Welcome back!
Before you read this, make sure you read my post on Beliefs, Thoughts, Emotions and Behaviour as this article is a continuation of the previous one.
How many times have you listened to an audio book, watched a video or attended a conference where a motivational speaker addressed the group? When you listen to the audio book, you get excited and decide that you are changing your life around, when you watch a motivational video, you also feel excited and motivated and can write an entire list of things you want to do or change and when you walk out of the conference you just can't wait for tomorrow to start doing things in a different way to get different results.
Does this sound familiar? I know it does!
How many times have you heard people say (or even said yourself): "I had the best intentions, but when I got back to the normal day to day things I just did not have the time to get to it" or "I never felt so good, but that subsided very quickly - the feeling just didn't last"?
If you think about beliefs, thoughts, emotions and behaviour... which one of the four does motivation speak to? In other words, which one of the four does motivation influence or effect? It had a lot to do with how you felt at that point in time, thus emotions, right? It can even talk to your thoughts as it can make you think differently about something specific.
Do you notice anything at this point?
Motivation does NOT talk to what you believe! So even though you think differently for now or even if you are excited for now, ultimately you will go back to your old ways of thinking and back to your old emotions that will make you behave the way you always do... thus changing nothing!
Until such time as you change your beliefs about something, you will not be able to sustain the motivation. You will not be able to change anything as a matter of fact.
But is it possible to change what you believe? Absolutely!
I am a firm believer that everything in life is a choice. You can choose to change your view of something, but to do that you have to be honest with yourself and truly change your view (belief) and not just say you are now changing how you view something. Saying that, I guess it is also fair to say that one will not be able to change all of your views, but the ones you really want to change, you will most definitely be able to!
Question: Do you think there is a difference in levels of success reached by optimists vs. pessimists?
Thanks again for reading my blog - please leave a comment or tick one of the boxes below to indicate what you think of the post!
Francois
3 comments:
I had to take some time and think about this one. I agree with you that your 'beliefs' which is your values affect your motivation. In my opinion: it is much more complex than changing your values. Your values are instilled from childhood by your caregivers. It gives you the opportunity to differentiate between right and wrong and you are able to see from a person’s values what is important to him. It is unfortunate (or not), though that values are relatively stable and enduring.
To make things even more difficult, you have to compete with people with different personalities. You might be dealing with someone who is very open to new experiences or someone who are more agreeable than another. Or you may be so unfortunate to deal with an individual with just the opposite personality traits. Then you have a problem convincing them to change their ways.
When you start researching motivation, you would find several theories from several people such as the well known 'Needs theory' of Maslow, or Herzberg, McClelland, and Locke, which give you an idea about the complexity of motivation.
We all know that those type of leaders or motivational speakers who enable you to be so ‘worked up’ when you listen to them are called charismatic leaders. But how effective are they in the long run? At what point would you become almost ‘resistant’ to those emotional roller coasters. Not that I am against them. There is definitely a place for them also.
As you can see: It is not so easy. Maybe the answer is in a holistic view. Recognising a person’s culture, personality, values, cognition and emotions and work from that in order not just to motivate a person, but change his ways.
Adele, thanks so much for your comment. Love it when someone envoke thinking in a different way.
I think there are two types of beliefs: 1 is your values as you said that are instilled since childhood and I think in a lesser way sometimes past experience and the 2nd type is how you choose to view something which is mainly instilled by past experience.
The 2nd one is the one you are able to change by analysing your current view and exploring the possibility of seeing it in a different way.
I will also dwell on everything you said and write a follow up? Thanks for joining the conversation and for bringing up very valid points!
Oh my word. What a can of worms!
You are right. Sometimes you would deviate from your value. Imagine values on an intensity line. On one side you have values which are very important to you and on the other not so important, but they are still your values.
Let us make it practical.
Let us say for instance your values are that you are a fighter for equality, you have a high level of self-respect, family security is very important to you, and you are an honest, helpful, and responsible person. All these values are very important to you. Suddenly one day you are faced with a dilemma. One of your daughters is being caught driving your new Merc without a licence. (Ha, ha! Had to say that) She phone you and luckily you are close by. On the scene the traffic official hints to you that he would be willing to accept a bribe. What are you going to do?
You have conflicting values! Which value would be more important? The level of intensity of family security and helpfulness or would your honesty, responsibility and self-respect be stronger?
So, yes values are relatively stable. After this incident you would still have those values of honesty etc. It’s not going to go away after bribing the officer.
Your perception of traffic officers in general might have changed after this incident and you would feel guilty afterwards. If you did not accept to bribe the officer you might now consider using the value of honesty and equality to motivate you to start a campaign against bribing traffic officials.
That motivation again, depends on other factors such as personality, ability to think, culture, needs etc.
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