How Types of Motivation can help You

There are many types of motivation – pain, pleasure, inspiration, other people etc. Knowing what yours is can help you when you’re looking to achieve a goal.

While motivation may be something that’s clearly understood, it belies the fact that there are many different types of motivation because there are many different reasons for it.

“If you always do what you've always done, you’ll always get what you've always got.”
Unknown

I suppose when we think about motivation, most of us think about self-motivation. In other words, we think about the strong inclinations we feel towards something – something we want to do or be or have etc.

But these aren’t the only types of motivation.

Pain motivated:
When something in our life situation is so uncomfortable, so difficult, so unsatisfactory that we can no longer bear it, that’s the time we may choose to make some changes in our lives. But the pain has to be strong enough, or for a long enough period to motivate us. People who react in this way are those motivated by negative energy.

Pleasure motivated:
This applies when the thrill of an experience or the satisfaction of a result is the motivation. People who react in this way are those motivated by positive energy.

Motivation through a change in circumstances:
Some changes are brought about by circumstance. For instance, with the changing climate in the world today, floods and hurricanes are more and more frequently devastating homes and whole neighbourhoods. This motivates many people to make changes in the places they live

Motivation through accessing new information:
If you read articles or see on the TV that certain things are unhealthy for you, or that other things have been found to be helpful to a health problem that affects you, this may be enough for you to make changes to your lifestyle.

Motivation through inspiration:
If you’ve just read a book, seen a film, watched a news item, listened to a speaker or seen a video that’s inspired you,

Motivation by someone else:
If you’re doing something because someone else wants you to do it, or if you’re trying to get someone to do something because you want them to – it may work in the short term, but that’s it!

Let’s say, for example, that you want your partner to stop smoking because you know it’s affecting their health, their cough is getting worse and you’re worried about cancer. They’re very noble, very understandable and very caring reasons.

But unfortunately you can’t motivate anyone to do something that will be ‘good for them’ if they don’t have the motivation to do it themselves. They may make the effort because they want to please you, but keeping it up without self-motivation is almost impossible.

Reverse motivation:
You may have friends or family who always put you down and put down your ideas. Many people would be dejected by this constant wearing down, but to others it has the opposite affect. What motivates these people is being able to show the doubters how wrong they are!