Welcome to Motivational Mondays with Mark Kent your weekly Proactive Empowerment Performance (PEP) talk with Mark Kent.
Thanks again for participating in this exciting process of understanding motivation and how this can be an empowering and driving force in your life.
Today I would like to dispel the myth that motivation has nothing to do with feelings even though when we say we are not motivated we are really saying we don't feel like doing something. Let's conduct an experiment. At 6am in the morning we stop 100 motorists driving to work and ask them a simple question. Do you feel like or are you motivated to go to work today? Out of those 100 workers what do you think the split would be between yes and no. My experience would be that most people, let us say 80%, say no they did not feel like or were not motivated to go to work - and the other 20% are driving with their boss J. Now lets conduct the same survey 6 hours later, would there be an increase in yes responses? In fact there is a dramatic increase in motivation when asking workers how they feel about working now. What happened? Well it has to do with the Action First Principle.
Our emotional connection with motivation says we have to really feel like doing something before we can accomplish our goals but really it's just the opposite in fact maintaining motivation has little to do with feelings at all.
How many times have you avoided a task or initially just did not feel like doing something but somehow mustered up the effort to start, for example writing a paper, going to the gym or an arduous work project and noticed once you got started that you now feel more motivated. What happened? Well it was the Action First Principle.
Action First - Motivation second. Since feelings are based upon emotions and they fluctuate and are inconsistent to be consistently productive and motivated it's important to act first then the motivation tends to come after the action not before. So here are some concepts to consider when applying the principles of motivation.
1) The more you associate feelings as a perquisite for motivation; you are likely to be inconsistent in completing your goals.
2) Practicing the Action First Principle will help you separate the emotional component of motivation from your behaviour and significantly reduce self-sabotage.
3) You will achieve a greater sense of self-control, confidence and sense of accomplishment by moving forward on objectives regardless of how you feel.
Next week I will discuss with you how there are two basic forces that determine whether you are driven by short-term motivation or long term and how to maintain consistent long-term motivation in achieving higher levels of completion and satisfaction in life.
Thanks for allowing me to share these ideas on motivation. To your motivation and empowerment.
Mark Kent
