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Do you sometimes wake up in the morning without any drive or passion?
You’re not alone. Many people sometimes find themselves struggling to push themselves.
When you feel a lack of energy, ask yourself some questions to know yourself and reignite your drive.
Who are you? What are your strengths? Are you happy with where you are? Do you enjoy waking up every morning to go to work? Are you celebrating your successes or dwelling on failures?
The famous Greek philosopher Aristotle said, “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
Knowing yourself can motivate you to push yourself to meet your goals. Self-reflection helps widen your perspective and allows you to see things differently. You’re able to categorize your goals more efficiently when you learn to reflect on your actions.
Self-motivation or the ability to motivate yourself is an important skill. It helps you to carry on despite setbacks and seek new opportunities.
Personal motivation can come from various places in life. It could be a promotion at work or admission to the university of your dreams. But understanding what comes naturally to us and what pushes us to perform better lies at the heart of self-motivation.
Harappa Education’s Interpreting Self course empowers you to explore different aspects of your life. It teaches you the importance of self-motivation to achieve career goals.
Identifying your strengths, aspirations and work styles will help you understand the kind of person you are. The Kaleidoscope Framework in the course will help recognize the areas of your life where you can put in more work. Look inwards to first know who you are and whether you want to achieve personal or professional goals.
Let’s now look at the meaning of self-motivation, why self-motivation is important and self-motivation examples.
What Is Self-Motivation?
Self-motivation is the reason why you do what you do. To put it simply, it’s the reason why you go to work, why you love your family, and why you enjoy traveling or reading. It’s about knowing what you really want.
The meaning of self-motivated is derived from passion and an underlying desire to achieve something. Personal motivation is a crucial driving factor in your professional journey. Nothing can stand in your way if you’re sure of what you want to do and how you want to do it.
Harappa’s Lead Habit focuses on self-development. You can leverage your strengths to realize objectives or you can alter your strategy if something isn’t working. Self-motivation can be developed if you leverage your strengths to your advantage.
Why Is Self-Motivation Important?
Let’s look at the importance of self-motivation for personal growth. Self-motivation is important because it does not let you depend on others and drives you tap your strengths to meet your goals. It also helps you ensure your work on your weaknesses and don’t let them hinder your plans.
Here are some key aspects of self-motivation and why you need to build it:
1. Surviving in a competitive world
The world may throw problem after problem at you, but if you’re motivated you can overcome any challenge. To hold out against the competition is one of the most useful skills you can develop. Not only does it give you the power to withstand setbacks but also helps you grow as an individual.
2. Achieving personal goals
Try to understand the meaning of self-motivated in the context of your personal life. For instance, you may be keen to volunteer abroad in Bali and help with the rehabilitation of turtles. You can either do your research and reach out to the relevant wildlife organization or you can get bogged down by why your plan won’t work.
Reasons such as lack of funds, trepidation about visiting a new country or a fear of stepping out of your comfort zone will always hold you back. The first step comes from conviction and determination. You have to believe in yourself and convince yourself that you can do anything you put your mind to.
3. Doing well in a professional setting
To really do well at work, you need to know your strengths and weaknesses. Self-motivation drives you to move past setbacks and failures to learn from your mistakes. It’s easy to feel bogged down at work, especially when you have a deadline coming up and you’re already running behind schedule.
You can approach this problem in two ways. You can either continue to feel discouraged or you can buckle up and get moving. Part of personal motivation is to push yourself to face every hurdle that comes along.
What Are Internal And External Motivators?
What you think, do or say is determined by both internal and external factors. Internal motivators include your thoughts, passion and desire to do something. This can be anything from visiting a close friend to listening to your favorite music. External motivators are elements such as buying a house or performing well at work.
Every day you have to strive to strike a balance between internal and external motivators. Let’s look at an example to understand the meaning of self-motivator.
Mariyam was recently inducted into her new role as a sales associate for an e-commerce website. Before this, she used to work for a nonprofit children’s center. Two months into her new job, Mariyam started to feel the pressure of meeting her monthly sales targets. She began to miss her old workplace even though it paid little compared to now. Her determination to accumulate her savings for the future and move to a bigger house motivated her to continue in her new role.
Self-motivation examples such as this one focus on how you can meet yourself halfway. The ideal situation is one where your internal motivators are aligned with external motivators. Think about a scenario where you love what you do and you’re getting paid enough to sustain the kind of lifestyle you desire. It’s not unattainable. Self-motivation helps you persevere and deal with testing situations on a daily basis.
Ways To Sustain Self-Motivation
We’ve all heard the saying “you are your own worst critic”. Instead of telling yourself why you can’t do something, think of why you can. You can do a lot more than you give yourself credit for. One way to go about it is to align your goals with your strengths. Work hard to refine your existing skills so that you become the best version of yourself
However, it’s important to remember that because you’re feeling motivated today doesn’t guarantee you’ll feel motivated tomorrow. This is a continuous process where you have to act as a personal coach to train your thought process.
Here are some self-motivation practices to achieve your long-term goals:
1. Adopt a positive belief system
It’s not always easy to stay positive, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t try. Adopting a positive belief system can help you during difficult times. If you keep talking down to yourself instead of lifting yourself up, you’ll fall into a pit of despair. Try to inculcate positive habits and embrace positive thoughts to block out any negativity.
2. Vision boards
A great source of personal motivation is a vision board. You must’ve seen plenty of vision boards on Pinterest packed with personal goals and uplifting quotes. Create a vision board for yourself and add pictures of things you wish to buy, your favorite bands or artists you want to meet, your dream travel destination and one thing you want to achieve in the next year. That’ll serve as a constant reminder to get moving on your goals.
3. Nature is therapeutic
Now more than ever, we understand the importance of connecting with our natural environment. Many people suffer a deep, inexplicable sadness—or what we call melancholy—when they’re away from nature for too long. Go to your neighborhood park and enjoy a leisurely walk outdoors. It’ll help you organize your thoughts and think clearly.
4. Music can lift your soul
It may be a tired cliché but music can really lift your soul. Whether you have a job interview in an hour and you’re having a mini panic attack or you had to cancel your trip to Peru because of a pandemic, there’ll be multiple situations when you won’t know what to do. In such cases, music can be the escape you need to clear your head and come up with an action plan.
5. Focus your attention on the most important task
Prioritize your tasks to motivate yourself. The Eisenhower Principle is a good way to categorize your to-do list. Former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower devised the ‘urgent-important matrix’ to categorize tasks as ‘urgent’, ‘not urgent’, ‘important’ and ‘not important’. This is a useful tool to prioritize tasks and work on the ones that require immediate attention.
Personal motivation is important because it gives you room to think about yourself. Harappa’s Interpreting Self course not only teaches you the importance of self-motivation but also helps you assess your strengths to develop self-awareness. Sign up for the online course to know yourself so that you can motivate yourself and get back in the groove.
Explore our Harappa Diaries section to know more about topics related to the Lead habit such as What is Leadership, Meaning of Resilience, Humility, Self-Esteem, Work Ethic & Meaning of Mentoring.
