What Drives You? The Techniques to Motivating Yourself

What Drives You? The Techniques to Motivating Yourself

"Your own resolution to success is a lot more important than another one thing." - Abraham Lincoln

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Bianca rose to the sound of pigeons cooing and traffic grumbling in the pub below. As she yawned and stretched, she thought about what was waiting for her that day.

She felt her motivation slowly drain away with each deadline and commitment that zipped through her thoughts. As Bianca did start to wither and wilt internally, she remembered the motivation pills she'd purchased last week from your Good Value Pharmacy.

There were yellow pills labeled 'Money', pink pills labeled 'Pride', green pills labeled 'Family', purple pills labeled 'Respect' and a few ugly grey pills labeled 'Nagging Advice'. The chemist had said as he dispensed the pills that some is correct for her and some wouldn't normally... he could never tell beforehand which pills would work for which customers. Your advice in mind and a smile on her lips, Bianca reached for the one she knew could be just right for her...

Among the best things you can do for yourself on your own journey of self discovery is always to work out what drives you. The initial step is to identify your values since they provide the fuel to your motivation and the drive behind everything you do in life. If you value something you will always discover the motivation and energy to acheive it. If you don't value something, you will always struggle to get the motivation and energy to do it.

Values

Your values are exactly what are important to you. These are the broad concepts that guide your decisions in daily life and form the foundation of your character. Your values also determine how you spend your time. For instance, if your most important value is health, you will spend your time quite differently from someone whose most critical value is career or family.

Values also drive all your motivation. You won't pursue an option unless it relates to something value at some level. Identifying your values allows you to kick-start your own motivation, set goals which can be appropriate and spend some time on things that are important to you.

How Your Values Are Formed

Your values come from a number of sources in addition to your family, friends, religion, school, teachers, country along with the media. They are also shaped without notice in your life by significant emotional events for example natural disasters, emotional abuse, global depression or war.

Your values change while you grow and evolve. Whenever you change your values, additionally, you will change some of your beliefs and exactly how you live life.

How To Identify Your Personal Values

Identifying your individual values helps you to:

- Understand why some issues really are a problem for you;
- See why the main things motivate you and others don't; and
- Identify and overcome troublesome areas of your life.

For example, assume you've weight issues. You determine your own personal values and find that physical fitness and health doesn't even rate a mention as part of your values. You may have found the reasons why you are having weight issues, i.e. physical fitness is not something you value. Even if this remains the case it's going to be very difficult for you to shed weight and gain a greater amount of health and fitness in your life since you will not have any motivation to take action.

You can identify your values by thinking about:

- What is important to me in relation to my life, career, relationships etc?
- What would cause me to leave my life, career, relationships, etc?

For those who have an understanding of your values, it is useful to see how they affect your motivation.

Motivation

Your values drive your motivation. If you set goals which are aligned with your values, you will have the motivation to help you achieve them. In case you set goals that aren't in line with your values, it's going to be an uphill struggle to achieve them.

When you understand your values as well as their impact on how you are still motivating yourself you will have a wonderful insight into the reason why you achieve the results that you simply do in life. You will also understand how to motivate yourself more effectively in the foreseeable future.

Motivation comes either from the inside of you (intrinsic motivation) or from an outside source (extrinsic motivation).

Extrinsic motivationis furnished by some factor external for your requirements. It can take the form of inducements (rewards) or punishments. The rewards might be tangible or intangible (like praise).

Intrinsic motivationis evident whenever you engage in an activity due to the own sake without external incentive. It appears from research made by Albert Bandura that if you have more self efficacy (belief in your abilities to control your environment) you are more highly intrinsically motivated than other individuals.

As intrinsic motivation will be the only one you can tote around and call upon at any time, it is the most important when it comes to self motivation.

Intrinsic motivation might be broken down further into 'towards' motivation and 'away from' motivation. 'Towards' motivation is motivation towards something you want and 'away from' motivation is motivation faraway from something you don't want.

'Away From' Motivation

'Away from' motivation is driven by pain. Pain motivated performance is just not pleasant, produces inconsistent results and disappears in the event the pain is no longer present.

'Away from motivation' does, however, supply you with a strong initial motivation to advance away from the thing you don't want that you experienced. A problem with using this type of motivation is you wait until things are bad before action to change them. One other issue is that you don't have a target or goal that you will be aiming for (just something you are running from) which means you don't tend to achieve results.

Sophia uses 'away from' motivation in terms of her weight. Because of this she is the classic yo yo dieter. Her process goes this way. Sophia looks in the mirror and is aware that she is overweight. She says to herself, 'I don't wish to be fat anymore'. She then goes on a diet to ensure she is no longer fat. (Jane is moving away from being fat). Sooner or later she looks inside the mirror and is aware that she looks fantastic and it is no longer fat. As she's no longer fat, she's got just lost the foundation of her motivation (to not fat). As there is no more any motivation, she not stays on the diet and discards her exercise regime. She will not be motivated to perform whatever she has to stay fit and healthy. In the course of the future she will view in the mirror and again constitute the judgment that she is fat along with the process will start all over again.

When you are motivated away from something that you don't want in daily life, you tend to focus upon abdominal muscles thing you don't want and that is what you attract to you. As examples:

- If you constantly inform yourself, 'I don't want to be broke', your focus is upon being broke which 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 which is where your unconscious mind will aim.

Motivation far from what you don't want can inspire you, but it doesn't accomplish that for long and you cannot be sure what results you are going to achieve. It can give you a fantastic initial boost of one's, but you can never guarantee your location going to end up as you do not possess a firm direction in your mind, just a place you have to get away from. If you use from motivation in your life, you'll tend to create a number of crises to keep yourself motivated.

'Towards' Motivation

The use of 'towards motivation' you will take action to advance towards your goal and you may achieve them generally.

'Towards' motivation is the best approach to motivate yourself. When you are motivated towards what you would like, you tend to stay consistently motivated and soon you achieve your goal (provided you desire it enough).

If you are motivated towards what you want, you constantly set and attain 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.

Can you be sure If The Motivation You have Is 'Towards' Or 'Away From' Motivation?

We now know that values drive your motivation which motivation can be either towards what you need or away from whatever you don't want. Now it is time for you to review your values to learn whether the underlying motivation for each and every of your values is:

- towards what you look for; or
- away from what you don't want.

To determine whether or not the underlying motivation for each and every value is 'towards' or 'away from' consider, "Why is that value crucial that you me?" then tune in to your self-talk and note everything you say to yourself. The clues as to whether you are using towards or far from motivation for that value are:

You are probably using 'towards' motivation in case 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 in case you:

- talk about what you don't want
- make comparisons within your explanation or use words like 'better than', 'more than', 'less than', 'best' etc. (These demonstrate are unhappy with that you currently are)
- use words including 'must', 'need', 'have to', 'got to' etc

As an example, feel that 'money' was your highest value regarding your career. You then contemplate, "Why is the value 'compensation' important to me in relation to my career?"

Should your answer is, "Because I want to create a lot of money and are in luxury", the response would indicate 'towards' motivation because of this value.

If your answer is, "Because I don't want to be broke i have to be able to pay my bills", the response would indicate 'away from' motivation with this value.

Your chances of achieving goals concerning 'money' are much greater if you work with towards motivation.

If you find that you have identified 'away from' motivation with regards to any of your values, you will discover:

- This area of your life is one that you will experience the most difficulties;
- You won't be achieving the results in the bradenton area of your life that you might wish; and
- There are unresolved issues to be cleared away and healed in relation to this area of your life before you decide to will experience the success you wish.

This is wonderful information to possess as it identifies areas of your life for you to focus upon.

Problems With Motivation

We all experience issues with motivation at some point. Days gone by when you just can't appear to find the desire to do issues you know you should. The down sides can arise because:

- You are have less energy. There are some easy things I know you do when you are feeling 'low' to really get your energy back. Keep in mind that sometimes in life, you need and deserve a rest.
- The thing you are aiming towards isn't something you value. (In such cases, question whether you should be exerting your time in that direction); or
- You have trouible with your motivation strategy (see below).

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If it is your motivation strategy which is causing you challenges, identify which section of the strategy is causing the problem after which use one of the following processes to assist you to change it. If you aren't motivated because:

- You feel overwhelmed, break the goal down into smaller steps and do them one-by-one.
- You are only using 'away from' motivation, identify where you stand aiming and focus upon the positive eating habits study attaining it.
- You feel obliged to pursue the thing, either accept desire to is not for you and overlook it or focus upon the positive outcomes you'll get from achieving the goal.
- You are scared, identify what could go wrong and what you'd do if it did.

In Summary

If you understand your values, you'll find out what motivates as well as why. If you discover whether you're using towards or from motivation in different regions of your life, you will have answers for why some parts of your life are successful while others are not. If you use one of several above techniques to overcome common motivation problems... and also you take action... you should be on your way to success!

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