Motivating Is Not Giving Encouragement, Motivating Is Giving Reasons

Motivating is not telling someone “you can”, “do your best, you are going to get there” or “go for it, if you insist you will conquer the world.” If we take this approach and apply it to awaken strengths in others, we will miss our purpose. Because to motivate is to give reasons, it is to remind someone of the reason why they are striving, it is to clarify the purposes and goals so that they can achieve them.

In recent years we are seeing a slight change in motivation. Although it is true that those coaches who promise to enable us to succeed, lead us towards well-being and train us in any area of ​​life do not stop growing , from the field of more rigorous psychology we see this area from another perspective a little more cautious, perhaps more real.

Let’s take an example. Someone may be very motivated to lose weight, to exercise. We could take for granted that this internal energy and will is enough for the person to achieve their goal. However, it is common for that motivation to wane after a few weeks, the desire fades and one returns to an unhealthy behavior once again.

Therefore, we must be clear about one aspect: motivation is not just desire. A person can harbor a very intense desire, but not be doing anything to materialize it. Because desire is an emotion and emotion does not always drive behavior. Something else is missing, and that “magic component” is giving reasons to the person and teaching them habits.

Let’s see more on this topic.

Motivating is giving reasons (don’t tell me I can, remind me why I do it)

Feeling motivated is not particularly easy. Moreover, many times, we make use of words without transcending them, we cling to a series of labels more for fashion than for real utility. Thus, it is very common to hear friends or family say that “I am motivated to quit smoking”, “I am 100% motivated to get a place in this opposition.”

However, before long, we see them disconnected from their motives and experiencing some frustration with themselves. Now, it is true that in some people this type of motivation focused exclusively on emotion does work. Telling someone that they are capable of achieving what they want, that they are trained, and that if they try hard they can touch the stars is only helpful in certain personality types.

However, the motivation area requires highly complex testaments, where biological, neural, emotional, cognitive and behavioral factors enter.

Desire doesn’t always drive behavior

I want to master English well. I want to get my driving license. I would like to finish my university degree at once. All these expressions are actually mere wishes and do not denote a 100% motivated person. As we pointed out at the beginning, a wish does not always translate into a correct behavior to achieve an achievement.

So … what are we missing? We are actually halfway away. It is important to consider the components of motivation:

• Activation (desire and involvement).
• Persistence (the persistent effort to achieve those goals).
• Intensity (degree of concentration invested, time, efforts, etc).

As we can see, it is not enough just to wish, it must be done. On the other hand, recent studies on motivation, such as that carried out by neurobiologist Roy A. Wise, from the University of Baltimore, point out something important to us. Motivated behavior requires being clear about what we want (in this way, dopamine, the neurotransmitter related to activation, motivation, happiness, is released).

Likewise, another element is needed: learning capacity. The reason? To achieve something we are obliged to innovate, to learn, and most importantly, to change habits.

Motivating is giving reasons and creating new habits

Effective motivated behavior, which is maintained over time and achieves results, does not start as we see only from mere desire. It is not throwing a thought into the air and asking a star to make our goals come true. After all, every goal requires effort; hence it is necessary to internalize some practical ideas for our day to day:

• Motivating is giving reasons and reminding the person why they should strive, what will happen when they achieve what they want, and how their life will improve when that happens. A “you can, you deserve” is not enough, it is a “you do this to achieve that.”

• On the other hand, it is essential to give the person guidelines on how they can do it. For example, if we are dealing with a person who needs to lose weight, it will not do much to make him repeat to himself the “I have to lose weight, I have to lose weight.” The ideal is to teach them to change habits (choose well what to put in the shopping cart, take care of the quantities on the plate, comply with exercise routines, etc.).

To conclude, more than thinking about feeling motivated, the most successful thing is to start thinking about objectives : making concrete plans, with subgoals, is the first step so that the desire stops being asymptotic to reality.

Later, those goals must become practical and realistic goals, new habits and creative ideas that allow us to progress every day. Let us bear in mind that emotion without action comes to nothing; in a mere desire that disappears like a shooting star in the sky.