Motivation is logical. Discover how to motivate yourself to success and accomplishment.
It is simple to determine what inspires individuals. It is a logical phenomenon that occurs in everyday life. People are motivated to do things that they want to do, while not being motivated to do things that aren’t quite as appealing. It just makes sense.
Human Behavior and Motivation
Human behavior as it relates to motivation is pretty consistent for most people throughout life. Children are excited to get up to open presents on Christmas morning. They’re excited about going swimming in the summer or going to a birthday party. But when it comes to eating vegetables or going to school when they didn’t do their homework, it’s a whole different story.
Likewise, adults might be excited to date a new person, shop for new clothes, be seen on television or buy a new car. They’ll be much less excited about getting up to go to a job they hate, cleaning their house, changing the oil in their car or washing the dishes.
How People Motivate Others
People motivate others when they want them to do something or when they want to be helpful. Parents provide incentives to get their children to certain things. Eating vegetables in order to get dessert and cleaning the bedroom before going on an outing are two that come to mind. As well, adults try to motivate each other in a variety of ways including getting angry, pleading, and identifying a payoff.
Thinking Logically About Motivation
When you think logically about motivation it is pretty easy to understand. At the beginning of each calendar year, many people make resolutions and set goals for what they’re going to do differently or improve upon. Typically, these resolutions fail because they are goals to do things that the individual is not inspired to do, such as losing weight, exercising or finding a new job. The reason for the lack of motivation is that these things aren’t fun to do and there is no real incentive for the person to follow through.
Perceived Motivation that Doesn’t Work
Motivation doesn’t work if there is no true payoff. Making a resolution to exercise for a certain amount of time each day to “get in shape” doesn’t motivate someone who doesn’t really care that much about getting in shape. However, if the activity of exercising 30 minutes each day for 6 months would result in the reward of a beautiful new car, there would likely be a whole different level of motivation. It is difficult to be motivated when there is no reward.
Motivating Yourself
Motivating yourself to accomplish goals can be a challenging endeavor. There has to be an identified payoff and a desire to get the payoff or it’s really hard to do. This is especially true for people unable to produce their own incentives. It’s even more true if the payoff is too far away. For example, it’s very difficult to work a second job for minimum wage to save up to buy a high end car. When people feel like they’re never going to get there, they tend to lose motivation rather quickly.
5 Key Steps to Getting Motivated
There are crucial actions individuals may take to get motivated.
- Identify the desired goal. Example: Spring cleaning the house
- Determine the action necessary to accomplish the goal. Example: Go through each room in the house, clean all closets and drawers, move and clean behind furniture, vacuum spider webs, clean ceiling fixtures, etc.
- Set incremental or daily activities to stay on track. Example: Week 1 – Master bedroom, Week 2 – Office, etc. (More specificity is better)
- Establish intermittent rewards to ensure ongoing motivation. Example: Go out to a casual dinner at the end of each week if the goal has been accomplished
- Identify the ultimate payoff. Example: When the spring cleaning is completed, take a romantic weekend trip to a nice resort and have a massage, dinner at an upscale restaurant and a nice bottle of wine.
Motivation is so much easier to acquire when the goals, activities and rewards are well defined.
