How Motivation Works And How You Can Use It & How To Be More Self-Motivated

Knowing how motivation works allows you to harness its power and use it to achieve whatever you set your heart on. The science of motivation says there are two sources of motivation to get from point A to point B. Motivation can be traced back to one of two originating sources. These two sources are:

    Movement Away From Pain.
    Movement Toward Pleasure.
    All innovation and achievement comes from one of those two sources of motivation. Let's take a closer look at how these two sources work.

Movement away from pain: When you are experiencing something in your life that causes pain, you eventually reach a point where you will not take it any more, and thus become motivated or determined to make a change.

This pain can be in many forms, it could be a relationship that is strained, a physical disorder, a case of depression, anxiety, confusion, etc. It could be any number of things, including vulnerability. Once you become determined to change this circumstance or emotion or reality, you begin to take action.

The catalyst for this action, or the motivator is the pain (frustration, confusion, irritation, etc) you are experiencing.

However, the reason motivation sometimes does not last, and you need to re-motivate yourself is that once the pain is gone, you often stop making the change, and go back to your old ways.

You had a pain, you changed something, saw a manifestation of a different life, got comfortable, and now the pain is starting to reappear. When motivated by pain you get fast results, but often the effect is not as long lasting. This is because the further you get from the pain, the less you become motivated. In other words, your motivator disappears.

This is where the second form of motivation needs to come into play.

Movement toward pleasure: When you take the time to take stock of your life and determine what it is that you want, you can use those desires to get motivated. Usually the way this form of motivation works is that you write down your goals: financial, relationship, education, general, etc.

It really does not matter what your goals are, what matters is that you have them. Once you have your goals set, you change your actions to help you achieve them. Thus, your motivator is pleasure: a better job, a bigger house, a kinder spouse, etc.

After some time, usually longer than the previous example of a pain motivator, you start to see some of this new life manifesting itself. However, in some cases this form of motivation starts to fail as well because the results are too slow.

So, now that you know how you get motivated, to get pleasure, or avoid pain, you can use this idea and combine the two to get and stay motivated to get better things for your life, and experience less of the painful, frustrations.

Being, staying, and feeling motivated is a foundational element of success, change, and happiness. Knowing what you want, and what you don’t want are key to motivation.

How To Be More Self-Motivated

Finding motivation is sometimes a difficult thing to do, but there are steps you can take to make it easier to get there. You will need to teach yourself how to be more self motivated and this is something that can’t be forced on you but has to be a conscious decision you make.

Self motivation is a skill that can be developed by employing the right steps and by making a sincere effort each day. On one can force you to be motivated and it is something that you have to convince yourself to do on your own and then follow through. Others can help motivate you to take the steps necessary, but it ultimately your responsibility to be self motivated.

1. Step out of your comfort zone

Setting and accomplishing goals is something that should be difficult and that should push you past the actions you do every day. Stepping out of your comfort zone doesn’t mean that you have to do ridiculous things or go against your moral beliefs, but it does mean that you should try and do things you have never done before and then work very hard to achieve those goals.

There will be times when you aren’t sure if you will actually be able to get everything done and this should drive you to keep going and to do more than you ever thought possible. The objective of stepping out of your comfort zone is to help you realize that you really are capable of a lot more than you probably think. When you come to this realization, you will find it easier to stay motivated and to continue the positive cycle of goal setting and accomplishment.

2. Be willing to take a risk

Doing only things that are very easy will never help you get the best results. If you want to really get somewhere in life, you will need to be willing to do things that most others wouldn’t even every try.

Taking a calculated risk in your business life is sometimes difficult to do but can bring tremendous rewards in the long run. It is also essential to be smart about the risks you take and never do anything that is illegal or unethical. It’s also important to keep a long term perspective in this matter to realize that taking risks doesn’t always pay off immediately, but will in the long run if you stick to your guns and keep going.

3. Think positively

One of the keys to getting and staying motivated is to have a positive outlook on life and everything that will happen to you. It doesn’t make sense to have the expectation that your life will never have any kind of problems or that you will be immune to hardship when you are working on motivation, but you can realistically learn how to see the positive in every situation and to make every mistake or difficulty into an opportunity.

The cycle of self motivation is a positive cycle and will continually build on itself. The more you are able to be motivated and to achieve your goals, the better able to set and achieve new goals you will be. This will be and upward spiral that continues to lift you throughout your life.

Life will never be predictable and will always throw some kind of challenge at you, but understanding how to set goals and to be self motivated will help you to meet the challenges that come your way. Motivation will become part of your life and won’t just be something that you think about on New Year’s Day only.