“Your own determination to succeed is more important than anything.” -Abraham Lincoln
Bianca rose amid the cooing of pigeons and traffic jams in the street below. She stretched as she yawned, thinking about what awaited her that day.
She felt her motivation slowly fade with each deadline and promise flashed in her mind. When Bianca’s internal organs began to wilt, she remembered the stimulant pills she bought from Good Value Pharmacy last week.
There are yellow pills marked ‘Money’, the pink pills marked ‘Pride’, the green pills marked ‘Family’, the purple pills marked ‘Respect’ and some ugly gray pills marked ‘Nagging’. advice pill. When the pharmacist hands out her medicines, she tells her that some medicines work for her and others don’t… He can never know in advance which medicines will work for which customers. Considering this suggestion, Bianca, with a smile on the corner of her mouth, reached out to the one she knew would suit her best…
One of the best things you can do for yourself on your journey of self-discovery is find out what makes you tick. The first step is to define your values, because they motivate your motivation and everything you do in life. If you appreciate something, you will always find the motivation and energy to do it. If you don’t appreciate something, you’ll never find the motivation and energy to do it.
Table of Contents
Values
Your values are important to you. They are broad concepts that guide you in making decisions in life and form the basis of your personality. Your values also determine how you spend your time. For example, if your most important value is health, then you are spending time that is completely different from someone whose most important value is career or family.
Values will also drive all your motivations. Unless it has something to do with something you value to some degree, don’t take any action. By defining your values, you can activate your motivation, set appropriate goals and spend time on things that are important to you.
How your values are formed
Your values come from many sources, including your family, friends, religion, school, teacher, country and media. They can also be affected at any time in your life by major emotional events, such as natural disasters, emotional abuse, global depression, or war.
Your values change as you grow and develop. When you change your values, you also change some of your beliefs and your lifestyle.
How to determine your personal values
Determining your personal values helps you:
- Understand why some problems are a problem for you;
- See why some things motivate you and others don’t; and
- Identify and overcome problem areas in life.
- For example, suppose you have a weight problem. You’ve established your personal values and discovered that
- health and fitness aren’t even mentioned in your values. You may have found the cause of your weight problem, meaning that health and fitness are not what you care about. While this is still the case, it will be difficult
- for you to lose weight and achieve a higher level of health and wellness in your life because you will not have any motivation to do so.
You can determine your values by asking yourself:
- What is important to me regarding my life, profession, interpersonal relationship, etc.?
- What will make me leave my life, career, relationships, etc.?
- When you understand your values, it’s helpful to understand how they affect your motivations.
motivation
Your values drive your motivation. If the goals you set align with your values, you’ll be motivated to help you achieve them. If the goals you set are not in line with your values, achieving them will be an uphill battle.
When you understand your values and their impact on how you currently motivate yourself, you have a great understanding of why you are achieving results in life. You also know how to motivate yourself more effectively in the future.
Motivation comes either from your inner heart (internal motivation) or external (external motivation).
Extrinsic motivation is provided by a number of external factors. It can take the form of incentive (reward) or punishment. Rewards can be tangible or intangible (eg praise).
When you undertake an activity for a particular activity without any external motivation, the intrinsic motivation becomes apparent. Albert Bandura’s research shows that if you have more self-efficacy (belief in your ability to control the environment), your inner motivation will be higher than others.
Since intrinsic motivation is the only motivation that something you don’t want.
‘Away From’ Motivation
‘Away from’ motivation is driven by pain. Pain motivated performance is not pleasant, produces inconsistent results and disappears when the pain is no longer present.
‘Away from motivation’ does, however, give you a strong initial motivation to move away from the thing you don’t want in your life. A problem with using this type of motivation is that you wait until things are bad before you take action to change them. Another problem is that you don’t have a target or goal that you are aiming for (just something you are running from) so you don’t tend to achieve results.
Sophia uses ‘away from’ motivation in relation to her weight. As a result she is the classic yo yo dieter. Her process goes like this. Sophia looks in the mirror and sees that she is overweight. She says to herself, ‘I don’t want to be fat anymore’. She then goes on a diet to ensure she is no longer fat. (She’s moving away from being fat). At some point she looks in the mirror and sees that she looks fantastic and is no longer fat. As she is no longer fat, she has just lost the source of her motivation (to no longer be fat). As there is no longer any motivation, she no longer stays on the diet and discards her exercise regime. She will not be motivated to do whatever she needs to stay fit and healthy. At some point in the future she will look in the mirror and again form the judgment that she is fat and the process will start all over again.
When you are motivated away from something that you don’t want in life, you tend to focus upon the very thing you don’t want and that is what you attract into your life. As examples:
If you constantly say to yourself, ‘I don’t want to be broke’, your focus is upon being broke and that is where your unconscious mind will aim.
If you constantly say to yourself, “I don’t want to be single”, your focus is upon being single and that is where your unconscious mind will aim.
Motivation away from what you don’t want can motivate you, but it doesn’t do so for long and you can’t be sure what results you will achieve. It can give you a fantastic initial boost of energy, but you can never guarantee where you are going to end up as you don’t have a firm direction in mind, just a place you want to get away from. If you use away from motivation in your life, you will tend to create a series of crises to keep yourself motivated.
‘Towards’ Motivation
If you use ‘towards motivation’ you will take action to move towards your goal and you will achieve them more often than not.
‘Towards’ motivation is the best way to motivate yourself. When you are motivated towards what you want, you tend to stay consistently motivated until you achieve your goal (provided you desire it enough).
When you are motivated towards what you want, you constantly set and achieve goals each time stretching yourself further. By using motivation towards what you want you give yourself a far greater chance of achieving what you want out of life.
How Do You Know If The Motivation You Use Is ‘Towards’ Or ‘Away From’ Motivation?
We now know that values drive your motivation and that motivation can be either towards what you want or away from what you don’t want. Now it is time to review your values to discover whether the underlying motivation for each of your values is:
- towards what you want; or
- away from what you don’t want.
- To determine whether the underlying motivation for each value is ‘towards’ or ‘away from’ ask yourself, “Why is that value important to me?” then listen to your self-talk and note what you say to yourself. The clues to whether you are
using towards or away from motivation for that value is:
You are probably using ‘towards’ motivation if you:
talk about what you do want
don’t use comparisons in your explanation (better than, worse than, more than)
You are probably using ‘away from’ motivation if you:
- talk about what you don’t want
- make comparisons in your explanation or use words such as ‘better than’, ‘more than’, ‘less than’, ‘best’ etc.
- (These show you are unhappy with where you currently are)
use words such as ‘must’, ‘need’, ‘have to’, ‘got to’ etc - As an example, assume that ‘money’ was your highest value in relation to your career. You then ask yourself,
- “Why is the value ‘compensation’ important to me in relation to my career?”
If your answer is, “Because I want to make a lot of money and live in luxury”, the response would indicate ‘towards’ motivation for this value.
If your answer is, “Because I don’t want to be broke and I have to be able to pay my bills”, the response would indicate ‘away from’ motivation for this value.
Your chances of achieving goals relating to ‘money’ are much greater if you are using towards motivation.
If you find that you have identified ‘away from’ motivation in relation to any of your values, you will find:
This area of your life is one where you will experience the most difficulties;
You will not be achieving the results in Areas of life you may desire; and before experiencing the desired success, there are some unresolved issues that need to be cleared up and healed related to this area of your life.
This is good information because it identifies areas in your life that need attention.
Motivation problem
We all have motivation issues from time to time. Those moments when you can’t find the desire to do what you know needs to be done. The cause of the problem may be:
- You don’t have enough energy. If you are feeling “down” I believe you will do simple things to restore the energy. Also, remember that sometimes in life you need and deserve a break.
- Your goal is not what you value. (In this case, ask yourself if you should use your energy in that direction); or
There is a problem with your motivation strategy (see below). - If your incentive strategy presents a challenge to you, determine which part of the strategy is causing the problem,
then use one of the following techniques to help you make the change. If you are not motivated because:
- You feel overwhelmed and break the goal down into smaller steps, one at a time.
- You just use the “road” motivation, identify your goal and focus on achieving positive results.
- You feel obligated to pursue your goals, either you accept that the goals don’t suit you and let go, or you focus
- on the positive results you get from achieving your goals.
- You’re scared, figure out what could go wrong and what you’re going to do if it does.
In brief
When you understand your values, you understand what motivates you and why. If you discover whether you are using or staying away from motivation in different areas of your life, you will know why some areas of your life are successful and others are not. If you use any of the above techniques to overcome common motivation issues… and you take action… you should be on your way to success!
