How to find ways to increase your motivation?

Ugur Comlekcioglu (PhD)
5 min readMar 29, 2022

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Finding ways to increase motivation is crucial because it allows us to change behaviour, develop competencies, be creative, set goals, grow interests, make plans, develop talents, and boost engagement. Applying motivational science to everyday life helps us motivate employees, coach athletes, raise children, counsel clients, and engage students.

Motivation is the desire to act in service of a goal. Motivation is the process of individuals working with their own desires to achieve a specific purpose. Motivation is an essential element in determining and achieving one’s goals. Motivation can have many sources, and often people have multiple motives for engaging in any one behaviour.

Let’s define it as a driving force or a need; Motivation is intrinsic energy that seeks change in ourselves or our environment. Motivation involves the biological, emotional, social, and cognitive forces that activate behaviour. If the person utilizes this energy, they have the power to interact with their environment as an open-minded and problem-solving individual.

In this context, we must discover suitable sources of motivation for ourselves to reach our goals. Motivation is influenced by the satisfaction of needs necessary for sustaining life or essential for wellbeing and growth. Motivation can have many sources, and often people have more than one motive to engage in any behaviour.

The source of motivation may be exogenous. In extrinsic motivation, a person is inspired by external influences, other people, or events. Motivation can also be internal. The desire to improve in a particular activity or achieve a specific goal can arise from a person’s inside. Intrinsic motivation tends to push people more strongly, and achievements are more satisfying.

How can you be motivated for a specific goal?

First, set achievable goals. Then think about why you set the goal and what you want to change. Eliminate factors that will distract you from your goal. Next, determine why your goal is essential to you. If you determine the importance of the goal, you can focus your attention and strengthen your motivation.

Identify a set of small, specific, measurable tasks to cover your goal. Create a plan for performing all small tasks to achieve the big goal. Smaller goals are easier to achieve. After completing a task, striking out the item in the task list may encourage you to continue. Making items measurable allows you to recognize and celebrate when each is done and then move on to the next step. You should set targets for a specific difficulty level. If the goal is too difficult, you may be daunted to start. If the goal is too easy, it can make you bored this time. The optimum goal should present a manageable difficulty.

Why Do We Lack Motivation?

Everyone loses their self-motivation from time to time or may lack the will to motivate themselves. If you have a long-term loss of motivation or cannot start an important task, several possibilities cause it. Your goals may need to be rearranged because the determined tasks are often too large or too complex. Therefore, you may be experiencing burnout. The goal needs to be broken down into smaller components. You may lack confidence rather than motivation and therefore fear moving forward. Perfectionism or slowness is associated with a lack of trust. If you doubt your ability to perform the task at hand, you will be motivated anxiously and unable to act.

The gap between motivation and action

There are many forms of self-doubt and frustration in the gap between motivation and taking action. It is crucial to identify which thought processes cut the link between motivation and action to achieve the goal. Depression or dysthymic disorder — chronic depression — can lead to a feeling of apathy. In these situations, lack of motivation is a symptom of low mood. The dissatisfaction associated with depression takes away the ability to pay attention over a while because neural circuits in the brain that regulate reward and motivation do not work together.

Environmental events and social ambience are the prime conditions that motivate us. Then our physiological and psychological needs give us strength, our consciousness guides us, and the intensity of our emotions energizes us. The combination of premise conditions and instincts ignites the motivation to move us towards a goal. With your taking action, stronger emotional states occur. This situation reinforces the behaviour and increases motivation through a positive feedback loop.

Motivation is a dynamic process, and our motives change over time. Therefore, we cannot stay motivated continuously. As conditions change and time passes, motivation rise and fall. This situation affects our focus, will and ambition. Therefore, it is imperative to know how our motivation changes over time when setting our goals.

Motivation can also be developed for performing routine or boring activities. The objectives should be clear, and the methods should be chosen well to fulfil the tasks. Clarity and choice, together, can increase overall motivation as they meet basic psychological needs. Short-term goals increase motivation by providing more frequent feedback on progress. Short-term goals work better in activities that are not enjoyable, which further reinforces efforts to keep going.
Yes, the best way to increase your effectiveness is to find the strength to motivate you and control your motivation. If you can master motivation, you will be able to cope with life’s setbacks, always find a way in the face of problems, and create new experiences.

Motivation affects every aspect of education

Motivation is an essential part of the student’s experience from the preschool period. For example, motivation may affect how students are generally approaching the school, how to associate with teachers, how much time and effort they have to work with, how much support they are looking for when struggling, how they perform in the assessments (and hence how to perform the school).

The lack of motivation has significant results

The lack of motivation is a real problem affecting a significant percentage of students. More than 40% of high school students are disengaged from learning, are careless, exert little effort on school work, and report being bored at school. Losing learning motivation has serious consequences that may result in students to drop the school. For example, a 2006 survey investigating why students had left high school, found that 70% of the dropouts were not motivated.

Four main dimensions contribute to motivation

The researchers use different frames to think about motivation. They essentially agree on the primary factors listed below that students must have to be motivated:
1- Qualification: a belief that they can do something
2- Autonomy/control: the ability to adjust appropriately and see a correlation between targets and efforts
3- Interest/value: a feeling that the value and importance of the task is worth the effort to complete it
4- Relevance: the need to feel part of a group or social context and the appropriate behaviour to that group exhibit.

Ultimately, understanding motivation is essential in many areas of life, from parenting to the workplace. You may want to set the best goals and establish suitable reward systems to motivate others and increase your motivation.

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Ugur Comlekcioglu (PhD)

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