What Is Your Definition Of Motivation?

Posted on February 01, 2010 by Guru Bob

“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.” - Wayne Dyer In an earlier post on the Four Stages of Competence, I mentioned that a key driver for you to move from one stage of competence to the next is your motivation. I want to explore the definition of motivation [...]

“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.” - Wayne Dyer

In an earlier post on the Four Stages of Competence, I mentioned that a key driver for you to move from one stage of competence to the next is your motivation. I want to explore the definition of motivation at length in this post and discuss it’s importance in relation to setting goals and the need for rewards/penalties.

Looked at logically, it seems easy. Let us say that you had a desire to succeed with Internet Marketing, you would set appropriate goals and assuming that the reward that you would achieve when you reach your goals is desirable enough, then you would be easily motivated to do the work to learn and implement them.

But I’m sure like me you have set out to do this in the past and failed…perhaps many times.

Why does this happen?

Part of the reason might be a lack of understanding of your principle motivation system and what you personally need to achieve goals.

As it turns out, there are two main types of motivation; one is ‘towards’ something you want (your goals for instance) and the other is ‘away from’ something you don’t want (fear of failure or loss or ridicule). We all have elements of both types of motivation within us but if you are predominatly driven by an ‘away from’ motivation, then the lure of a desirable goal may not be enough to get you to take action and implement in the face of experiencing something you don’t want. Fear of failure, loss of certainty and potential for ridicule or embarrasment are powerful drivers and they make it easy for somebody to give up on a goal half way through or prevent them from getting started in the first place.

This is the classical carrot and stick scenario.  What makes the donkey move, the desire to get the carrot or to avoid the stick.

So what can you do?

Well if you happen to be predominantly towards motivated (as most entrepreneurs are) the possibility of NOT achieving the goal is a sufficent penalty to keep that person on track. They are driven by the need to achieve because failing is not an option and they crave the reward that comes with success.

For an away from motivated person, however, the penalty needs to change from being goal focussed to a self imposed penalty (real not imagined) that you will impose on yourself if you don’t stick to the plan and keep working towards the goal. The away from motivated person needs to feel that the penalty of not working towards the goal is worse than giving up.

This can be hard to do, it requires real discipline, so you may need to garner the involvement of your partner or significant other to hold you to your self imposed penalty.  And make it real, make sure the penalty is tangible and significant, something that you would hate to lose if you decide to give up or not follow through.

The main thing here is to be absolutely honest with yourself. It is very easy to say that we are towards motivated but the reality is that most people are not, they are mainly away from motivated expecially in something as important as Internet Marketing where success is measured against your current income earning capacity. It is very easy when faced with inevitable set backs to fall back on what you already have, however much you think you would prefer something different.

The other aspect of being away from motivated is that it provides very little energy or direction to push you forward. Often, no matter how hard you try to avoid the things you don’t want, you seem to contine to attract these things. Listen to your ‘internal dialogue’…are you mainly focussed on what you don’t want or or fearful of what might happen if you fail? Then you might be away from motivated and it is critical you take this into consideration when preparing to start a new endeavour.

But don’t worry, you CAN change. Recognise your motivation system for what it is and put measures in place to increase the probability that you will set clear goals and that you will take positive action towards those goals.

It is…as it is.

GuruBob

It Is As It Is

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Discussion: 19 Comments

19 Responses to “What Is Your Definition Of Motivation?”

1. 

   David Leigh

   - 1st Feb, 10 09:02pm

   Interesting – while I’m mainly driven by working towards my goals I think I’m also driven by trying to escape boredom too. And I’m also driven towards things I like doing, which distracts me from my main goals too.

   I suppose it could be argued that I’m diverting away from those same goals because of some other factor, but perhaps “away from” motivation isn’t completely negative.

   David

2. 

   Oliver

   - 1st Feb, 10 09:02pm

   Awesome article! Love your blog.

   I’m a towards-outcomes motivated person and here’s how I keep my motivation up … maybe somebody will benefit from it.

   Since I started following this ritual, lack of motivation and procrastination is a thing of the past.

   I review my goals (long-term and derived short-term) daily to get PUMPED. I also recently started writing down my personal affirmations daily… the effect this has on your mindset and motivation is profound. It’s like programming your mind with the basic operational parameters you want to run your life by.

   Then I take my to-do list and script out my day by the hour, which task to do when etc. – I basically get all decision-making out of the way at the beginning of the day which pretty much destroys procrastination. I set my little timer for the allocated time and just focus on the task at hand until it beeps. At first this seemed counter-intuitive… who’d like to work by the clock? But setting the clock is actually liberating! It’s like telling yourself “Ok, I can forget about everything else until this thing goes off.. and I know, thanks to my schedule, that I will get to everything I want to accomplish today”.

   This ritual recharges my motivation everday and keeps me pumped and looking forward.

3. 

   kevin

   - 2nd Feb, 10 12:02pm

   Hey Bob, I think the only thing stops from reaching my goals is the understanding of how to put together all that I have learned.(business model). See ya in Melbourne. I finally got my passport!!

4. 

   Mike at Hypnotherapy Bristol

   - 14th Mar, 10 11:03pm

   I love this subject.

   For years I have been wanting to get to grips with motivation only to discover I should have been focusing on procrastination. LOL

   So when I say, solving the problem of procrastination is the goal I am moving toward I think I have all the bases covered.

   Carrot & Stick has worked very well for armies over the centuries, but only works because they totally control environment. I worked for a company that had only these two tools in the box. I left and so did nearly everyone else.

   Motivation has been researched more heavily in the last forty years than probably any other area of psychology, mainly due to workforce productivity and it’s potential rewards from it’s finding.

   What they tell us is…. we are all different and while generalisations can be made we are not rats in a maze. People have their own funny ideas about stuff!

   So my approach, and the least frustrating and productive one is to treat what goes on in my head and what comes out in the form of behaviour is just one big, exciting experiment. My head is my lab.

   You look at what you put in and what comes out and make adjustments accordingly until you get what you want. Sound familiar?

   The same is true with influencing others. Calibration helps you know which buttons to press and takes some working out, but more broadly we have to rely on what the herd are likely to do.

   Mike Orme

5. 

   Rob

   - 13th Aug, 10 11:08pm

   interesting post Bob!
   I suppose it could be argued that I’m diverting away from those same goals because of some other factor, but perhaps “away from” motivation isn’t completely negative.