Why is Motivation Important?

What Motivates You?

People are find motivation for many reasons and these reasons determine how we choose to behave. People find their motivation when the find their passion so a persons motivation comes from within. Your motivation is determined by the reasons for your passion, or you’re ‘why’. So you motivator is the ‘why’; the ‘why’ we do what we do, The thing that keeps your going.

Motivation is essential if you want to achieve your goals and ambitions. Without motivation, you are at the mercy of one of the most basic human conditions; the balance between pleasure and pain. Our comfort zone is the single most important factor impacting on your level of motivation in life. If people feel there is no need to change; if the level of comfort they are currently experiencing in life is acceptable to them, then they are very unlikely to find the motivation to change their current situation.

What is Motivation?

Motivation is the differential between pleasure and pain. Motivation is therefor translated into the level of desire required to initiate action to change your current situation for a new situation. So, when we ask Why is Motivation Important, we find that the basis of all achievement and accomplishment is centred around the level of motivation required to achieve the desire. The greater the motivation required to realise a desire, the greater the relative sense of achievement when an individual finally realises one of their goals.

The starting point of all achievement is desire.
Weak desire brings weak results,
just as a small amount of fire makes a small heat.
- Napoleon Hill

To understand motivation you need to have an understanding of nature of desire. There are two types of desire.

• The desire for pleasure.
• The desire to avoid pain.

Of these two motivators the desire to avoid pain wins every time. Sure, you can work hard towards something you consider special, but 9 times out of 10 if a situation that involves perceived pain presents it’s self, then the focus of your efforts will move to initially avoiding the pain. The Fear of pain is a bigger motivator than pleasure.

Why Are We Motivated?

If we look at the functional aspects of motivation, the primary motivators in life being the pleasure and pain motivators, we see that in both cases your desire is made up of 3 things: the desire for Autonomy, the desire for Mastery (accomplishment over the circumstances we find ourselves in) and Purpose, the desire to change a situation

Autonomy

The desire for Autonomy stems from the urge to direct our own lives and enjoy our right to freedom; freedom from stress, freedom from hunger etc. We desire to do what we do how and when we want to do it; we want to be self directed.

Mastery

The desire for Mastery and the development of skills that we utilise in our lives; the desire to get better and better at something

Purpose

… the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

What are Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivators?

Intrinsically motivated behaviour refers to doing an activity for the sake of doing it, in contrast to extrinsically motivated behaviour where an activity is undertaken to gain a separable outcome (Ryan & Deci 2000). In reality there is usually a combination of both extrinsic and intrinsic factors that determine an individuals level of motivation (Day 1976, Kanfer and Ackerman 1989).