Motivation in 2021

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Summary

Intrinsic Motivation.  This is the one that typically rules those New Year’s Goals. The classic example is losing 20lbs.  Your reason for doing this may be that you will feel better about yourself or be more confident or look sexy in those jeans you got for Christmas that almost fit if you lay on the bed and wiggle your legs fast.  That is an internal motivator and can be some of the hardest to maintain as we know how easily we let ourselves off the hook…time for that workout buddy.  

Extrinsic motivators – These are motivators that are the result of something outside of yourself that is pushing you.  Maybe that 20lbs that you wanted to lose did not come from the desire to be more confident but was the result of a partner putting the pressure on to lose 20 lbs. so you would be the attractive person they first met.

That fundraiser may be your child’s school saying that you need to be more involved in helping the school raise money and therefore you should chair this event.

These are motivators…no question about it but it is someone or something else’s desire that is fueling it.

The good news is that even though the New Year’s Goals sometimes don’t have the longevity that we wish they did, the strongest motivators are intrinsic. They are the dreams, goals and visions that mean the most to us. The motivation comes from within us.  We have created it and we are responsible for keeping it fired up.  

Intrinsic goals can be extremely powerful because we are doing it for ourselves or for something that we strongly believe in or want. Another example might be a charity event that you oversee.  This is likely an internal or intrinsic motivation because it is a passion or something that is important for you to succeed at.

Full Transcript

So beings we are going into a new year it was not totally a coincidence that I am starting the year out with Motivation as a topic.  However, I didn’t want this to be the normal rah rah New Years goals conversation.  I mean, I could do that but you can tune into any podcast for that and likely you don’t even need to, as we are so good at pumping ourselves up with new year's resolutions that are going to change our life…for 2 weeks.

I wanted to get into the real heart of the soul of motivation.  I know it is a term that is tossed around daily with no care or caution with how it is used.  I am sure you have heard…or said one of these things in the past week, month or maybe even today.  “I am just not motivated to go to the gym”, “Let’s order in, I am not motivated to cook”, or how about this one “I can’t get motivated to get moving in the morning”.  I could go on but you get the picture.  

But here is the thing Motivation is the key to everything! Without motivation there is no drive, no fire, no ambition, no excitement…No reason to even have goals.

Here is the thing though, motivation shows up in so many different ways in our lives.  Whether it be great motivation or lack of motivation.  It is a part of every decision that we make…no, really every single one.  You may be saying but Leigh, motivation has nothing to do with me feeding the dog or taking out the trash or even something larger like helping my child with homework.  These are just things that must be done everyday in the overall scheme of daily life.  Ahhh, but that my friend is where you are wrong.  It seems like we don’t give motivation all the credit it deserves.  It gets defined as either bad…no motivation, or good…very motivated.  But what about everything in between.  You may argue that those items I mentioned earlier are just to do’s, there is no conscious motivational energy involved in them.

Let’s look more carefully at this…There are as many definitions of motivation in the different dictionaries as there are fast food restaurants.  But if you take the gist of all of them it simply comes down to this.  “The reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way.”  

Everything that we do each day is a choice and in order to determine which choice A or B and sometimes C or D we have to process a decision.  Each decision is based upon the outcome of what each choice will result in.  The outcome can be dictated by a number of things depending upon…oh, wait, here it comes, what the motivation is.

I will grant you that some items, for example taking out the garbage, you quite likely weighed the outcome years ago and therefore you don’t have to mentally go through all the potential outcomes every time you take the garbage out because you know if you don’t, the house will stink, or the dog will drag it all over, and you will have to explain to your spouse, your roommate or anyone else that  is questioning why they have banana peels in their bed from the dog carrying the trash around, that the outcome of that conversation will not be desirable…Just easier to take the trash out.  

But let’s take that same trash and go back say 25 years to a younger time in your life.  You can do your own math…just get back to about 12 years old or so…Ok are you there?

That same task of taking out the garbage may get analyzed and questioned every time your mom or dad asked you to take out the trash.  Why is that? Well,  first of all you are 12 and everything is a battle at 12.  

Secondly, as you were arguing about taking out the trash you were gaging what the outcome would be if you didn’t do it, or if you did… See where I am going with this.  Motivation has appeared.  You may have been motivated to do what you were asked because the repercussions of not doing what you were told were not all that pleasant, or maybe the reward for doing what you were asked…say your allowance, motivated you to do the chore.   Either way, regardless of the decision that you made, it was based on a type of motivation.

So now that you have your mind wrapped around that you can come back to whatever age you are today, or whatever age you want to be…I am cool with that.

Motivation is an awesome, powerful, sneaky, sometimes nasty little critter, and we are going to look at 4 different types of motivation that show up in different areas of our lives.

Here we go.  Number 1 – Intrinsic Motivation.  This is the one that typically rules those New Years Goals. The classic example is losing 20lbs.  Your reason for doing this may be that you will feel better about yourself or be more confident or look sexy in those jeans you got for Christmas that almost fit if you lay on the bed and wiggle your legs really fast.  That is an internal motivator and can be some of the hardest to maintain as we know how easily we let ourselves off the hook…time for that workout buddy.  

The good news is that even though the New Years Goals sometimes don’t have the longevity that we wish they did, the strongest motivators are intrinsic. They are the dreams, goals and visions that mean the most to us. The motivation comes from within us.  We have created it and we are responsible for keeping it fired up.  

Intrinsic goals can be extremely powerful because we are doing it for ourselves or for something that we strongly believe in or want. Another example might be a charity event that you are in charge of.  This is likely an internal or intrinsic motivation because it is a passion or something that is really important for you to succeed at.

Number 2 are the Extrinsic motivators – These are motivators that are the result of something outside of yourself that is pushing you.  Maybe that 20lbs that you wanted to lose did not come from the desire to be more confident but was the result of a partner putting the pressure on to lose 20 lbs so you would be the attractive person they first met.

That fundraiser may be your child’s school saying that you need to be more involved in helping the school raise money and therefore you should chair this event.

These are motivators…no question about it but it is someone or something elses desire that is fueling it.

Before I move onto number 3 I want to back up just a bit and tell you that there are many minor motivators that fall under the titles of intrinsic or extrinsic, as every motivator will be one of those two types.  So you can think of these as subcategories of the two big dogs. 

The third type of motivation which would be a subcategory of intrinsic is one that we talked about earlier when you were 12 and taking out the trash for allowance.  This would be Reward or Incentive based.  This form of motivation can vary greatly and can also be more effective with some people than others depending on the reward.  Since people value different things this is one that needs to be very individualized if you are hoping to use this to have someone accomplish a goal that is important to you.  For example, you may be in charge of getting a large project done on a tight time scale and you need your support team to really step it up.  Sally may be motivated by a bonus if the project is completed by the deadline or early, while Bob may care less about money but a long weekend off with his family would go the distance to get him motivated.   In order for the reward or incentive to be a form of motivation it must resonate with the receiver.

Number 4 – Fear Based Motivation.  I suppose this could also go back to when you were 12 on trash duty and you knew if you didn’t do what you were asked then likely mom or dad was not going to be happy and the outcome was not going to be pretty and therefore it was fear based.  

As much as this probably falls under this category I am going to choose to go a different direction with this one so that we can take something productive away from it.

We know that most times when you set a goal, if you announce it to the world or at least a group of friends, a level of accountability has been organically planted.  They are going to ask how it's going or be looking for results.  The fear of not completing the goal and having to admit failure or embarrassment is a form of fear-based motivation. To save face and show up as the person who does what they say they are going to do, avoids the negative outcome of not completing the task or goal.

This can be a great tool to use as long as the fear is real and will push you to finish the goal.   You could see how you could use this with almost any goal you have just to put on that little extra bit of pressure and accountability.  How great will it feel when you have succeeded in the final goal?

In the coming weeks I am going to be talking about mastering motivation, tools to use to sustain great motivation and ways to regain motivation when it seems you have lost it.

I hope that this has been helpful and as always please put your questions or comments below so we can answer them personally.  Please share this with 5 friends and hit that like button.

You are an amazing person with goals and dreams that deserve to be reached for…Remember it is always your choice to Focus Forward.