Stress is a detrimental force that impacts our health at all levels. It exposes us to physical pains, emotional troubles, and mental chaos. All these impacts of stress eat away our enthusiasm for living. We feel drained of all our energy, we don’t feel interested to do anything in life and everything appears meaningless. This vicious circle of stress keeps going on and on. It seems nearly impossible to find a way out of it. But it isn’t impossible in actuality. There is an infinite source of power within all of us by utilizing which we can end this vicious circle. But, rather than accessing that power from inside, we keep looking for it from outside sources.

The power we are talking about is ‘Motivation’. The motivation we derive from external sources is transient and short lived. Whereas, motivation when derived from internal sources, is eternal and everlasting. It is far more powerful than the kind of motivation we derive from external sources. This ever powerful motivation is known as ‘Self-Motivation’.

Given below are 5 reasons why self-motivation can prove to be your strongest armour to stress:

1. You can access it anywhere and at any time

Stress isn’t confined to a particular place. It can happen anywhere and at any time. It can come stealthily like hovering clouds, block the sunshine of optimism and wrap you in a mist of negativity. So, it is important for you to have an elixir against it, which we can access at all times and Self-Motivation it is. This is because self-motivation is ever present right within you.

Whenever you get engulfed by stress, you just have to access your inner armor to prevent us from dwindling. Although, you can also carry many external sources of motivation along at all times in your smartphone such as motivational videos and podcasts. It isn’t possible to access them at all times.

For instance, if you are in the middle of a conversation with someone and it turns out to be stressful, you cannot just stop and start looking for a motivational video. You’ll have to hold yourself against stress and all its physical and emotional symptoms, right there in the middle of the conversation. It is only with the armor of ‘Self-Motivation’ that you can do so. You can use it to remind yourself that you have had encounters with stressful situations before and they have never been able to destroy you. This way, you can use self-motivation to guard yourself against the physical, emotional, and mental blows of stress, which together try to buckle you down.

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” – Thomas Jefferson

2. Self-motivation is imperishable

External sources of motivation may temporarily cease from being there for you, but self-motivation will never. For example, you are so stressed about your performance in an important presentation that you feel like giving up beforehand. In order to counter your feelings, you choose to watch a motivational video on your smartphone. But, alas! You find your mobile phone out of battery. Under such circumstances, when you have no access to external sources of motivation, self-motivation will still be there for you. It never runs out of battery. Thus, self-motivation is imperishable and you can access its power forever.

3. You can hit the hammer of self-motivation exactly where needed

Stress can have multiple causes ranging from personal to professional. This implies that there is not always the same type of stress you experience. So, the same kind of motivational videos cannot always help you withstand your degrading stressful spans. Along with this, external sources of motivation cannot identify and work exactly on your stressors. As a result, they may not offer the desired support for withstanding stressful moments. Whereas, self-motivation can help you hit the hammer of support exactly where needed. This is because most of the time you are aware of the exact causes of your stress. It is in this light of awareness that you can direct self-motivation in the right direction and guard yourself against the damaging impacts of stress.

4. It empowers your resilience against stress

Self-Motivation is an inside force. As you learn to utilize it for busting stress and its impacts, you become empowered from the inside. This overtime, builds your strong resilience against stress. As a result, you become eminent in the art of withstanding the biggest moments of stress, without dwindling. You no longer experience those stress-induced pains such as chest pain, headache, and muscle pain. Rather, you stand strong amidst the waves of stress. So, we can say that self-motivation builds your defense mechanism against the deteriorating effects of stress. Further, no external sources of motivation can do that for you. This is because external motivation mostly works on the surface level. It doesn’t reach out to strengthen your inner core.

“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.” – Marie Curie

5. Self-motivation keeps you from breaking in times of adversity

Difficult situations in life are always stressful. They may relate to your personal or professional life, but they expose you to breaking amounts of stress. Under such circumstances, motivation derived from external sources doesn’t work well in saving you from succumbing to stress. This is because it works only at a superficial level. Whereas, in order to stand strong amidst adversity, you need inner strength, which you can only derive from self-motivation.

Self-Motivation acts from your core and works perfectly in strengthening you from inside out. Thus, self-motivation keeps you from breaking in times of adversity. To conclude, the 5 reasons given above prove that self-motivation is your strongest armor to stress.