Consider for a moment, if you had your own personal ‘compass’, to navigate your life so that you can achieve your goals for success and happiness in every aspect of your life, what difference would that make to you from where you are now, to where you want to be?
What if, this ‘compass’ will help you to identify what your primary motivators are and what really motives you, so that you get clarity, direction and a sense of purpose to take your life from where you are now to where you want to be, much faster than you ever imagined possible?
Knowing your primary motivators and what motivates you, is key to not only setting goals, but also achieving them. It is a process of stimulating you to identify what really motivates you and to drive you to act toward goal-oriented behaviours.
Before we delve deeper to understand what motivates you, let’s first understand what motivation is and why it is important to you achieving your goals.
What is Motivation?
For simplicity, we define motivation as our desire for a want or need that directs us toward goal-oriented behaviours.
It describes why you would do something (want) and what is the driving force behind your actions.
This driving force can be either extrinsic motivations or intrinsic motivations.
Extrinsic motivations
These types of motivations arise from outside of you and is a reward or incentive-driven behaviour, like being paid to do a job, seeking praise, or seeking fame or approval. The purpose is to obtain an external reward or outcome. You’re not doing the activity because you want to, but because of external influence or seeking some kind of external reward.
Intrinsic Motivations
These types of motivations arise from within you and you are driven to the task or activity because you want to do it. The task or activity is meaningful or important to you, because it gives you pleasure or a sense of accomplishment, or leads to personal growth, and so the reward is internally driven.
Based on the above, ask yourself:
“What are three most important tasks I’m doing, WHY am I doing it and WHAT outcome do I want to achieve as a result of this activity?” List them down in the table below.
Example: you may be working because you have to support yourself and your family; or, you may be working to save money to buy a house; or, somebody else told you to lose weight because that is good for your health. Whatever activity you’re carrying out now, whether you agree with doing the activity or not, which is leading toward some outcome, list it in the table below. Take five minutes and complete this small activity.
| ACTIVITY | WHY DO I DO IT? | WHAT AM I TRYING TO ACHIEVE? |
Why is Motivation Important
Motivation is an important life skill. It helps you to build your determination to achieve something. Without it, it’s hard to strive for success and achieve internal happiness and a sense of worth. Motivation is a primary requirement throughout the entire goal process.
The 7 key reasons why motivation is so important:
- Motivation builds your self-confidence
If you are lacking in self-confidence, you will have plenty reasons for not wanting to try something new. The fear of failure, negative self-talk, worrying about what others may think, not the right time or not having enough money are some of the more common reasons preventing you from getting out of your comfort zone and to take some risk and try to do a different task or activity. Motivation builds your self-confidence and helps you to get unstuck and get out of your comfort zone.
Ask yourself: “Is fear or the lack of confidence holding me back from trying out new opportunities?”
Case Studies.
Numerous case studies have shown the link between procrastination and the fear of failure. The higher the fear of failure, the higher the level of procrastination, resulting in no action taken. This means that the more anxiety we feel about failing and reach our goals, the less likely we are to act toward achieving our goals.
There are many examples of famous people who once failed and bounced back to achieve success. Some of these are:
Colonel Harland David Sanders
“Colonel Sanders” as he is famously known, moved from job to job, fired in most of them, before founding his Kentucky Fried Chicken empire. Ashley Barnett in “The Failures and Eventual Success of Colonel Sanders”, says:
Here’s a guy, aged 65, living in his car driving around the country looking for someone to buy his chicken recipe. He took over a thousand “No’s” before getting even one “Yes”. That’s 1.4 ‘No’s” per day every day for 2 years. I can’t even imagine…
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison’s teacher told him he was “too stupid to learn anything”. Edison went on to hold more than 1,000 patents and invented some world-changing devices like the phonograph, the practical electric lamp and a movie camera.
The fear of failure bedevils the lives of millions of people across the globe. As a result, procrastination often follows. We develop a mindset that we are only worthy if we succeed at the highest levels and worthless if we fall short of that expectation.
May is one of our client’s. She was thinking about starting a side hustle, while keeping her full-time job as an Operations Manager at an ASX mining company; a job which didn’t really excite her. May and her partner discussed the need to save up money to buy a bigger house for their growing family. She needed to earn more money to save money for a greater purpose, and her current job was not going to earn her more money.
May considered her options for a side hustle, by making a list of all the things she enjoys doing and is passionate about. May likes photography, travel and skiing. She’s also very passionate about baking, particularly baking French Apple Tarts, a traditional recipe she learned from her grandma and which everyone in her family and friend circle enjoys. May did some investigation and concluded that there would be a market for her tarts. May had no idea about her next steps and whether starting her own business was a good idea. She thought it might be a good idea to start off by marketing them initially within her community and at the local market. May always came up with great ideas but lacked the motivation to implement them. She was afraid of failing. “What if nobody likes my tarts. What if it didn’t work out? Maybe wait until the kids are a bit older”, are some of the negative thoughts going through in her mind.
May knew what she was passionate about. She also knew why she wanted to sell her traditional, home-made French Apple Tarts. May realized she needed to act, if she was going to achieve her goal of buying a bigger house.
May needed help! She needed to firstly determine what really motivated her and ascertain what her primary motivators in life were. The negative self-talk and the lack of confidence held May back for over two years before she acted!
That’s when May approached us. We helped May to set up a solid foundation by firstly getting her to have a better understanding of herself, her motivation and what her primary drivers in life were. With some coaching and adopting a positive mindset, helped May build her self-confidence, knowing that she had the safety net of her full-time employment, should things not work out. This minimized her risk. With our help and guidance, May put into action her idea and ventured out to start her French Apple tart baking business from her home. Today, May owns a bakehouse, renowned for her traditional Apple Tart and has never looked back. She and her partner are both full-time in the business and can enjoy a lifestyle they always dreamed about.
- You become committed, happier, and grow as a person
Your commitment to step out of your comfort zone and take that small step to try something new, will give you internal happiness. You will feel relieved. You will become more committed, and you grow as a person. Motivation enhances your personal growth and development. As you set yourself personal goals and you reach them, you feel a sense of pride and achievement and feel inspired to push yourself further.
James is another great example. James’s hobby and passion were Pencil Sketching. In his spare time, he would sketch people’s faces. He called it “The faces of world cultures”. James often thought how he could share his skill with others within his community that may be interested in pencil sketching. James lacked self-confidence to take the next step to market his passion. He felt that others may not consider him good enough and the thought of being rejected was his greatest fear. He feared rejection would make him look stupid and harm his reputation in the community.
Patricia, a close friend of James from college days suggested he sells his sketches at the local markets. James told her that he’s been thinking about setting up classes to share his knowledge and skill with others that may be interested in learning pencil sketching but was afraid of failing. She encouraged him not to let fear or the lack of confidence hold him back.
Her appraisal of his sketches made James feel more comfortable and he decided to take the first step of displaying his sketches at the local market and then decide next steps. This first step, and the positive response from the public, motivated James. It gave him more confidence and he decided to offer training classes. Twelve months later, James quit his full-time employment and spent more time improving on the quality of his training and marketing his course to other communities. James went on to achieve his goals and spends more quality time with his family today than ever before.
This first step multiplied into many steps on the path to achieving his goal.
- Helps you to identify goals
A goal is something you consciously agree you want to achieve or acquire in your life. You may be influenced by intrinsic or extrinsic motivators. Maybe you are forced to achieve something because of external pressure (extrinsic), or maybe because you want to achieve something for the better good of yourself and those you love and care for, like May and James in the scenarios above.
Wouldn’t you love to do something you really enjoy for yourself and for those you love, or for the benefit of the broader community?
Whatever your reason, whether it is your desire for change, for the betterment of yourself and those you love, or other, this is what will motivate you into action to identify and set up a clear goal and work committedly to achieving the desired outcome. Knowing what your primary motivators in life are, gives you your personal ‘compass’ to navigate change in the right direction. It builds your performance
Motivation is subjective because different people will be motivated by different things, depending on their needs and wants and the goals they set for themselves.
Your motivation is the most significant predictor of your success and success is achieved through building and maintaining high performance. (Dr Anders Ericsson and Jim Taylor). Set yourself small goals or tasks toward your bigger goal.
- Motivation gives you a sense of direction
Like most people, you too have some underlying direction, even if you feel you are in the wilderness of life. While you may be feeling like you’re in the wide, open ocean without a compass to navigate you, this does not mean that you don’t have a sense of knowing where you want to go. If you are feeling lost, means you need to change what you’re doing and take that first small step and change direction. Change what isn’t working. Create the change by not over-thinking and instead create the action to act. This single act will give you the motivation and a sense of direction, like May and James.
- It increases your commitment to goal achievement
The more motivated you are to achieve your goals, the more committed you will be. The desire to succeed, drives more commitment, more focus and more hunger for success. Success breeds success.
- Helps you to set priorities in life
Once you’ve identified your goals and committed yourself to achieving them, motivation helps you to set priorities in life. Both May and James showed us how they set their priorities in life for their future success and happiness.
ACTIVITY: Ask yourself:
“Why is Motivation important to me?” List three reasons why you believe motivation is important to you. Your reasons could be different from the examples above.
Reason 1:
Reason 2:
Reason 3:
How do you find out what really motivates you?
Identifying what really motivates you is important, because clarifying the ‘why’ behind what your wants are, gives you a sense of purpose and focus, and perseverance when the going gets tough.
To find out ‘what’ motivates you, you will need to do some honest self-examination of ‘why’ you are where you are in life, ‘how’ you got there and ‘why’ you want to get to the next stage in your life and then ask yourself, ‘how’ you going to get there. In going through this self-examination exercise of your life, do not be judgemental and do not think what should motivate you.
| Why am I, where I am today, in life/career? | |
| How did I get here? | |
| Why do I want to get to the next stage in my life? | |
| How am I going to get there? |
Consider making a list of all the things you did that excited you, and alongside it, write down what you accomplished and how that made you feel. Did it make you feel proud of your achievement? Did you enjoy doing the tasks? What did it achieve for you and did it help you to get to where you are now in your life? Doing this exercise will help you to understand the ‘why’ behind that feeling, and this is your answer to ‘what’ motivates you.
| The tasks I did that excited me | |
| What did I accomplish? | |
| How did that make me feel? (e.g., proud, confident; positive) | |
| Did you enjoy the tasks? | |
| Did you get to where you wanted to go? |
Ask yourself what was the single activity that most excited you and motivated you to accomplish a goal.
Answer: _____________________________________________________________________
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Going through this process of non-judgemental, self-examination, also helps you to become more self-aware of yourself and how this aligns with what you currently do and its impact on your life today and what you plan to achieve in the future.
As Zig Ziglar once said: “People say motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”
Your motivation changes and so does your personality, skills, likes and dislikes, change over time, irrespective of whether this change is intentional or unintentional. Change is inevitable, and you must adapt to the change if you are to remain relevant and progress with your life.
If you would rather prefer taking up an accurate, unbiased, ISO accredited motivational assessment which includes a one-hour, one-on-one coaching session, click on the link below and let us help you get on your path to achieving success.
