Most people understand others more than they understand themselves.
You might think that you understand yourself very well, but you will come to realize that you actually don’t understand yourself as much as you think you do. In a psychological and motivational structural correlation we often find that we are driven by two different sources of motivation. Intrinsic and Extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation comes from within. It is a highly introspective influence from which your actions derive. The sense of accomplishment is an intrinsic motivation for example.
You are not seeking something in the outside world, you are finding something within.
Extrinsic motivation on the other hand is highly external. Your drive and motivation derive from a sense of external gratification.
You are seeking something that exists outside the sphere of personal individuality.
Wealth can stand as a solid example. People who seek riches are driven by their extrinsic motivation.
The pinnacle of the science behind motivation rests upon a question that people aspire to answer. In fact the question has been answered, yet the answer is more complex than the question. Why do we do what we do? Why do you decide to engage in physical activity? Are you seeking something external or internal? Are you seeking an amelioration of your self esteem, a sense of accomplishment, a health related sensibility, or are you doing it to for get acceptance from an outer society or individual? Are engaging in it for an internal or external goal?
Once you answer this question you will be able to understand why you do what you do. And this answer doesn’t only reflect on your actions, but it also reflects on you as an individual. Getting into the psychological aspect of behaviour would help you understand why you do what you do. Problem is, people don’t know what they want to do, they do not know what they love doing. Insanity, is not knowing what you love doing, and accepting to keep doing what you hate, instead of sitting down by yourself, and going into a deep self reflective, introspective conversation with oneself.
This paragraph is going to be a bit strident and jarring. However it is reality, and you need to accept it in order for you to overcome it. Nothing can be more insane than rejecting and dwelling upon something that is real, and that you can not control at the moment. If you are seeking riches, that says something about you. You lack wealth. The only reason you’re seeking wealth is because it is missing in your life. If you are seeking a sense of accomplishment, it is because you know that you can accomplish more, you want to strive towards your accomplishments. What you want in life, creates the echo of who you are, and who you are trying to be.
Understand your goals in life, understand why you chose these goals, understand the motivation behind them, and you will start to understand yourself.
Our needs can be grouped and separated. Physiological needs, Safety needs, Belongingness needs, Esteem needs, and Self-actualization needs. That’s the exact order that Maslow followed when he developed the theoretical hierarchy of needs. Physiological needs being at the bottom of the pyramid rest upon basic survival needs, those which derive from our evolutionary survival instinct and mechanisms. Water, food, shelter, sleep.. Are all basic survival elements that we seek before anything else. Safety needs are also part of our basic needs. Once a human being is provided with water, food, shelter, and proper resting, he strives to ensure his safety from all the surrounding menaces and threats. Threat is highly correlated with a productive stimulation of Cortisol. This evolutionary based hormone known as “The Stress Hormone“ is our internal alarm and defensive system. To ensure survival, human beings needed to be in a high state of alertness and reactiveness when held face to face with a dangerous situation. Cortisol is one of the contributing factor that ensured our longevity and evolution. However, it comes with a downside.
Let’s go back to the last time you felt stressed. How effective was your ability to focus? How logical was your thought structural pattern? How efficient was your ability to control thoughts, impulses and actions? The answer is pretty clear. Whether you know it or not, scientifically speaking, Cortisol has a negative effect on all the functions previously mentioned. Therefore, held in a state of insecurity and stress, human being wouldn’t have been able to develop their intellect, the way they did, if they did not ensure safety.
It is only when a man is well fed and nourished, properly rested and fairly safe that he will start to think beyond the basic needs. Once those basic needs are satisfied, human beings would normally shift towards psychological needs.
We are Social Animals, we strive to be part of a community, we aspire to have those feelings of belongingness. Whether its friendship, intimacy, mutual approval and understanding, or affectionate love, a person would start seeking the conceptualized structure of society.
Moving on, once a person finds himself within a society he belongs to, his need to stand out, as a Sui Generis entity, will unfold. In a society where each individual is different, there are “ needs based elements “ that formulates the construct of those differences. According to Maslow, they’re known as Esteem needs. Those needs are fundamentally based on internal and external needs. Internal Esteem needs reside in independence, autonomy, success and achievement. External Esteem needs reside in social status, class, and social image.
All the previously mentioned needs, as different as they are, share one thing in common. Motivation towards these needs decreases as the needs are met. When you eat, you lose the motivation to seek food, because you don’t need it. Once you get hungry, and the specific physiological need starts to arise again, you will restore the motivation until the need is satisfied.
That’s exactly why Self-actualization needs, psychologically speaking, are the building stones behind our reason to exist. In this final spectrum, motivation increases as the needs are met. Self-actualization is attained through personal growth, feelings of personal fulfilment, or as Maslow refers to it: “ To become everything one is capable of becoming. “
For you to bear any how, for you to find a reason to get out of bed in the morning, for you to be motivated despite the situation you’re facing, your whyneeds to be confined and enclosed within those Self-actualization needs. The following example will help you understand those concepts better.
We often hear that money is not a good source of motivation, yet a lot of people use riches as a fuel to their engine, they use it until it makes their lives miserable. You want to make a lot of money to live the life you want to live? That’s absolutely fine. But when it comes to a point where a person works 16 hours a day, he is not living anymore, he is not even surviving, he is putting himself until tremendous pressure, and we are all bound to break. I’ve watched plenty of motivational videos that preach the 18 hour a day work ethic, and I respect that, every single person should. However, often times, when money is the primary and sole source of motivation, people would start working less and less as the days are passing by, until they get to the point where they give up, they give in, they crack under pressure. Their why is not strong enough to get them back up. Their why is based on a deficiency need, specifically, an Esteem based need, and your motivation towards Esteem needs will never be as strong as your motivation towards Self-actualization needs.
Let’s take another example. A person who is very close to his parents faces the tragedy of his father passing away. His father always wanted to see him graduate out of law school, and the person decides to go back into law school to make his father proud. Now even though his source of motivation is external, its effect is internal. His father can not be proud, for he is dead, only the person himself will be proud as self-actualization is achieved. His motivation will be tremendously high and persistent, based on the fact that the need behind this motivation has a strong enough why.
There is an interesting correlation, between accomplishment, belief, and the Incongruity theory. The theory states that laughter is caused by the perception of something that is incongruous, meaning that its violates our expectations and our mental patterns. It is psychologically proven that with laughter, comes more happiness. There are some situations however where violating our expectations and mental patterns would have turbulent and tempestuous thought patterns, leading to chemical reactions associated with emotions such as anger, disgust, sadness..etc
It all depends on whether or not it was associated with positive emotions.
A sense of accomplishment, is linked, in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, to the pinnacle apex need, which is self-actualization. It is a need, when met with the satisfactory result, would increase our sense of motivation. If you look back at the times when you are highly motivated, despite the amount of work, or trouble you might be going through, you probably felt alive.
Therefore by default, accomplishment enforces the satisfaction of a self-actualization factor which in return, empowers our sense of motivation, euphoria, elation, and jubilation.
There is something to keep in kind however. Belief, from a derelict intensity angle, commonly conjoins, perception based on external factors, opinions based on judgement and logic, and predictions, based on mental projection and imaginative capacity. It is very common to build up doubt. It is a frequent phenomena that, through questioned perception, opinions, and predications, emerges pessimistic feelings, such as, frustration, suspiciousness and bewilderment. In short, a person feels lost.
The object of meaning associated with belief, is now menaced by existentialism. Logically speaking, do negative feelings produce positive or negative emotions?
Commonly, if not unequivocally, positive feelings produce positive emotions and vice versa.
Doubt, on the other hand, coalesces and consolidates adverse feelings, and by correlation, pessimistic based emotions.
A belief cultivates faith. The former and the latter conceive hope.
For us to have a reason to exist, we need to believe in the object of reason, and its appropriate existence, we need to have faith that it a purposeful reason, and we need to have hope, that the journey we’re embarking gratifies our belief.
Stay with me for a second. If you read through the three previous pages, you might think that there was an immense amount of information that was thrown at you, and it seemed as if the ideas are out of context.
It was earlier stated that accomplishment, belief, and the Incongruity theory have something in common, but what is it?
The Incongruity theory states that laughter is caused by the perception of something that is incongruous, meaning that its violates our expectations and our mental patterns. Laughter usually leads to positive feelings and emotions. Violating our mental patterns positively, produces positivity, in opposed to negative violations that usually produces negativity.
Doubt produces pessimism which becomes menaced by existentialism, therefore threatening our hope and faith. An object of reason and purposefulness materializes through the three fundamental pillars, belief, hope and faith. Those pillars, under the contingency of doubt, puts the object of reason under ambiguous and enigmatic questioning. Belief is a mental pattern, and doubt violates this mental pattern in a negative way, producing negative emotions and feelings. It was previously said that a sense of accomplishment, is linked, in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, to the pinnacle apex need, which is self-actualization. It is a need, when met with the satisfactory result, would increase our sense of motivation. If you look back at the times when you are highly motivated, despite the amount of work, or trouble you might be going through, you probably felt alive. Therefore by default, accomplishment enforces the satisfaction of a self-actualization factor which is return, empowers our sense of motivation, euphoria, elation, and jubilation.
So how do we increase the sense of accomplishment properly?
If you undertake every task as a challenge and not a burden, you’ll be accomplishing success at the end of the scenario.
Obstacles and setbacks are motivation’s biggest enemy, but if you keep the next two ideas in mind I can assure you, the fluctuating levels of motivation you feel are going to stabilize and exponentially increase.
Don’t say you’re having a bad day, say you’re having a character building day, and realize that everything is happening for you and not to you.
Thank you so much for reading. If this article added any kind of value to you please give it a clap and make sure to give me a follow to know when the sequel is out!