We all have a plethora of tangled needs post stroke (and pre stroke for that matter!)
What motivates you in what aspects of your recovery? (And life in the new normal)?
How strongly/ completely (or not)?
What is weak/ missing from your motivation/ would help or anything else?
How can we help each other?
Onwards & upwards 
Simon
Good question, Simon
When Iām down, fed up with an ailment, or just struggling, I nearly always make my own luck; I get up off my backside, and break some personal record, walk 1000 steps, a record 16 minutes on the treadmill, or something that I can hold on to, count as a victory, and impress myself. I will do almost any breakthrough to impress myself, in any area. This inspires me and tells me about the possibilities for the future. āIf I can do xxx today, imagine what I could do in a week, a month, a year.ā
That way, no matter how rotten Iām feeling, I can turn things around, at any time, and have something good to punctuate the day and lift my mood.
Good luck with those personal achievements,
ciao, Roland
Wow
Thatās inspiring
I try to say to my self āWhatās on the to-do listā that fits into my time window
Yesterday it was trim 2 branches off the hornbeams that have grown large in the last 30yrs - and thatās ādaily livingā (in my case) - I like yours in the exercise realm
Good share thnx
Onwards & upwards
Targets for me as well.
Last year I managed 461 miles on my exercise bike which is the driving distance apparently from Bristol to Amsterdam.
Faster, further, greater resistance all motivate but having something specific to beat helps no end.
Cheers
Nige
461 wow Wow WOW!
And hear some stuff to make it to 20 characters
I canāt help feeling when I read the above posts that these are after the fact motivators not motivators to get off your _arse and do something
That is to say they give a good dopamine or serotonin hit when you achieve them.
They might be what makes something You are doing addictive?
But they donāt get you up and onto the cycle they donāt set the 1st hurdle to jump over because youāve already jumped the hurdle before & so are already in a motivated state
I think Iām questing for the āwhat motivation is the stimulus to startĀæā and you both reflected what is the reward at the end or in process that spurs you on - that is different from the motivation to initiate(?)
Did that make sense? Does it trigger further thoughts
Yeh it does.
On the face of it, it looks like two separate items, one to get on the bike in the first place and then to peddle fast enough or long enough to beat the target.
It feels though that the second one drives the first. I have to be on the bike to add more miles. If the motivation to add more miles is strong enough, I donāt need to worry about the first bit. I think itās down to the right target.
You are competing against yourself so there comes a point where you are maxed out.
Try as I might, I canāt go faster on my bike than 38 secs for a 1/4 mile lap. Full on sprint for me and completely exhausting and breathing so heavy it make me wonder a bit how safe it is. Works out as 25mph. So this is no longer motivational and I no longer try. I needed a new target, Iāve gone for much longer distance and timeframe, other end of the scale.
So 461 miles in a year. Just done my 50th tonight in 12 days so miles ahead of schedule. Will mile 463 be motivational. Who knows.
What makes you want to do anything ? If you had a grid with Mon to Sun on it and a box below to tick each day you did something, would that be enough to drive you to do something ? Would achieving a round figure like 10 miles ?
What motivates me is proving peopleās perceptions and āthe way it isā wrong.
Especially the ārecovery ends after x monthsā one - I couldnāt stand @ 3 months or walk @ 6 months, Iām now at 15 months and 13 days (not that Iām counting 
) and walk 3 miles on the treadmill every other morning and work full time.
And the particularly loaded āyouāve got to accept what has happenedā one - yep I accept that Iāve had a stroke (Iāve seen the MRI results so itās bleeding, quite litteraly, obvious) but I donāt accept that itās going to rob me of the rest of my life or affect me for any longer than I can possibly help.
So in summary, what motivates me = being an awkward bugger
Thanks everyone for contributions so far .
I think to a degree I share them all and to a degree I donāt share any of them enough to be the answer
Iām detecting some of the richness. there are motivators:
to start action,
there are motivators of the sort characterised by āif you want to go fast go alone (is there a pun there?), If you want to go far go in companyā
There are motivators like targets | goals | achievements. Achievement of these gives us serotonin or dopamine hit. Is that reinforcement? Is that where addiction comes from like many amateur joggers gym-rats are addicted? (@Outlander ?)
There are motivators that are attitude that carry one to goals, possibly in company after action has started
When one has a goal with achievable targets along the way and the umph to start activity, then is the strategy / tactics that make up the actions to achieve the milestones part of the motivation? Where does (should?) the design(s) of (options for) the journey come from?
Iām feeling towards something around the question 'the capability development journey needs the weaving together of various threads what are the threads who owns (curates? - or contributes what to) each one?
Ciao
Simon
Hello Simon @SimonInEdinburgh .
For me motivation comes from keeping goals real and achievable. Daring to dream in where those goals are so allowing a realistic flight of fancy. Is that a contradiction? Pushing the boundaries is important to me but I am also a realist and as such understand some things will not change so I need to accept and adapt.
Without set goals I would not have achieved what I am hugely proud to have over the last year. This provided motivation as the goals I had were based on aspects of life before and I knew would not happen without the necessary input. I accept the outcome is not the same in how it comes about but the outcome is nevertheless the same.
This has made me really think, thank you, Julia x
Thanks @JuliaH for your contribution (on this post and across the last 2yrs)
I hope āmaking you thinkā is a step towards giving you more achievement and satisfactions
Yes I think you saying something that I feel too and would paraphrase as the results wonāt be the same as before the stroke but the achievement is the same or bigger
EG
I might have been able to climb Everest in the past but getting to the top of my stairs now is a bigger achievement - actually its getting to the bottom of them while still upright thatās the achievement
@All
The community (IE us the peer group) here is capable of more than just āhello and welcome youāre not aloneā for new joiners
Thatās important.
Itās not 100% of our potential nor of anyoneās needs as our journeys proceed through the phases. The health services definitely arenāt set up for other than the acute stage and maybe a little of the initial chronic stage
I wonder how much we feel the posts of others sharing achievements contributes to our motivation & achievements?
I also wonder whether we could establish some more self organised group support of the common activities within the stages after the acute?
Ciao
Simon
In terms of other people, if I read that someone has walked a mile for the first time, I think fair play to you.
Does it motivate me ? Not really. I canāt do that as it stands. If someone posted they did 50 yards in 60 seconds, that might. Just to see how I compared. Could I achieve it in time.
This comes back to the whole stroke flavours. If there was someone who had cpsp, told a story of staying fit and they saw an improvement from month x that they wouldnāt have seen unless they stayed fit, that would motivate me.
Or you can ease or limit spasticity if you do this. That would.
I am looking on post stroke a bit like golf. You are aware of how other people do but really, this is a battle against yourself. You can compare if you want.Zero point in cheating when itās your own battle. Itās your own specific goals and targets.
@Nigelglos A lot of what you say resonates with me. Watching others progression is great & can be inspirational especially if youāve followed them for a while & see how far theyāve come. We are all on our own journeys though & have to have our own motivators i think.
My motivation is to try & get my life back to a place that iām happy with. That will be a different place than everyone else. I set small goals along the way to help me get there.
Seeing others achievements can be motivational if theyāre achieving things within your current / not far from your current capabilities. They can also demotivate as you can sometimes think if they can why canāt I. That comes back to weāre all on a different journey & started from different places & will finish in different places.
Thatās a whole heap of waffle from me that probably makes little sense. 