Motivational speakers and authors tell us to "fake it till you make it." They claim that we have to do something to make ourselves feel positive before we can experience success.
But does this really work? Is motivation simply psychological tricks, or is there really some science behind it? And how much of an impact does it actually make?
I've spent a lot of time trying to understand how to motivate myself, and after analyzing hundreds of studies on the topic, I've come up with my own theories on how motivation works.
STEP 1: What Makes Us Motivate?
There are two basic components to our drive to achieve something: desire and expectations. Desire refers to our inherent need to want to do something. Expectations refer to how important or meaningful the task is to us.
Desire is much simpler to measure. Simply, if we don't care about a task, it won't motivate us. And our level of desire is directly related to our emotional state, so the more negative our emotions, the less desire we have for the task.
However, most people are motivated by goals that are meaningful and worth pursuing. These meaningful tasks can have three key elements:
Importance - The task is important to us, and this increases our willingness to do it. We feel that if we fail, it will have a large impact on us. If it's unimportant to us, then we'll probably ignore it until we have to.
Urgency - The closer we are to achieving the task, the more we feel we must do it. We will do anything to avoid missing the deadline. For example, if we're waiting until the last minute, then we'll have no choice but to work on this task until the end.
Commitment - Our actions towards the goal are committed. We feel a strong sense of responsibility for the outcome. In contrast, when we have no choice but to complete something, we'll probably procrastinate.
As for expectations, they can be much more complex. Sometimes, we're inspired by our own past achievements, and feel a personal motivation to repeat those results. And sometimes, we feel motivated to try things that we're convinced will fail because of our desire to learn something new.
In both cases, the most effective methods of motivation are to find something that matters to us, then create a sense of urgency around it and focus all of our attention on completing it.
STEP 2: How to Increase Desire
When it comes to increasing our motivation, most of the advice you hear is just about focusing on what we desire to do. But what matters the most is how we feel about the task.
So, you have to first figure out what you want.
But it's difficult to define what you really want. After all, motivation often involves a sort of wish fulfillment. It's more about what we would like than what we actually want. That's why the next step is to start taking action. This
I’d like a simple life.