Being Positive is Being Self-Motivated
“People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.” –Andrew Carnegie
To describe “Self-motivation” in its simplest form: it is the energy that makes you do things.There are many ways to try to elaborate what self-motivation is and some top wise men in the academia have spent their life’s assignments and work in attempting to understand the very concept of “self-motivation” and its applicability in our regular lives. Self-motivation is a key life skill and something that everybody benefits from with respect to personal development. Motivation pushes us to achieve our goals, feel more fulfilled and improve the overall quality of life. People who are self-motivated tend to be more organised, with good time management skills and have more self-esteem and confidence while interacting within personal and professional environment.
What is Your Motive?
Fundamental to Self-Motivation is to understand what motivatesYouto do things. Mostly your motivation is hidden from your consciousness – your own personal hidden agenda. Your motivation may differ from hour-to-hour, day-to-day and throughout life. As this happens your needs, wants and goals change and evolve. For instance, in police work, it’s more important to know ‘Why’ they did it – what was their motive?This would lead to ‘Who’did it. It may take you some detective work to understand your motives too – what makes you do the things you do, and maybe more importantly what stops you from doing other things?
Broadly speaking, there are three types of Motivators;
• Intrinsic: Love to do something because we want to.
• Extrinsic: We do it because we need the money.
• Obligation: Obligation coming from our ethics and sense of duty, of what is right/wrong.
Setting Personal Goals
There is a strong correlation between self-motivation, personal goals and achievement. In order to get properly motivated it helps to spend some time thinking about your personal goals and what you want to achieve in your life.We all have a desire to achieve depending on our dynamic preferences. As a child I wanted good grades, then wanted to win a competition, later wanted to scrape though the driving test, and so on. While our goals will keep on changing as we grow, our desire to achieve something at every stage will be remaining same. More you achieve, the more self-confident you become. As you become more self-confident, more you become self-motivated which in turn helps you achieve more. By setting clearly defined personal goals, you can measure your achievements and keep sight of your progress. Therefore, preparing goals is the best way of utilising your knowledge, managing time and resources so that you can focus on making the most of your life’s potential.You do this because you are ‘Positive’ and thereby ‘Self-Motivated’.
Categorise Life Goals
Catergorise your goals: make a list of them like Academic, which would include what qualifications you would like to acquire; Career, including what level in your job would you like to achieve in a realistic time frame; Monetary, how much do you aim to earn & save in a certain age of your life & how; Social, what kind of activities & how many such activities for a good cause would you like to do; artistic, goals related to fine arts or hobbies, if you will, that you would like to pursue; followed by, may be, Domestic & Physical goals
Making Your Goals SMART:
Achieving your goals only depend on how smart they are. S for Specific, so you know exactly what you are looking for; M for Measureable, so that you are able to measure and can keep tab of your progress by yourself; A for attainable or agreeable, meaning that they should not be impossible & unrealistic; R for Relevant meaning their sub-goals need to be relevant to your main goals; T for timed, for attaining each of which you should set a timeline.
Keep Motivated
Finally it is important to keep yourself motivated, and in order to do so you may do a few tricks to your body & mind to maintain high levels of motivation: Keep reading, talking to people, mingle with enthusiastic & positive minded people, stop procrastinating & start doing small but regular things that you may have shelved for years, know and keep working on your strengths & weaknesses, keep helping others, allow others to help you, practise empathy, and finally spend time mentally, physically, and spiritually exercising.
“Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.” ? Winston S. Churchill