Identifying motivations is the secret habit of Millionaires. “Motivation is what gets you started. Habits are what keep you going…
There are a million different paths to success. But with all of those options, I have learned that the fastest way to success involves one option above all others.
When success habits become part of your new routine, your life can change dramatically.” – Dean Graziosi
It often happens to feel lacking in spirit in the activities in which one engages. This is precisely what is called lack of motivation! What is motivation? How important is motivation? What are the consequences of lack of motivation? How to find the motivation? So many questions that it is important to answer to increase success in your life. We take stock in this article on motivation!
The importance of motivation
What is motivation?
Motivation is defined as a set of dynamic factors that determine the conduct and action of an individual vis-à-vis a goal. It therefore designates a desire, a will, a motive, a justification to act.
From the moment there is a goal, there is motivation. Motivation exists in the face of extremely varied objectives. These can be more or less long, more or less important or more or less complicated to achieve. Likewise, they can be ordinary or exceptional.
For example, it is possible to be motivated to do housework in order to obtain a pleasant place to live, just as it is possible to be motivated to learn courses in order to graduate at the end of the school year. In the same way that it takes motivation to get out of bed in the morning, it also takes motivation to risk your life for the benefit of a cause that you defend! Motivation, to varying degrees, is omnipresent in our personal and professional lives.
Motivation is always related to our needs. It is because we need something that we want to get it.
There are, however, different types of needs that drive motivation in humans. According to the theory of Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist, these can be divided into 5 categories: physiological needs, security needs, belonging and love needs, esteem and recognition needs and self-realization and personal development.
The intensity of our motivation can vary depending on the value we place on the goal. Similarly, the level of motivation necessary for the success of an objective changes according to its complexity. The so-called external needs (physiological and safety) are listed at the lower level. While the so-called internal needs (belonging, self-esteem and self-fulfillment) are identified at the higher level.
Why is it important to have motivation? Here is a question you probably ask yourself after reading the beginning of this article. You need a minimum of motivation to take action. However, the greater the motivation, the more we increase our chances of success, in the most optimal way possible at all levels.
Motivation is a catalyst in all the acts we perform. It is the energy that drives us to find the resources, inside and outside of us, to achieve our goal. It is, undeniably, the key to success!
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Be motivated in your daily life
As explained above, even the most ordinary daily actions require motivation. The acts we perform every day, such as eating or sleeping for example, have a purpose because they meet some of our needs. They are generally intended to satisfy physiological or safety needs. These appear to us as so banal that we come to forget their reason for being!
These everyday actions are often responses to so-called low-level needs. They respond to external needs, which affect the preservation and protection of our physical body. Their repetitive aspect, and considered unrewarding, can quickly and easily lead to lack of motivation.
However, it is harmful to always feel unmotivated in your daily life. Demotivation is accompanied by a feeling of weariness. Indeed, the fact of repeatedly performing acts whose meaning we no longer perceive causes a form of physical and psychological depression. What could be more unpleasant than always feeling demoralized, tired or bored? This situation can, in the long term, cause you to lose interest in life!
This loss of joie de vivre causes various ailments, such as depression, stress or fatigue for example. It can also cause physical problems, because the body and the mind are linked. Our body regularly sends us signals aimed at drawing our attention to a psychological point to be treated. It is not uncommon to quickly find oneself helpless under this accumulation of suffering.
It is therefore important to put consciousness back into all the ordinary acts we perform. Being motivated is above all giving deep meaning to each of your actions, even the most basic ones.
For example: it is possible to understand meals differently by assimilating the impacts of food on our physical and energetic bodies and by becoming aware of the many pitfalls that exist in this area. As part of such an approach, it will no longer be a question of mechanically swallowing food at random, but of eating in conscience.
It is possible to act in this way in the face of all the acts that we consider insignificant. The actions cut off from the rank of inferior have, in reality, a much greater importance than we imagine. When we become aware of their real stakes, we take a fresh look at them.
Likewise, your daily life should not be limited to a metro-work-sleep routine. It is essential to instill an aspiration to develop yourself personally. It is about improving yourself on dimensions other than physical and psychological survival. These soul-changing challenges engender a new way of looking at life and boost your daily motivation.
Be professionally motivated
Work occupies a large place in the lives of the majority of citizens. It is where we spend most of our time.
However, suffering at work and burnout are growing problems in our contemporary societies. Many people engage in a professional activity just to meet their basic needs. They feel no pleasure in doing their job.
Professional life necessarily influences private life. It takes up too much space in our heads and in our schedules to neglect it. It is psychologically harmful to spend your life carrying out a mission for which you have no other motivation than to survive.
It is quite natural that money should be one of the main objectives of our professional life. There is, however, a difference between working to be able to meet only one’s vital needs and also working to fulfill one’s dreams and have fun. Likewise, money should not become the only work-related enjoyment. It is important to have a minimum of personal satisfaction in carrying out your professional missions!
Several sociological studies show that motivation increases individual and collective success within a company. A motivated individual is capable of more progress and better performance than a demotivated individual. The same goes for a group of individuals. This is why many companies are now working on the well-being of their employees and team cohesion. The objectives of these measures are above all pragmatic.
Moving forward in your professional life therefore requires, above all, motivation! Motivation involves qualities that are essential for development such as the pleasure of exercising, the desire to do it at best, and the desire to always move forward.
It’s hard to feel motivated about a job you don’t like or working conditions that put you down. Motivation results from an optimal psychological and environmental set.
For this reason, it is important to choose your job well, to give yourself every chance of getting into it, to experiment as many times as necessary, not to be afraid to question yourself or to change career paths if need. Likewise, do not agree to work in poor conditions. Dare to assert your rights in all circumstances!
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Lack of motivation: the disadvantages
Lack of motivation, in general, has many disadvantages in your life. It has various consequences.
First of all, the lack of motivation causes real difficulties in taking action. It is, sometimes, the cause of procrastination. The demotivated person comes to develop a form of immobility. Or it doesn’t work at all. Either it acts, but always very slowly and late.
It is not uncommon for the demotivated person to repeat the same mistakes and the same harmful patterns over and over again in their life. This, for lack of will and courage to undertake actions that can lead to change. The actions of change seem, in this case, insignificant or insurmountable.
The lack of motivation also causes a reduction or a lack of success. Acting with motivation is the best way to achieve your goal. Motivation is a powerful engine for the human being. Those with lower motivation cannot put their skills to the service of the goal with as much power as those with high motivation. There is also the phenomenon of what is called self-fulfilling predictions: that is to say that if we anticipate a failure in advance, we will tend to behave unconsciously in such a way as to favor this failure! These weaknesses lead to either a lack of success or sub-optimal success.
Finally, the lack of motivation is at the origin of a psychological imbalance. We are not made to live without motivation. When we regularly perform actions whose meaning we do not perceive, it is as if we are slowly dying inside.
This internal “death” can manifest itself in various ways. These can be psychological ailments, but also physical ailments. In any case, the demotivated person, in the long term, is in pain.
Lack of involvement in his life on all levels
Failure in his professional life
Do you go to work every morning with low spirits? Do you feel perpetually uncomfortable in your workplace? Do you have no pleasure in carrying out the missions entrusted to you? Waiting for the end of the day with your eyes glued to the watch? We can say that you are failing in your professional life, and this is a real problem!
Failure in one’s professional life is unfortunately common. Many people are unhappy with their jobs. Some know it, but do not find the courage to remedy it. Others do not even realize it, but continually suffer from this aspect of their existence.
The first sign of failure in professional life is precisely the lack of motivation! Motivation is a valuable indicator that you should always take into account. It happens to everyone to occasionally run out of energy. However, from the moment when the lack of enthusiasm to practice your profession is continuous, we can say that there is a problem.
How to identify lack of motivation at work? It’s quite simple. Simply ask yourself if the reasons for which you made this professional choice still exist today. If you no longer know why you are doing this job rather than another, it is because you lack motivation.
This lack of motivation can translate concretely in different ways depending on the person. It may, for example, be difficulty getting up in the morning, repetitive delays, lack of application in your professional activities or even intense anxiety on Sunday evening at the thought of Monday morning.
It’s all a downward spiral. Lack of involvement causes professional failure just as professional failure causes lack of involvement.
Failure in his private and daily life
Failure does not only exist in professional life. It can also be present in personal life. Private life, however, includes a wider range of areas than work life. It is therefore sometimes more difficult to understand the failure of one’s daily life and the reasons for it. Generally speaking, failure in personal life is more complex than failure in professional life.
Are you happy ? Here is a question that seems simplistic, but that many people will find difficult to answer. Even if the result will necessarily include nuances, it can be interesting to ask it.
If the answer contains more elements that tend towards no, it is possible to conclude that there has been a total or partial failure of his private life. However, be careful not to get discouraged. The important thing will be above all to find the problematic points to remedy them and not to consider that it is a fatality.
Again, lack of motivation is an important sign of a problem in one or more areas of your personal life. Do you still feel passion for the person whose life you share? Do you always marvel at your sleeping children? Do you enjoy doing simple things like drinking coffee in the morning, quietly, on your balcony?
The idea, through all these examples of questions, is to know if you are still dynamic inside! The lack of motivation in private life is more subtle than the lack of motivation in professional life. It can result, among other things, in a lack of physical and mental dynamism.
It goes through various signs and these can vary depending on the person. For example, not appreciating what you have for its true value can be a sign of a lack of motivation. It’s about feeling jaded by what previously delighted us. Everything becomes tasteless and unimportant. Similarly, the absence of new objectives and the fact of wallowing in repetitive banality can be harbingers of a lack of motivation.
The common point between the lack of motivation at work and the lack of motivation in private life is disinvestment and its consequences. The demotivated person disinvests his environment and this disinvestment always generates more demotivation. It is always difficult to see the end of the tunnel when you fall into this trap.
How to cultivate your motivation?
The will to change, one of the first rules of motivation
You are probably asking yourself the following questions. How to maintain your motivation on a daily basis? How to avoid wearing down your motivation over time? How can you always renew your goals and the energy that drives them? These questions are indeed worth asking, because they point to frequent problems in our society.
The first thing to know is that the will to change is essential to motivation and its preservation. It is necessary to want to change your perception of life to cultivate your motivation. In other words, the process of regaining motivation itself requires motivation!
To want to change, you must already be aware that the current state of things is a problem. Anyone who believes that living his life in a gloomy way is normal will never feel the desire to apprehend his environment differently. Solving a difficulty starts with noticing and accepting the difficulty. Then you have to be able to imagine that things could be different. The fatalistic spirit is the enemy of your motivation. It is important to believe in your capacities for change and to really want to use them.
The fear of failure can be the source of a lack of motivation. Fear of not succeeding sometimes leads to not wanting to try at all. For this reason, it is essential to believe in yourself and work on your self-confidence.
Motivation, a personal approach
Once the will to change is present, it is necessary to be aware that the journey towards motivation is a personal process. By personal approach, we mean an intimate approach, specific to the specificities of each person.
It is therefore obviously impossible to make an exhaustive and precise list of things to do to regain motivation. Everyone will have to find their method according to the particularities of their case. However, it is conceivable to list the outline of the different stages of the road to motivation!
Take what speaks to you and leave out what doesn’t resonate with you. The following advice should be seen as tips, keys, avenues to invest and not as commandments.
First of all, to achieve motivation, we must understand the reasons for our demotivation. These can be extremely varied from one situation to another. For example, if you are disinvested in your couple, perhaps the person you are with no longer corresponds to you. Or maybe it’s just a lack of time for each other. The eventualities are diverse and can sometimes exist simultaneously.
However, the explanations are not always simple and obvious. It can sometimes be unconscious and complex psychological processes. For example, some people are demotivated, not by fear of failure, but by fear of success! Thus, it is essential to dismantle all your limiting beliefs to begin the work towards motivation on empty ground and therefore conducive to the establishment of new bases.
Being motivated also means giving yourself the means to evolve personally and professionally in good conditions, and thus to be effective. A harmful environment is more likely to trigger demotivation. Already because it involves more difficulties than a healthy environment and therefore requires greater motivation. But also because it causes in the individual a non-optimal psychological state, such as stress for example.
Encourage others to motivate themselves through their own change
Life is a succession of situations that intertwine with each other. Without knowing it, we are constantly living through a domino effect. This is why each of our actions, no matter how small, has an impact on the world. Although we do not realize it, each of our choices changes our existence and that of others.
“It is said that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can cause a typhoon on the other side of the world”. This cult line by Evan Treborn in the movie “The Butterfly Effect” illustrates this reality well. The entire Universe is governed by the Law of Causality.
Know that by undertaking work on your person, you become an example for others. The change you embody is a source of direct or indirect motivation for the people who observe you. Even if you are not necessarily aware of it, you positively influence your environment by becoming a better version of yourself.
This is why it is important to give yourself the means to embody your core values. A deed is worth a thousand words. There is no better way to convince your interlocutor of a benefit than by experiencing it yourself. Your behavior is the best example!
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Set goals to be motivated
In order to preserve your motivation over the long term, there is a method that sometimes works. It’s about setting goals for yourself on a regular basis. As we saw earlier, motivation works through a goal that directly or indirectly satisfies a need.
Be careful though! To go the distance, the goals you set for yourself should not seem too complex or too distant. Conversely, they must be particularly accessible. You need to be able to check off your goals regularly, as validation, to make you want to move on to the next one with as much enthusiasm.
So when you want to achieve a huge goal, it’s best to break it down into smaller goals. These sub-objectives, achieved one by one, will gradually lead you to the achievement of the main objective. Each day will have its challenge to succeed. So you never get tired or discouraged during the long journey of reaching an important goal. You can even take the opportunity to give yourself a well-deserved reward for each step you complete.
This technique allows you not only to be organized, but also to feel valued. It is ideal for increasing your confidence and self-esteem. Feeling up to it strengthens your desire to continue and your ability to do so. It is important, both to yourself and to others, to stimulate with the positive rather than crush under the negative.
Find motivating sources of inspiration
Just as you can inspire someone else, you also need to find sources of inspiration. Motivation is greater when we have positive examples. Seeing the benefits of our goal on another person makes us want to achieve it even more.
There is nothing negative about being inspired by someone. It is not a question of idolizing the person concerned or placing him on a pedestal like a guru. Nor is it a question of stupidly imitating without any capacity for reflection. It’s about taking an example, not of the person as a whole, but of what they do well that resonates with you. It is perfectly possible to put aside the elements that inspire you less, if there are any!
If something resonates with you, it is never by chance. It’s probably because it’s a quality your soul longs for. So, when you come across someone who makes you jealous, don’t dwell on that feeling of frustration. Instead, ask yourself what deeply appeals to you about her, and what you could do to learn those same skills. This is a great way to make negative feelings useful and constructive.
Likewise, it is highly recommended to take the good in every person and every situation you encounter. People are only very rarely all black or all white. It’s all shades of gray. You will thus realize that each person can become, on certain points, and in certain circumstances, a source of inspiration for you. Life allows you at every moment to enrich yourself with others!
Surround yourself with people who motivate you
You also have the possibility to select the people you want to meet on a daily basis. Surround yourself as much as possible with positive people who lift you up!
We are necessarily influenced by our environment. Even while trying to remain the most faithful to ourselves, our attitude is not the same depending on the people with whom we find ourselves.
For example: spend a first afternoon with a happy and high-spirited group, then a second afternoon with a particularly pessimistic and depressed group. Observe your mood at the end of each day. Similarly, try to resist smoking in the middle of a group of smokers or in the middle of a group of anti-tobacco activists. It is impossible to be completely neutral.
It is therefore preferable to have an entourage that corresponds to your aspirations. Regularly rub shoulders with individuals who tend towards what you consider good.
Of course, there is no question of categorically cutting yourself off from anyone who does not correspond to your ideas. It is only a question of preserving, as much as possible, a positive bubble around you, in what constitutes the skeleton of your life. This does not prevent you, beyond this founding cocoon, from opening up to the world and to other horizons.
Indulge in positive thinking
Thought plays an important role. Motivation exists when you believe you can do it. Whoever leaves defeatist has already lost.
It is therefore essential to cultivate positive thinking towards oneself and one’s environment on a daily basis. Have faith in yourself and in the future. Always perceive the positive side of each situation, even if the latter is a test for you. Don’t let doubt creep into your actions.
Also know that positive thinking makes the law of attraction work. The vibrations that you release, through your way of apprehending what surrounds you, attract to them events with similar vibrations. We are ultimately the co-creators of our reality. So if you are perpetually pessimistic, you actually risk creating failure. Whereas if you think like a winner, you call victory.
Give yourself the physical means to succeed, but encourage this concrete work by your psychic. Body and mind work together.
Motivation is omnipresent in our life made up of needs and therefore of objectives. However, it is possible to be sorely lacking. Fortunately, there are several ways to increase and maintain motivation. Personal development, on various points, is the key.
