Motivation
Today, I am going to talk about motivation, what influences it and how to overcome demotivation. At first, let’s know what motivation actually is. Motivation acts as a drive to achieve things that you need or want in your life. Motivation can be of two types, intrinsic and extrinsic. We tend to be more motivated when whatever we do in life has an absolute ‘meaning’, for instance, some students get motivated to study simply to get good grades and in the hope to get praise from his/her parents.
As of today, we continuously lookout for available opportunities to fulfil our needs and wants, you need to stay motivated at all times. This is because demotivation hits you hard when you fail to grab those opportunities that you think are ‘perfect’ for you. Your failure results in a loss of interest to move forward in life. You as a consequence lose all your hope and feel like you do not deserve anything good and that you have no control over the things you are doing. You start feeling useless and irrelevant in whatever you are doing to achieve that certain goal.
But you need to understand that motivations in life at times, can come from moments of failure that you were simply dissatisfied with. Moving forward after facing failures can become impossible for you. Motivation, in this circumstance, acts as a driver in life, it might drive you to places that are full of opportunities for you. You just need to have full faith in this driver to take you to that one place after crossing the failures to grab that one opportunity that you desired.
So let’s talk about what influences motivation?
- We get demotivated by anxiety and doubt. Being anxious and doubtful about your work tends to slow you down. If your doubts and anxiousness are big enough, a part of you will push you to keep yourself in the ‘safe zone’ by making you cautious at every step you take. It will successfully keep you away from exploring opportunities that might both be safe and desirable.
- We also get demotivated by value conflict. We have multiple values in life that we take as very important to us. The belief that you can’t satisfy all these values at the same time in a given situation is what makes you feel conflicted. You then tend to juggle between the ‘more and less important work’ to you. This consequently dries up your motivation to work further while dealing with your internal conflict.
Let’s now know what to do when you get demotivated! You can simply follow these 5 tricks that I’m going to share to motivate yourself:
- Envision and start working on the long-term goals
The first trick is to start visualizing the goals that you want to achieve in life. Initially, start with finding the long-term goals that you really want to accomplish. Working on long-term goals can be highly motivating according to research done by Professor Thomas Bateman of the University of Virginia. As stated in that research anticipating your future goals and combining them with your present work can motivate you even when your goal is to be achieved at a distant time. You tend to perform better when you think about the future outcome of that work.
For instance, look at the NASA scientists. They continuously require motivation as they need a very long time to train themselves to travel to space. Even though the gratification is delayed they keep working by envisioning the joy and satisfaction that they are going to enjoy after reaching their goal.
- Get out of fears and be confident
Secondly, I can absolutely say that you are not afraid to complete a task. But, your fears and doubtfulness about yourself can lead you not to get the work done at the same time. So when you are pessimistic and uncertain about the work that you are going to do, you should try to find out the reason behind it and try to get out of it as early as possible. You should always remember that it is possible to achieve anything if you are strong and confident enough. However, you can also try to uplift yourself by engaging yourself in positive ‘self-talk’. A simple 3-word sentence can simply influence how you are going to take on a task, i.e, rather than saying ‘oh! No, it’s really hard, and it’s not my cup of tea’ you should say in your mind that ‘I can do it’. Trust me, this will really have a positive effect on your mind. indeed, it will help you to start a task with a positive mind-set at least.
- Build a positive attitude towards what you do
The third trick is, to have a positive attitude toward life. Your attitude is your ‘state of mind’. Building a positive attitude towards what you do can be very beneficial for you at your workplace. For instance, if you are more eager and inspired to do something, your stress will reduce and you will feel more energetic and interested in your work than you used to feel previously. This, as a consequence, will help to increase your productivity level at your workplace. You should always remember that you are absolutely capable of achieving your goals if you know what to do with your available time and energy in the right manner.
- Create a positive surrounding with people who you dream to become
Here’s the fourth trick that you should try in your life, you can gain motivation from the people in your surroundings. You can do so by creating a positive environment with people who are successful and whom you want to be like in the future. Basically, if you associate yourself with a bunch of people who are excelling in their own job and who are eager to achieve something bigger in life, it would also motivate you to do the same.
- Reward yourself even on your small successes and wins
The fifth and the last trick that I want to recommend is you should try to reward yourself for every small success and achievement either at work or in your personal life. For instance, a candy bar can be your reward to yourself after the completion of a task that was due. Try to make it a regular habit and soon you will notice changes within yourself. You will be more interested and more eager to complete tasks in hope of getting a reward for it. This is because we tend to work better when there are rewards for accomplishing it.
In conclusion, I would like to say that life is actually an ‘open-ended journey’; and as motivation plays an important role in our daily life, you should follow your true passion and create a list of the goals that you want to achieve in the future. Stay confident, come out of your fears and develop a positive environment so that when negativity hits you hard again next time you know how to remain calm, inspired, and positive.