What motivates you??

I love beginnings. New things to experience. New people to meet. New things to see. Do. I love the clean slate that the first of the year represents. Lots of times I make big plans and have all these goals for a new year. Or month. Or week. This year not so much. I do have goals and plans but I find myself a lot more introspective as this year draws to a close. It was a tough year in many ways and I'm frankly glad to see it go. But there are some things that will be happening in the coming year that I don't to blow and that has started me thinking.

Today I was thinking about motivation. What is motivation? According to the dictionary motivation is the reason or reasons for engaging in a particular behavior. So hunger is a motivation to eat. Tiredness is motivation to sleep. Money is a motivation to work. I get it. I have my motivation to finish school, save money, things like that. We want to move to Colorado and all of those things will further that. So that's my motivation for other things I need to do in my life.

But what is my motivation to eat right and work out? Sure there are all those things, be healthy, feel better, have my clothes fit better, have more energy, blah, blah, blah. But those things are intangibles. Moving to Colorado is a tangible thing I can plan for and work towards and I'll know when I get there. All of those things for weight loss and working out are intangibles. Not easy to measure. Hard to know when I reach them. After eating right and working out for a couple of weeks I have more energy and feel better. So am I done??? No. But, on the other hand, setting goals can lead to failure, despair, and giving up. So what's a girl to do?

Clearly I need to set tangible goals that I can achieve and easily measure. I got that. But I clearly can't set weight goals. That doesn't really work for me. So what? I have some goals for running that I plan to work on but there are some problems there. I can't run everyday. On the days I can't run I need to do something else. I know as an older female that I need to strength train. So I need some strength training goals. What are reasonable ones?? Should I work towards doing 10 full push-ups?? How about chin-ups? Should I work towards lifting a certain weight? Maybe doing a row with 25 lbs?? I don't know. I'm at a loss at this point. What motivates you?? What do you use to get your butt out of bed and to the gym everyday??? Any help would be great.