Sunday, July 21, 2013

Vital Questions - IV


'Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.'  Reggie Leach

What will keep me on going (motivation)

Motivation is described as the process of arousing and sustaining goal-oriented behaviours. Motivation creates your power of change, builds your self-esteem and capability and could manage your development and helping others with yours.

There are few popular (but not universally accepted) motivation theories which based on them some therapists, organization-sport counselors, NLP practitioners ,... have made their own motivational techniques. Like the self-awareness techniques I also recommend to find and apply the one that fits you the most but again do not stick to it as the only one.  Here I just want to review the subject from another perspective which may be compatible to most of them and could be universally applicable.

Self-motivation is a combination of different skills to initiate the process of transformation and to maintain the energy through the process of change. This includes risk taking, modelling, visualization, time management, challenging limiting beliefs, feeling purposeful,...

By going back to the previous vital questions, we can  now define the relationship between the four answers and see the difference in conscious and unconscious (auto-pilot) modes:

 
 
When we are not fully aware of what we really 'need' and what exactly we 'want', some pre-defined goals will be setup and our automatic behavioral patterns, belief system and habits make decision on how to move toward them. Since our power of intention plays an important role for 'feeling purposeful' (as a key motivator), in unconscious mode  the intentions may be mixed up or lost  by  the internal/external causes such as fears, failures, social forces,... That's when we lose our courage and energy to finish the job. The unclear/unknown intentions are not capable to maintain enough power for motivation, and therefore the goals may not be fully satisfactory be achieved.

On the other hand, at the conscious mode we are capable to clearly set and choose our goals and intentions + be able to freely monitor  our motivational strategies and emotions rather than become the victim of the outer causes and situations.

Let me share with you an interesting experience I had last week with one of my friends. He is a university prof, who had planned  to quit his job and to start his own business for the first time (which of course would be a great stretch out of his comfort zone). He had very hard time during last two weeks and he got so mind full (instead of mindful!), he  suddenly decided to stop the ongoing project of  his own future business + quit the university and go to work at a coffee shop. When I was trying to ask (or may be push)  him to re-look what he was going into, the reaction was: 'I don't need a life coaching, I only need money. I know my pattern, which I born with. But what can I do?  That's who I am!'.

He was totally right! From his current point of view, he's just a victim of his genes, socio-economical environment, stupid boss at his workplace,... I've doubt even he believes that he deserves the money he's looking for.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." (may be by Albert Einstein)

And the repeated lesson for me was:  We are unable to PUSH anyone to change. We could just make of your own free will changes, which could motivate the people around us to change!

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