Daily Motivation: What Motivates You Each Day?
Many of us set goals for ourselves. In turn, these goals motivate us to work hard to achieve success. Goals drive an individual’s daily motivation. Goals such as getting a Master’s degree, having a high-paying job, getting married, purchasing an expensive car, or mortgaging a home drive a person to succeed. When setting a goal, a person must remember that taking small steps to achieve it helps keep up a positive attitude. It is best not to get overwhelmed with attaining a huge goal quickly; but rather one should take small steps to get it done. The desire to accomplish a goal is what keeps people going, even on bad days.
Attitude:
A positive attitude is a source of daily motivation. Believing that one of your goals is too difficult to achieve will eventually prevent you from achieving it. Having a negative attitude will cause you both internal and external stress. A negative attitude will de-motivate you, and put you on the road to failure. To achieve your goals, you must be able to tell yourself that every goal can be attained with hard work. If you tell yourself that you can do it, chances are that you will. Never underestimate the power of the mind. Daily motivation is all about attitude and outlook.
Religion:
While not all of us are religious, many people who are will agree that religion helps improve daily motivation. Religion can be used as a great motivational tool for people from all walks of life. Religion – no matter what kind – encourages mindfulness and internal motivation. The religious depend on their beliefs to strengthen them mentally.
People often depend on their religion when things are going downhill. Prayer and meditation inspire those who might otherwise turn to drinking, food, or drugs to nurture their spirits. Religion may help some people to be more mentally and physically healthy. Therefore, religion is a positive source of daily motivation.
The desire to live:
Daily motivation also comes in the simple desire to live. Whether children, a job, or money inspires someone to get out of bed in the morning, that person is motivated by something in life.
Even things as simple as nature can motivate someone to maintain a positive attitude about life even when times get hard. A person can take pleasure in nature’s beauty by taking time to smell the roses or listen to the birds sing. Studies show that people who live in warmer climates have a more positive attitude about life in general. These same people also have the tendency to go outside and exercise more often. This exercise brings about a sense of inner peace and positive feelings, thus becoming a daily motivation for many people.
A Look At Intrinsic Motivation
Intrinsic motivation is when an individual is motivated by internal factors, as opposed to external factors.
Examples of intrinsic motivation would be doing something because you feel it is the moral and ethical thing to do; doing something because you know it will benefit others or doing something because it brings you pleasure and joy.
The latter is common in regards to an enjoyable pastime or a hobby.
It is believed that intrinsic motivation is far stronger than extrinsic motivation however there are times when extrinsic motivation can become stronger because it displaces intrinsic motivation.
This is known as the overjustification effect. For example this occurs when you begin doing something for intrinsic reasons and then are offered monies or another type of reward for doing it that overrides the reason you started doing it in the first place.
In many cases when this happens, a person loses interest in the activity once the reward is taken away. The key is to not offer large extrinsic rewards for something that is meant to be motivated intrinsically (in other words, from within).
Intrinsic motivation has been widely studied by researchers in the realm of education since the start of the 1970s and their findings have been that when students are intrinsically motivated to do well in school, they tend to perform better, make higher marks and they also tend to enjoy the material they are learning a great deal more.
A man named Bernard Weiner created a theory known as the “Attribution Theory” and he looked at such things as the orientation of goals and the locus of control (internal and external).
As an aside, an internal locus of control is when a person believes that they have control over what happens to them whereas an external locus of control means that a person believes that control is outside of themselves and has more to do with extraneous factors as opposed to their own actions.
According to Bernard Weiner, students are much more likely to possess intrinsic motivation in their studies if they feel that their educational achievements have more to do with their own efforts as opposed to anything else.
As well students will experience intrinsic motivation if they feel that they play a paramount role in attaining their own personal educational goals as opposed to feeling as those it has more to do with luck or simply a “roll of the dice.” Finally when students have motivation that comes from within they will work harder to completely understand and master a given subject as opposed to simply learning the work at hand so they can pass a test or exam and then forgetting it afterwards.
Keep in mind that intrinsic motivation holds no promise of rewards for students as opposed to extrinsic motivation, which is all about rewards.
Many decades of research has given rise to a theory known as “Goal Theory” which has shown that intrinsic motivation in some communities and groups is altruistic in nature as the desire to help others and contribute to the greater whole is the number one motivator.
When a person appeals to the common good or does something based on a moral obligation or commitment to others this is when intrinsic motivation is shown to be alive and well in the world.