of those years ago, that the me that would be able to run a 10K distance would be muscular and attractive. I imagined that the 10K me would have a six-pack and biceps and pectorals. And, while I am who I wanted to be, inasmuch as I can run the 10K distance, I am still not who I wanted to be.

And so, the dream continues…

Visions of the future are funny like that. In 1989, the movie Back to the Future II envisioned the year 2015 with hoverboards and flying cars. 2015 didn’t turn out that way. In the 1990s, the Star Trek franchise of the day envisioned the twenty-fourth century with tablets that looked bulky and antique compared with the tablet that my wife plays canasta on in our twenty-first century living room.

It’s hard to imagine the future correctly, but the best way to do it is to make the future that you envision occur.

I want to be a writer one day. I want to be able to walk into a Barnes & Noble –somewhere, someday– and pull my books off of one of their shelves. And whether or not I’m going to make my way to the shelf on a hoverboard, I can, through my dedication and discipline and conviction right now, do my best to make part of that vision of the future a reality.

If you’ve ever run in an organized race, there are various distances for which you can register. I’ve run in the local Sunburst race three times, and each of those times, I registered for the 5K. Now that I can run the 10K distance, I guess it’s time to look forward to my next goal distance. Maybe someday, I’ll be able to run a half-marathon –probably not any day soon, however.

Well, anyway, I guess I’ve written all of this to say a couple of things: motivation to do something, especially when you don’t want to, can come from a larger dream, a larger vision of the future. If that vision isn’t there, discipline and dedication are going to be weak, at best. And, when you tap into the power of that larger vision, it can be significantly helpful in overcoming those moments when you may be less than enthusiastic.

I mean, look at me, I just whipped out a thousand words, and I wasn’t even feeling it.