Understanding Motivation

Understanding motivation is an important key to accomplishing anything in your life.

Find out more about your personal motivation by uncovering the primary reasons for why you do what you do (or why you don't do what you think you should).

Developing this understanding will make finding motivation easier.

Sources of Motivation

Every action you take is tied to a deeper motivation. At a very basic level, you have a primary biological motivation for survival. You will take action to obtain all the basics to live- air, food, water, etc.

Beyond basic survival, we all have other needs and desires that drive us to take action. These needs and desires are driven by what we believe will give us satisfaction, happiness, or what we believe will help us avoid pain. You may not even be aware of some of your deepest beliefs, but they are influencing your actions and motivation level all the time.

Motivation and Beliefs

Understanding motivation comes down to understanding beliefs. Specifically, what you believe will help you to find pleasure or to avoid pain is what will drive your self motivation. Your motivation to act will be high if you believe that by taking action you will result in high rewards with little pain.

Conversely if you see high pain and/or little pleasure from taking an action, motivation to act will be low. The key point is that it comes down to your beliefs regarding the pain or pleasure associated with taking action. More importantly, your beliefs might be causing you to act in counterproductive ways.

It is all to easy to let your fears blow things out of proportion by associating great pain with a possible outcome. Have you ever been hesitant to start a conversation with a stranger because you feared potential rejection or embarrassment?

It is easy to assume the worst, to associate pain with a potential outcome and allow that pain to keep you from taking action. I have heard it said that fear of public speaking for many people is actually greater than fear of death! The beliefs you have cause you to associate pain or pleasure with certain actions, and those beliefs can increase or inhibit your motivation.

Take Control

By understanding motivation you are empowered to take control of your motivations. By figuring out the underlying beliefs about pain or pleasure that you associate to a behavior you want to change, you can make conscious effort to change those associations and thus change your motivation levels.

If you want to stop a behavior, consciously create beliefs to associate more pain with doing the behavior and pleasure with stopping it. Doing this consistently to reinforce the new belief will change how you perceive the behavior and alter your levels of motivation.

Understanding Motivation in Others

You can use this framework to understand motivation levels in other people. It can be very liberating and empowering when you realize what is driving other people to act. Everyone is acting and reacting based on what they believe will maximize their pleasure and minimize pain. If you can figure out what those beliefs are, you will be better able to understand why they do what they do and improve your interactions with them.

Return from Understanding Motivation to What is Motivation

Return from Understanding Motivation to Self Motivation Strategies