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How to motivate ourselves and others
We all seem to know how to live well, yet few of us can bring ourselves actually to do it.
You might be able to come up with strategies and recommendations on how to motivate ourselves and others. Unfortunately, what is easy to do is rarely what works.
Optimal match of skills
Optimal match of skills and challenges
Intrinsic motivation and autonomous initiative are created by activities with a specific set of properties: they are challenging, require skill, and have clear and immediate feedback.
Specific conditions that allow for the onset of flow:
- Presence of clear goals.
- Immediate feedback.
- High challenges need to be matched with adequate personal skills.
- Focus on the task at hand and focused attention are must-haves.
- Perceived control of the situation.
- Loss of self-consciousness.
DistractionsDissatisfaction can motivate us
Distractions
Dissatisfaction can motivate us and drive us to act. If we are not happy, the pain lets us know that something needs to be done about it, and this represents a perfectly healthy evolutionary response.
Look for the emotion that proceeds the habit, getting curious about it, and instead of trying to escape, bringing even more attention to the craving.
When you put these negative thoughts and emotions on stage, they tend to dissipate
Techniques for sustaining motivationRemindersTo
Techniques for sustaining motivation
Reminders
To focus our attention on a particular commitment, it helps to have reminders.
Repetition
Regular reminders can pave the way for repetition, which is essential for lasting change. Technology has given us all sorts of excellent tools.
Motivation and stressStress can
Motivation and stress
Stress can have a significant impact on our motivational states.
Effective coping with stressors involves planning, execution, and feedback. During the planning component, appraise life change events. Analyze if the event is positive, negative, or irrelevant to your wellbeing.
During execution, determine how to cope with either the original stressor or the stress itself.
Clarifying and trying to solve the stressor is a form of problem-focused coping while alleviating the accompanying distress is an emotion-focused coping strategy.
RitualsWe form rituals after
Rituals
We form rituals after a sufficient number of reminders and repetition because our brain creates new neural pathways associated with a particular behavior.
As you create a reminder, repeat, and ritualize, remember:
- Less is more
- Fail and fail again
- Public commitments are a strong force
- Affirmations
- Journaling
Motivation techniquesWhen considering motivational
Motivation techniques
When considering motivational techniques, motivational states can be supported, neglected, or thwarted.
Effective interventions will more often make changes to the person’s environmental conditions and the quality of their relationships.
The goal of motivational techniques is to find, create, or offer motivationally and emotionally supportive conditions and relationships and to leave behind neglectful or abusive ones.
FeedbackGiving feedback can be
Feedback
Giving feedback can be a beneficial form of motivation. Here are some great pointers for doing feedback well:
- The power of expectations. Establish at the outset what the feedback is intended to accomplish and what form it will take.
- The power of accuracy and specificity. Be specific and pay particular attention to the part of the feedback that might be superfluous.
- Feedback is directed at the future, not the present. The focus of the feedback should be the vision of the terrific future work.
- Believing in the project. Your feedback should speak to your personal investment and express your belief that the work can be great and has the potential for success.
- The power of relationships. Harness what you know about the person to give better feedback and keep them accountable.
The science of motivation
The science of motivation tells that motives are internal experiences that can be categorized into needs, cognitions, and emotions.
These internal and external forces point us to how we can intervene to increase motivation.
Depending on the motivational dilemma, design interventions that target physiological or psychological needs, as well as make adjustments to the environment to create an optimal context for increased motivation.
Researchers who study motivation
Researchers who study motivation come to two conclusions.
- Not all attempts to motivate others and ourselves are successful.
- What is easy to do in practice is rarely what is most effective.
Leaders have much better success motivating their employees’ creativity and hard work when they take the employees’ perspective and invite them to generate their own self-endorsed work goals.
Goal setting and implementation
Goal setting and implementation intentions
The realization of goals can be effectively facilitated by forming an implementation intention that spells out the when, where, and how we are going to achieve our goal.
