Misconceptions about Motivation

FEATURE Misconceptions about Motivation

How good are you at motivating yourself? What do you do to get motivated? Are you someone who can easily tap into motivation to get started, or are you more of a procrastinator, waiting for motivation to come to you? What if turns out motivation is often comes after starting a new behaviour, not before? All you have to do is… start.

Motivation is enough

Many people experience a time when they suddenly feel motivated to do everything they really wanted. Then they sit down and do what they can in one time. Great, but what’s next? Sadly, it won’t help you to achieve your goal. Motivation helps you to keep going as your body is giving you extra boost of energy to complete a task, but it is not everything you need. Unfortunately, it is not long term and a singe boost will not help you to achieve your dream. You need discipline! The key for success is discipline! As basic as it sounds you need consistency in order to maintain your progress for a long period. Many people, especially pupils and students, dislike discipline as it is associated with strict rules and discomfort. In fact, those clams are based only on prejudice. Yes, discipline is not that easy to follow as the adrenalin rush, but it is more rewarding. Try to remember why you want to achieve your dream and that scheduling time to complete it on a regular basis. Trust me, it will work!

All you have to do is start

Waiting for a right time

“Don’t wait until everything is right. It will never be perfect. They will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So, what. Get started now.” - Mark Victor Hansen be able to start something. For example, you should wait until you fully recover from an injury to start training, or wait for the right time to start a new business. However, it is not like that with education. Nothing restricts you to start today or tomorrow apart from yourself. So, stop creating excuses for yourself. Don’t let laziness to control you as it wouldn’t get you anywhere in the academic world. Just start from something even something small and overtime you will see results.

Stop creating excuses for yourself

Not setting a clear goal that challenges you

The phrase “I will just do my best” is commonly used by people in hope that it will motivate them. Nevertheless, the research had shown that this phrase has a completely opposite affect on motivation. People need challenges, without them people get bored and give up. Challenges add a sense of stress that forces your body to secrete cholesterol, a stress hormone that boosts your brain function. This gives you extra energy which your body wants to use so your motivation to do something increases. In addiction to that seeing a clear destination and how you come closer to it is satisfying as you imagen the result. This further stimulate you to keep going and do more.

ONLY starting when you are motivated

Try to remember the last time you thought, “I don’t feel like it, I will do it tomorrow”. A lot of people are always waiting for the ‘right’ time, for them to be motivated, inspired etc. In our society it is assumed that you should only start a task only if you feel motivated. However, it is not necessary to be motivated before starting to achieve results. When people think of motivation, they usually remember the time when they felt motivated after seeing something and then doing the task. This is known as passive motivating. Nevertheless, there is another type of motivation: active. Passive motivation is wildly spread as it is easy to get. However, despised a common claim, passive motivation is not as strong as active motivation. This is the case because before starting the activity people usually don’t realize what sacrifices and difficulty would face them along their way, so they are not prepared for them. Due to this shock it becomes more difficult to overcome those obstacles and reach the goal. Active motivation, on the other hand, accrues after beginning the activity so a people would not misconceptions about the task and would already know that they can overcome.

No rests or rewards

Often people focus to much on the final goal and don’t allow themselves to take a break and appreciate what they already achieved. However, it is not the best approach for achieving your dream. First of all, it is not a good idea because you will probably run out of energy before succeeding which would make it even more difficult to maintain your motivation. Rests will allow you to reload and get more energy to carry on, although you do have to be careful too not give yourself to much rest as then it will be hard to come back to the routine you created. Furthermore, it is very important to analyse and appreciate what you manage to achieve as you would be able to see fruits of your hard work which is very inspiring. This will keep you excited about what you can achieve next.

No explaining why

Finally, but most importantly to maintain your motivation you need to realize why do you want to achieve or do what you are aiming for. No writing down a structured version of how your goal would help you in your life is one of the biggest mistakes beginners make when they try to get motivated. Take a piece of paper and wright down reasons why you what to reach your dream and how they will benefit you in the future. This activity would fulfil your rational mind that will help you not to give up as it would mean that you will lose the possibility of becoming better.