Motivational Psychology Techniques

Understanding these motivational psychology will give you the edge in your ability to get yourself to take action.

Understanding the Pain and Pleasure Principle

At the most basic level of motivational psychology is the pain and pleasure principle.

Motivation comes from either trying to avoid pain or to gain pleasure. If you go deep enough into why you do anything you do, you will find at the root a combination of the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

Understanding this can help you to discover the cause of feeling low motivation. Whenever you are having a difficult time taking action, take a moment to analyze what the underlying fear is and think about how it is tied to either gaining pleasure or avoiding pain.

Using the Power of Belief

An extremely important key to motivational psychology is that the pain/pleasure principle is dependent on what we believe will bring pleasure or pain, which might be different from the reality.

I've had the experience of feeling like I really wanted something, getting excited about it and feeling like it would really make me happy. This created a strong motivation to go out and get it, only to find after the initial exuberance wore off I felt empty and disappointed. I anticipated getting more pleasure than actually happened. I've had similar experiences with anticipating pain. There are things that I have gotten very worked up about, fearful of what would happen, only to find that the result was much less painful than I anticipated.

The key to remember is that the actual experience of pain and pleasure is often quite different from our expectations. And it is our expectations that drive our motivation, much more than the actual experience. You can consciously change your expectations and beliefs, either emphasizing the pleasurable aspects of taking action, or minimizing any fear of pain associated with it.

Using Choice to Increase your Motivation

Do you remember what it was like as a child when your parents told you that you had to do something, even if you didn't want to? When your choice was taken away, did that make you more likely to want to do it?

As an adult, you have much more power over what you do, and a great motivational psychology technique is to remind yourself of that fact whenever you are having difficulty getting motivated. Rather than telling yourself "I have to do this" or "I should do this", think in terms of "I choose to do this".

If you think hard enough, you could always come up with an alternative to the action (although you would have still have to face consequences). Sometimes just remembering that you don't have to do anything makes it easier to go ahead an take action.

Learn to Live in the Moment

Another great motivational psychology technique is to learn to be present in the moment, in what you are doing. Often motivation can get sapped when you focus too much on what you fear what will happen in the future or focus on past missteps or failures.

When you find your motivation is low when distracted by these thoughts, consciously shift your focus to the present moment. Become aware of how your body is feeling, of any sensations present. Focus on your breathing, become aware of the in and out. A shift to the present can help to release your tension, your worry and help re-motivate you. Being present in the moment helps you to let go of the thoughts that hold you back and frees you to take action.

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