We always use the word motivation. In the workplace, we are often tempted to talk about motivation as the main driver of what we do or can’t do at the moment. According to Australian research conducted in 2017 Motivation is the second strongest factor for achieving results that people share.
According to the level of motivation and level of achievements reported, people in the study were divided into two groups. Successful and average. It was concluded that what separates a successful person from an average one is the ability to understand why it feels de-motivated, respond successfully on that reason, and after that moving forward.
Researchers have found that there are three main reasons why people lose their motivation:
Lack of confidence
This reason is based on the belief for the meaning of something you must do. It answers the question: “Why would you continue to try doing something if you don’t believe that you can do it?” If you can’t answer that question then you are setting up for failure. This setting is some kind of self-protection. To succeed you will need to boost your self-confidence to the level allowing you to make an impact and change the situation.
Lack of focus
When you don’t know exactly what to do, you will then ask yourself ”Why you should do something if you don’t know exactly what to do?” Another reason for the lack of focus may be that you are up to so many goals at the same time that you can’t prioritize them and focus on succeeding with one at a time to begin producing achievements
Lack of path and direction
If you have understood what you want then you start believing that you can do it. But still, the one thing that is missing is the answer to the question “How to start?” Not knowing how to answer that question can either stop you from achieving then support your activity. The positive part here is that sometimes you don’t need to have direction from the beginning. Instead, staying in action will define your direction and will educate you on the necessary steps you must take to succeed.
These three reasons have a huge impact on the level and direction of your internal motivation. But we are humans and we have self-conciseness. We are able to work on self-motivation to help to achieve goals we are assigned to by addressing these three motivation distractors.
Addressing a lack of confidence
To do hat you may need to Focus on your positives or strengths instead of what you lack in your work. Try to create a positive attitude by telling yourself how able you are to succeed. A good strategy will be to repeat things that you already know, just to remind yourself that you are a goal achiever. And last but not least, you must learn to accept compliments from others and enjoy their feedback instead of closing yourself and defending your ego.
Addressing a lack of focus
In a disturbing and busy environment like the one we exist, it is so easy to lose focus. That often leads us to something called “fear-based” thinking. Here is the fear to lose our jobs, because we can get poor, the fear to speak in front of others, because of possible disapproval from their side on what we have to say, the fear to take risks at work, because we are not sure about the final result, etc. That fear stops us from achieving results and moving forward. To defeat your lack of focus you must learn to set goals to yourself that are achievable and clearly defined. As clearer the goal is, as much you will try to focus on it, knowing what has to be achieved and the importance of that what. You must move from worrying about unclear future on what you can achieve now to improve situation.
Addressing lack of path and direction
Well, you have developed your goals and you are now focused on them. But still, you find it difficult to find the path and the direction you need to follow to transform your goals into real results. When in this situation, people often procrastinate. This motivation distractor is a difficult one to overcome, but not impossible. It requires you to take your goal, break it in small steps on a daily basis and then start planning and achieving for each day. It is easier if you build something similar to a daily “to-do” list. That will help you to focus on a separate list for every single day and will clear your path and set up the direction for you.
You have addressed the motivation distractors, have planned how to deal with them – Now what? If you want to be successful in dealing with motivation distractors efficiently in time you need to show persistence and self-discipline. Because the discipline to continue reaching your goals, despite how you feel at the moment, ensures your joy of reaching results and making efforts when on the path of achievement. Self-discipline requires you to act according to how you think, instead of how you feel. And yes, we all have bad days when we don’t want to get up from the bed or start with tasks at work, but overcoming these feelings and acting from the position of thinking will help you to constantly deliver results.
Self-discipline helps you in several directions like:
- Going to exercise in the days that you don’t feel like you want to do it;
- Working on your daily tasks, despite the feelings;
- Turning away different temptations in your work and social life;
- Walking away from time-sucking gossips in the office….etc.
People who are self-disciplined have five basic characteristics that make them look different from the rest:
Self-knowledge
These characteristics can help you understand what is important for you and to identify areas where you want to improve. Knowing yourself means to know and understand what your strengths are, how these strengths help you in different situations. But self-knowledge also means that you are able to recognize and identify your areas for improvement and are ready to work transforming them through your strengths.
Self-Awareness
To become more disciplined you ill first need to take into consideration what you are doing and whatnot. For example you will need to answer yourself questions like: “Where am I investing my time well? ” and the opposite: “Where am I wasting my time? ”, or” Where am I investing time in important and unimportant things?” etc. Until you don’t build awareness where your discipline suffers, you want to be able to build a sustainable plan to improve it. The better you identify areas where you lack discipline the faster you will be able to transform that unproductive behavior.
Internal commitment
Self-discipline won’t last long without a true and powerful internal commitment from you. If you find that by the first temptation you start losing the self-discipline, you will need to go back and explore more on your self-awareness. Your commitment is stronger when you do something closer to your understandings, feelings and internal world. Maybe some of the steps completing a task won’t be as pleasant as you expected, but still committing to something has to mean that you will invest time, effort, energy and all other resources needed, to complete it successfully.
Internal courage
To stand in front of something challenging and tempting in your life takes a great deal of courage. When going through the first steps, people often think that self-disciplining will be easy. But there is no guarantee for that. Your level of commitment to something important for you to define the level of activity you put to reach your goal or in other words, the level of internal courage. It is the power you feel inside you to tell “NO” to things that may distract you and dissuade you from your course.
Internal coaching
Back in the beginning here I wrote about the “internal critic” in you. Now, the self-disciplined person needs to discipline this internal negative voice in their head. We all have our internal critics. When you face a challenge to your self-discipline that internal critic comes out to shoot his words, making you feel like you want to quit or give up. That is why you need to transform him into something positive. You will need to learn how to cheer and encourage yourself to reassure that you are making the right choices.
IN CONCLUSION:
We all need to understand that the motivation we talk so much on is not an external topic, but something that lies inside us and defines what is important for us at a particular moment in our lives. Learning better what distractors we may meet in our way of building it and the ways we can build strategies to help us improve consistently and persistently in time can guarantee us high level of internal motivation and high level of external engagement with all challenges in work and life, allowing us to transform negative and unproductive behavior to productive and winning approach.
The Human place 