Self-Motivation

Self-Motivation

Self-motivation is, in its simplest form, the force that drives you to do things.

Self-motivation is far from being a simple topic; there are many books, web-pages and articles that attempt to explain self-motivation and some top academics have dedicated their life’s work to trying to understand, model and develop motivation theory.

Self-motivation is a key life skill and something that everybody interested in personal development should think carefully about. It is also a key part of emotional intelligence, one of the three areas of personal skills that are integral to the concept.
What is Motivation?
Motivation is what pushes us to achieve our goals, feel more fulfilled and improve overall quality of life.

Daniel Goleman, the author of several seminal books on Emotional Intelligence, identified four elements that make up motivation:

Personal drive to achieve, the desire to improve or to meet certain standards;
Commitment to personal or organisational goals;
Initiative, which he defined as ‘readiness to act on opportunities’; and
Optimism, the ability to keep going and pursue goals in the face of setbacks.
There are many advantages to self-motivation. People who are self-motivated, for example, tend to be more organised, have good time management skills and more self-esteem and confidence.

Understanding and developing your self-motivation can help you to take control of many other aspects of your life.

What is Your Motive?
Fundamental to self-motivation is understanding what motivates you to do things.

This may sound straightforward but sometimes your motivation is hidden from your consciousness – your own personal hidden agenda. Your motivation may well change from hour-to-hour, day-to-day and through life. As this happens your needs, wants and goals change and evolve.

There are two main types of motivation: ‘intrinsic’ and ‘extrinsic’ motivation.

In their simplest form you can think about these two types of motivation as:

Intrinsic = love, because we want to.
Extrinsic = money, because we have to.
A more detailed definition is:

Intrinsic: To perform an action or task based on the expected or perceived satisfaction of performing the action or task. Intrinsic motivators include having fun, being interested and personal challenge.
Extrinsic: To perform an action or task in order to attain some sort of reward, including money, power and good marks or grades.
Different people are motivated by different things and at different times in their lives. The same task may have more intrinsic motivators at certain times and more extrinsic motivators at others, most tasks have a combination of the two types of motivation.