new thing to read! - motivation

Joined
Jan 1, 2003
Messages
20,044
Reaction score
1,852
new piece im writing as part of my book "change your world"

for those of you who were reading my other piece on yob culture a finished draft is up on my website www.leeprice.ws

only about 1,000 words down so far here but its enough for u to get an ideo of whats going on, let me know what u think of it and how it makes u feel, good and bad!
-------------------------------

Motivation

What is motivation? Why is it so important? And where can we get more?
Hopefully by the end of this little piece you will have a clearer answer to all 3 of these questions.

If you want to be able to motivate yourself more easily for anything in life I believe by having a better understand of what motivation is that knowledge will act as a stepping stone towards developing more control and better direction for your motivation.


What is motivation?

When I look at motivation I see it with 3 shades. Each shade is similar but all are important in their own right.

1. Instant motivation
2. Short term motivation
3. Long term motivation

The only real difference between the types of motivation is the perceived time scale of the events or actions it is related to. Each type can also be split up into 2 further sections. I like to call these automatic responses and conscious changes.

To begin with let us look at the difference between automatic responses and conscious changes or conscious responses. These are important as no matter your goal it is rooted in either of these. The trick to having great motivation is using both together.

Automatic responses are quite simply anything that can be classed as a reflex action. Any kind of automatic response to any form of stimuli, the important thing here is that all the actions included within this category are instantaneous; there is no time to think about it, all of the reasoning is unconscious and automatic.

You could burn your hand touching a hot plate and you will draw your hand away before you even start to realise it hurts. Pain is quit simply a warning message letting you know there is some form of damage to your body. However if your body relied simply on you interpreting the pain there would be a longer delay before the plate is released thus causing more damage to the body. Reflexes are all in place to protect the body the motivation is the desire for continued survival of the body in full working order. Blinking at bright lights or when objects are close to the eyes, flinching away from painful objects or perceived danger all are motivated by the same thing. Because of their nature automatic responses are very powerful and it takes a great deal of control to over-ride them.

Conscious responses are any actions outside of your daily “survival” routine that you may choose to perform. This is an incredibly broad category and in is own right could be split up into further sub categories reflective of the level of motivation for each action.
An example could be picking up the hot plate to bring it closer so you may better use it, or maybe you wanted to test just how hot it really was. Absolutely anything you choose to do is a conscious response to a desire you hold. The desire may be conscious or unconscious but that matters not, if the desire exists you can choose to realize it.

So you can see broadly speaking that anything you react to without thinking is an automatic response while anything you can stop to think about is a conscious response. Automatic responses are always instant reactions to a thought or stimulus and most often can be put into the category of instant motivation whereas conscious responses are usually classed as short term or long term motivation.

It is important to remember that any action will be part of a higher cause. I don’t mean to imply a divine cause although this may be perceived to be true in some cases. By higher cause I am referring to every individual’s desire for survival. Every single action when broken down and looked at along a period of time can be seen as ensuring survival of the individual, the group or the race as a whole. Some actions are more obvious than others; picking up a fork does not seem nearly as significant as say running away from a bear. But whether you are hungry or the bear the end result will have a great influence on whether the individual continues to survive or not. Examples like this are why I like to split actions up into 3 categories based on the time they take to become complete. When motivation starts an action can shift between the 3 categories based on the priorities of the individual, they are not set and many desires will shift places multiple times.


Instant motivation

Instant motivation is in the here and now. Whatever you are currently doing may be changed or interrupted by the motivation to do something else. The most obvious motivations in this category are to do with immediate danger to the individual. Getting out of the way of falling rocks, running from that hungry bear or worse the angry wife are not things you would put off until later, all 3 could potentially result in injury or worse so it is always a good idea to deal with them right now. Examples here can usually be associated with an adrenaline dump and a strong urge for immediate action. Motivation in this category is always very high and usually easy to maintain until the danger has passed. Short and long term goals are pushed out of the way without much pause for thought and in some circumstances even forgotten completely.

Other not so immediate examples include hunger and thirst. While they too are vital for the survival of the individual they can usually be left until later. Most people upon feeling hungry or thirsty will start some form of action to get food or water.

Sexual urges can also be put into this category too as they are also fundamental for the survival of the species. Sexual urges in our society are a strange thing, people are taught early on in life to keep them in check and even though they would be classed as instant motivation they are quickly mastered and put aside or postponed.

Your environment has a great effect on whether or not you can carry out your urges immediately or whether you will be left waiting until later. That chocolate bar will just have to wait until you finish swimming.


Short term motivation

Short term motivation can be thought of as anything you wish to do or have that can be achieved in the near future but needs conscious thought or planning to achieve.
 
Read it mate, Its excellent, Already told you my thoughts ^^
 
Back