Motivation. You need to be motivated. Motivation’s getting a bad rap lately. I’ve noticed a lot of personal development coaches and speakers are starting to say, “You can’t rely on motivation. Motivation doesn’t exist.” I’m getting confused because motivation is actually a constant. If you look up the definition is basically: What is your motive to take action? Unless you’re sleeping all day, which actually is an action, there’s a thought before the behavior, right? What is that motive of what you got out of bed? What got you to the gym? What made you made that sales call? There was a thought before that, and basically there was a motive.
Now, I think a lot of people think motivation is about psyching yourself up to now take action. But in reality, our day-to-day life is not all about psyching up. We got to do a lot of things. Some times we like, sometimes we don’t. What I want you to understand is that motivation, there’s a strategy behind it. For instance, think of a time that you accomplished something. You were successful at something that was very important to you. Now, go back, and you probably there’s many, many steps along the way. Well, what made you make the first step? What made you make the second step? Right? There was probably in a thought, that was associated with the behavior.
There’s motivation theory, for instance, saying that what things motivate us. They’re broken down into a few different pieces. I just want to share a couple with you. Motivation comes from this idea of pain, pleasure principle, right? We do things to avoid pain or gain pleasure. When we think about it that way, it makes sense, right? If you go and you want to eat some ice cream, well that probably is very pleasurable experience, okay? However, if I say, “Hey, you want lead a healthy lifestyle,” then eating the ice cream actually would be painful because that would not link to your goal of being healthy.
Motivation starts with a pain, pleasure principle. We do things to either avoid pain or gain pleasure.
The next one is towards and away. When you work towards something or you try to go away from it. Back to the health idea, if you want to become healthy, and you’re on a diet, and you exercise, are you doing it because you want to move away from being unhealthy, and overweight, and low energy or do you want to work towards having a lot of energy, and being vitality coming through your body, and living that lifestyle of being healthy that’s working towards something?
Then, the other one is about intrinsic, extrinsic motivation is we tend to do things either because there’s an extrinsic rewards associated with it. If I do blank, then I will get a raise, then I will get a promotion, then I’ll get recognition from people. That’s an external thing that’s going to help drive your behavior. Or, is it all intrinsic? You love doing it. You get a lot of pleasure out of it. You can’t wait to do it because of the internal benefits that it provides.
Motivation is a constant. You may have behaviors that was linked to a thought of, “Why do I want to get up now?” Well, I’m going to go work because I want to make a difference, or I’m getting to go to work because I need to make a paycheck, or fill in the blank. There is a thought before the behavior. I want you to start to think about what is your best motivational strategy as you worked forward is because goals are associated with motivation. Your motive to take action towards a desired outcome. Start looking at what the behaviors are, and then reverse engineer of what was the thinking before that that lead to the behavior.
Remember, some of the things we do in life we don’t always like, yet we’re still doing it. Motivation is not about psyching ourselves up. It is about understanding what makes you tick, and where you want to go, and asking that first question: Why? Why is this important to me is going to be very important. What is your motive to take action today?