Pleasure Or Pain...What's Your Motivation?

Change can be difficult at best. You try to do things differently and before you know it you give up. Whether you’re trying to lose those 20 lbs. or maybe you’re looking to save more money, either way you can wind up scratching your head wondering what went wrong. But what if you knew that you could access something within yourself in order to make it easier? Well, you can…and that’s what I call motivation. I know, not everyone has a lot of motivation, but everyone has a motivating factor. This factor is your key message that corresponds to a positive gain, and when accessed can help you achieve better results. You just have to know how to tap into the right factor. Most of us fall short of accomplishing our goals because we get too caught up in our behaviors, and engage in thoughts that consist of negative motivating factors. Unfortunately, applying this type of thought process will fail to create positive outcomes. While it’s important to be aware of your actions and behaviors, learning the right way to internally motivate yourself to accomplish your goals is essential. Internal motivating factors are driven by two things…pleasure or pain. You either want to move closer to pleasure or you want to avoid feeling pain. This comes down to one being a positive focus, while the other is a negative focus. The truth is people generally go for the pain, which is the negative motivating factor. Using this approach though, causes you to reinforce what you don’t like about your current circumstances, and therefore keeps you stuck. Another typical component of negative motivation often relates to fear. The feeling of being afraid of what might happen to you if you don’t meet your goal, which can translate to messages such as “I will be a failure”, “I will be broke”, or “I will not get that promotion”. It’s impossible, however to achieve a goal that has a lasting positive outcome when using a negative motivating factor. Let’s look at a typical example of using this negative approach as it applies to the goal of losing weight. The thought process goes something like this, you have your goal in mind while you continually focus on how much you can’t stand the way you look. You want to lose weight because you feel “fat” and unhappy with yourself and your image. Therefore, wanting to lose weight in order to stop feeling badly about yourself is one common scenario of using a negative motivating factor. But here’s the big question…did you get the results that you wanted from this technique and were they lasting? My guess is probably not, especially coming from a perspective that sends you a negative message. Now, let’s look at the positive approach…You want to lose weight because you can’t wait to feel healthy and look great! You are excited about creating health for yourself. You visualize your wonderful new shape and can’t wait to feel good about being in your body. Thinking these positive thoughts is extremely motivating and will lead you to your goal before you know it. Plus, the best part about this type of motivation is that it creates lasting change. Achieving desired results means focusing on the positive reward or outcome. Remember, goals are supposed to be something that you really want, so proceed towards them with an upbeat, encouraging attitude. Now that’s motivating!