A good question you should ask yourself is “why am I doing this or that?” Why should I bother getting up early in the morning to do some grueling workout? Why should I save and deny myself things instead of spending my hard-earned money? Why bother to study hard and miss all those fun parties when I’m not even sure if I will graduate? The answer is simple: Motivation.
Motivation is your battery, it empowers your hard work. Motivation keeps us going when life is hard and things are going not as planned. Just a battery motivation has a positive or negative source. Both types of motivation can be successful in the end. Obviously positive energy is a lot better for your health and surroundings than negative. Do you want to know more?
What is motivation
Motivation: Motivation is defined as the process that initiates, guides and maintains goal-oriented behaviors. Motivation is what causes us to act, whether it is getting a glass of water to reduce thirst or reading a book to gain knowledge.
This is the official definition of motivation from Psychology Today. According to psychologists we have intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Let’s call them internal and external factors. External motivations are those that come outside of the individual and often involve rewards as trophies, money,… Internal motivations are those that come from the individual, such as solving a complicated riddle purely for the personal reward of solving a complicated problem.
Each person has different motivations that thrives them toward their goals. We can put this in a matrix and then we’ll have positive and negative motivation each with an internal or external drive as shown in the matrix below.
When you are driven by internal-positive motivation, the motivation comes from your talent and your strength. This in contrast to being driven by feelings of failure, insecurity (internal-negative) or the need for attention (external-negative)
Next time you get up early, and do your extra work, cardio, studies,… Ask yourself, what source (internal / external) drives your motivation and whether this comes from positive or negative energy. If you find that you are doing things but you are not driven by a positive internal drive it is perhaps time to reconsider your goals.
Let me give you an example: I often see people in my local gym lifting weights and spending hours for several weeks. When after 2 – 3 months they still have not achieved the body like the pro-fitness models who spend years on dedicated training and nutrition they resort to others things like steroids to achieve their goals. Often this behavior is driven by insecurity (negative-internal) and these persons do not like at all going to the gym. They just want to have a good looking body because they believe it will make them more successful in life. Here’s the magic fitness trick. If you want to look a pro-fitness model you will need to think like one and act like one and do this for years to come. Same goes for every other aspect going on in your life. If you cannot imagine doing something for a long time you better do not start with it at all and spend your energy on other things.
So for on motivation, got anything to say? Feel free to leave a comment below. Next post will be on element number 2: the plan