Motivation Part Two
So yesterday i touched briefly on my thoughts about motivation and what "it" actually is.
When we are motivated we become engaged, and unleash our creative and productive minds at the same time as being in a positive mental and happy mindset. Through motivation it is this that gives us the impetus to move, grow and change the things around us. We tend to feel powerful, and in control of our situation and surroundings and throught this we derive meaning and purpose in our lives.
So how can we tell when we or our loved ones or in my case my patients are demotivated and un-engaged from their environments?
It has been said that demotivation is similar to snow, in the sense that the inuits have 50 words for snow and each one describes the unique attributes that it has.
When we assume of demotivation we often basket them altogether into one generic term which we assume fits all, however this couldn't be further from the truth. Demotivation is a variety of problems in subdivided categories, and when we try to box all of these into one simple category we ultimately lead to failure as the standard approaches (setting goals, pushing harder, and creating accountability for yourself) to this will ultimately fail.
In essence when we are demotivated we are not fully able to commit to something and hence the need to understand the specific characteristics that we are experiencing to properly address and manage this.
Causes of demotiviation
Fear
Fear of the unknown and the fear of not knowing is often detrimental in the pursuit of change or stepping into an area beyond your current boundries. It could be assumed as a safety mechanism within your psyche to prevent yourself harming itself, so fear will slow you down and make you more cautious. Howeever when we combine it with our imaginations rather than a proper risk assessment or having a firm grasp of reality, your fear may lead to you not pushing forward with your goals and favouring safety and security of your own little bubble.
Setting the wrong goals
whenever we set the wrong goals, it often means that we are going in the wrong direction from where we ultimately want to arrive and so when we reach the worng destination we are often left dejected. [Marth Beck] (http://marthabeck.com/) describes us as having a Essential and a Social Self. More often than not these two having confilcting opinions and we often try to go with the flow as opposed to going with our heart. The essential self allows you to have spontaniety, along with your playful and creative side, whereas your Social self is more aligned with fitting in with the norms of society and trying to "fit in".
Lack of clarity
When we don't allow ourselves to properly articulate what we want from our lives, we have a less distinct picture of what we want our future to look like and it becomes blurry around the edges similar to fear we like the comfort of our bubbles and we tend to stay with things which are safe and familiar to us.
Conflict of values
Our values are the things that we hold and deem important for us. When we try to satisfy all of these in a given situation we often fall short and are unable to achieve this. As a result of this we end up causing ourselves to become conflicted and pulling ourselves in different directions, and trying to address all of these means we have a lack of focus on one particular issue at hand and ultimately fail to achieve what we set out to do.
lack of autonomy
We all have a centre in the brain responsible for making our decisions, as with everything it requires regular excercise and if we dont utilise it, it can often lead to depression which research has shown this part of the brain is often under developed in people suffering from depression.
Dusting of this part of the brain and aloowing yourself to dictate what, when, how and whom we do things with is essential in igniting the flames of creative and productive behaviours.
lack of challenge
there is a thin line we have to walk on this too great a challenge and fear may set in and depletes our motivation and if it is too simple we can easily bore ourselves and struggle to keep our attention on the task.
When we constantly challenge ourselves it helps to drive our evolution and allows ourselves to develop and master new skills.
Grief
Grief is similar to Fear in the sense that we are fearful and have doubts about what the future will hold for us in this new and uncertain world that we wish to enter into, and we start to grieve for what we are leaving behind and frightened to let go of the comfort of our past self. When we do this we allow confusion, self doubt and mistrust of the world to set in, and whilst all of this is going on we tend to see our motivation waning at this time.
loneliness
For those of us who are isolated or work from home you may end up with a bit of cabin-fever, and you just don't feel like working just now, and it is always easy to find something to distract ourseves with. Perhaps in essence this is all just part of our normal feelings of wanting to belong and the need for social interaction.
Burnout
I think we have all been a victim of this. Over extending ourselves, burning the candle from both sides, beyond which is both sustainable and end up tiring ourselves out and we would much rather prefer an extra few minutes in bed and that snooze button is never far away.
not sure what next to do
when we set our big ambitious goals, sometimes we dont think about the pathway to attain this and we want to go from the beginning to the end all in one go, however more often than not we dont subdivide it into bite sized tasks and have no clear plan mapped out for us it can often lead us around in circles and leave us despondent.
So with all of this in mind I think if we can clearly identify what is the particular thing which is causing us to become demotivated we can now specifically look at the issues at hand and customise our soltuion to our lack of motivation.
I know this has been a long post but its building the foundation for future posts to come. If you have any comments or suggestions I would love to hear from you. If there is anything specific you want me to cover in my posts please let me know down below.