Motivation, Motivator, Self-Motivated / Inspired

In my own personal experience being motivated, having motivator, motivating and inspire others including gaining knowledge with people by attending Motivational seminars and talks, I have explored with curiosity the necessity of motivation.

Why people attend motivational talks and seminars many times and yet have failed to harness the knowledge of self-motivation?

Why have motivational speakers have not successfully impart, the knowledge of motivation to inspire within individuals to make them self-motivated?

What makes people like Steve Jobs stay motivated, earning $1 as remuneration in Apple?

How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

We will be looking at all three (3) perspectives to understand, 

1.     What is motivation?

2.     How best motivators can proceed to motivate other(s) long term?

3.     What must individuals do in order to be motivated and inspired? 

In this blog we will be going through the stages of :
1.     Motivation
2.     Motivator
3.     Motivated / Inspire 

Understanding Motivation

To understand how motivation works is complicated and at times contradictory. There are a combination of elements such as hopes, desire dreams, rewards (that are outside influence), policies (that can affect social pressures), and many other psychological interpretations.

It is a complex equation made complicated by theories of motivation and categorize by many in accordance to tasks or subjects from Education, Learning, Leadership, Salesmanship, Labour, Human Resource, Motivational Speakers, politicians, Religious Clerics (one example is prosperity gospel, love GOD to be prosperous) and so on so forth.

There are many theories on motivation too by Frederic Freud, Lewin, Gardners, Weiner and many others.

Here is something to ponder or think about. Why did Steve Jobs accepting to a $1 remuneration when he came back to lead Apple? Think about it? He was losing money and was heavily in debt purchasing Pixar for $5 Million. There are a lot of argument and discussion on it but not many of the CEO or Directors would agree on a remuneration of a $1 a year. What motivated him? Think about it.

In this blog I separated motivation into two parts.

The two types of motivation we will look at are :

1. Extrinsic Motivation

2. Intrinsic Motivation  

Extrinsic Motivation

People who are motivated by extrinsic equation tend to work hard for rewards (includes social status and so on), as their attention is focus on external incentives to perform a task as their objective is to attain the goals either on merit of result, rewards or incentives. They are motivated to get the highest results or to the standard requirements that would qualify them to a certain goal. The rewards become the end product. 

Most of these individuals will not be innovative in approach in their learning abilities as they will avoid risk and likely to stay in a safe zone simply following instructions or not questioning the norm. Their motivation is of short term. Some or many would not even start to do the job or task. Once the result is attained they have no other motivations being formed. This forms students and adult to be educated and not learners.

Intrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic motivations have a deeper understanding of learning. Will have more interest and are more confident. They are more curious and love to explore. Due to these attributes they may or will take risk. While taking risk they may not get higher scores as they will not follow through with instructions but have fully understood subjects, issues, situations and circumstances by trial and errors. They look at things in forms of equations and always questioning the norms.

They can get easily bored in a controlled environment and like to do different things. These people have self believes. Are more innovative in approach and have developed self- motivation by means of exploration, by not fearing to fail and have the ability to assess issues to do better. They acquire knowledge by questioning facts. They will not be afraid to share the knowledge as they have confidence in gaining more knowledge. 

These individual(s) do not need incentives, rewards or promotions to motivate them. It’s a long term basis and forms students and adults to be Lifelong Learners.

Manipulation (with incentives / extrinsic motivation) vs Motivation (without incentives / intrinsic motivation)

There is a difference between Manipulation and Motivation. The only similarity both have is that they begin with the letter M. Extrinsic Motivation due to its reward equation is a form of Manipulation.

On the other hand Intrinsic Motivation is cultivated with focus objective purpose (this is purely on the focus of why, what and when learning process. If we want to learn to gain knowledge then one will be motivated for serving the “proper purpose”).

Motivation and manipulation can be engaged in the next segment of Motivator.


Understanding Motivator

Just like in the understanding of motivation there are two types in motivator.
They are:

1.     Leadership (Mentorship)

2.     Salesmanship / Showmanship / Managers

A major function of leaders is to support, mentor, consult and nature the motivation of other individuals and group(s). That is the leadership perspective. These are constructive approaches in cultivating individual(s) and group(s) to grow in confidence and be self-motivated. 

Cultivating these individual(s) or groups(s) to self-motivation sustains long term motivation. Although different people have different desires (a catalyze element of needs and wants) to be motivated, it would be excellent to make them focus on the intrinsic benefits rather than benefits towards material forms of rewards. Having said that, it would be better to form a balance in the choices to motivate.

The other form of motivators are motivational speakers, managers and even some political candidates and individuals directive or objectives are simply to motivate in terms of extrinsic motivation in terms of rewards, punishments or simply having messages of a euphoria to the audience, individual(s) or group(s).

These could be found in Multi-Level Marketing (MLM), Motivation seminars, political elections, Sales manager meetings at times in religious meetings and so on. These form(s) of motivation are not long term. And the goals are for self-fulfilment (motivator’s interest) of self-interest first. These are motivators of salesmanship or showmanship not leadership.

Motivation of individual(s) or group(s) must lead them to be self-motivated, leading themselves (those being motivated) to have confident in motivating others, and sustaining their positive attitude long term even in failures. Not seeking to be motivated or seeking euphoria induced motivational speeches every day, week, months and years and not find themselves determine and confident in leading themselves to be independent.

Motivators must understand that they cannot motivate all people. Just as Socrates statement one can only make them think. Not by simply standing on a stage and talking about your success. The key to supporting motivation of individual(s) and group(s) is to understand what motivates each of them.

TEACHERS / Child care teachers / Career Coaches / Trainers

In actual fact, teachers should be and must be first line motivators not just towards excellent student but also to slower learners and those not interested in learning. In Singapore, in my time and environment, teachers were not mentors, or motivators neither were they leaders. Many of them were simply following the standard operating procedures (SOP), to teach. Many of them were result oriented managers (although they were meant to be leaders. We had a different set of ideas of leadership principles).

The next line of group would be career coaches. Many of these fast growing individual(s) or group(s) in position, need to focus on mentorship and motivators which in turn giving them opportunity to have leadership not salesmanship attributes. It all depends how the policy makers and leaders cultivate the purpose for these sectors just like the sector for teaching.

Child care teacher(s), to my understanding and perception, is the holiest ground(s) that creates the authenticity of creating the culture of the nation. Child care teachers should be and must be carefully chosen, selected or recruited. And paid more respect in the society. They are the ones who would need to be equipped with the knowledge of leadership, mentorship and yes, motivators.

And in every child care centres must have a child psychologist to assess children from young, in terms of their learning abilities and other attributes. This would cater a ground for early detection of how best the environment or teachers can help poorer or slower learners or learner with disabilities and given better learning methods. By doing so we could better motivate them earlier.

Extrinsic Motivators

Extrinsic motivator(s) includes:

1.     Parents expectations

2.     Human Resource Managers

3.     Sales Managers (includes Multi-Level Marketing Speakers who call themselves Motivators)

4.     Role model expectations

5.     Earning potential

6.     Managers expectations

7.     Policy makers expectations

·        Advantage of Extrinsic Motivator 

Extrinsic motivator produces faster results in behaviour changes. It involve little effort or even preparation. As the structure is about result extrinsic motivators do not require extensive knowledge of individuals.

·        Disadvantage of Extrinsic Motivator

      On the other hand fast result(s) in motivating individuals or people or student tend to demotivate them faster as well. Or the knowledge gain seem to be forgotten once they have achieve the standard require expectations. Often need to find the right rewards for the individuals to perform. In the process resulting to “salesmanship motivation”.

Intrinsic Motivators

Intrinsic motivator(s) includes :

1.     Leaders2.     Mentor(s)

·        Advantage of Intrinsic Motivator

Teach to master the subject with passion. They teach things clearly by making learners think with understanding rather than simply going through the motion. It can or will be long lasting and self-sustaining. Efforts such as these focus on the subject rather than rewards or punishment.

·         Disadvantage of Intrinsic Motivator

Efforts to foster intrinsic motivation takes time and are slower to effect behavioural changes and requires special lengthy preparation and care. It would take lots of patients to motivate as it does not have a catalyst like a reward but solely for the right purpose of learning rather than simply getting educated. For adults it is about gaining knowledge rather than simply getting a certificate and following process in order to get promotion. There are two elements in this equation. 

Environment

Culture of the environment plays a big part in cultivating Intrinsic Motivation. Our environment separates fast learners to those of slower ones by streaming. The focus is more on fast learners who could memorize subjects and pages and succeed in exams. The faster learners are motivated with many extrinsic rewards. Result centric, career centric, status centric, and many more. They study and know they would not use what they have learned in daily lives. While the slower individual(s), have not much mentoring to help them in developing interest to learning.

As for workers or employees, the mind-sets are simply to work and work harder for promotions and bonuses. Although the situation is turning around to motivate by means of promoting Lifelong Learning, it must in time change to focus cultivating by intrinsic motivation for lifelong Learners. Everyone have to play a part in cultivating the right purpose to motivation for learning.

Movie Character(s) motivation

Most of us get inspired or motivated by Movies. My greatest motivator was ROCKY. Rocky’s character motivated me to do something different in my approach in training, in life and my choice to go back to school after my National Service (army stint).

Many of us get motivated from watching many movies. Sports movie(s) like Rocky and so on. We remember quotes in the movies, the scenes, the actions to keep us motivated.
It is also one way to begin self-motivation. It sets our mind-set to motivate and inspire ourselves.

Books Character(s) Motivation

There are many non-fiction books biographies that can motivate you and inspire you. Books by Mahatma Ghandi, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, Michael Jordan, "A beautiful mind" about John Forbes Nash Jr and many more which are in my mini library can induce a proper purpose to the objective of our motivation and inspire us for further improvement.Before I went on to do my degree in September 2009, I bought a book online called ‘When men win glory’ by Jon Krakauer. It was about a man name Pat Tillman. He walked away from a multi-million dollar contract to be a football player and join the army to serve his country. We are not talking about S-League here we are talking about multi-million dollar contract. Yes I understand it is one in a billion you get such an individual.

His character and attributes, in fact thought me to be motivated with the “proper purpose”. And so I went to do my degree with that state of mind. To gain knowledge. Not to follow theories but question the norm. 

Yes I did not score high marks for most of my course work. In fact because of the challenge I took I failed my business project finding an out of the box business. And yes my lecturer was disappointed. She expected me to kill that subject

Above is a screen shot of the screen shot of some of the books that made me intrinsic motivated. If you are interested you may browse through the link : http://www.michaelrsmorgan.com/#!books/cg1d 

Understanding being Motivated / Inspired

Having understood the two (2) different kinds of motivation, it comes to an understanding more about motivation. A recent article by Cheryl Tay in yahoo sums it up.

ht

tp

s://sg.sports.yahoo.com/blogs/fit-to-post-sports/body-positive--it-s-all-in-the-mind-075401358.html

Proper Purpose

But a wrong mind-set leads to wrong reasons for working out.

Some people may work out because they want to look like that celebrity on TV or someone they see in the gym and then get frustrated because they don’t achieve the results they want.

This constant idolization of other people will only lead to disaster.

In that news in yahoo, Cheryl Chan, have wrote about what is the necessary attributes in terms of mindset. 

1.     Sustainability vs short term success.

2.     Having the right mindset.

The objective was about weight loss to dieting to work out to look like a celebrity or to be like an idol and the list goes on. That was the focus and objective that would certainly lead to disaster.

People perceive it as motivational, inspiration objective to be focus on idols and celebrities. A psychological conditioning to be on diet or to work out (exercise) not in the proper sense of being healthy but in the focus to be like that celebrity or idol.

Which is the wrong idea, mind-set and concept in motivating themselves. What should be your focus and objective to motivate yourself must be of a benefit to be healthy. To work out in the gym or having a diet in a healthy way, should be and must be the “proper purpose”.

How to be a self-motivator?

Before we move on to how we can sustain our motivation we have to understand the reason we lose motivation. The reason we lose motivation and need to attend motivational talk all the time is because of :

1.     Lack of confidence

2.     Lack of focus

3.     Lack of direction

Having come through all and reaching this point we will now attempt to understand the how to motivate ourselves which in turn keep us motivated. We have understood by now with knowledge of motivation and now to progress in inspiring ourselves to goals, objective, vision and realize our missions.

It is the same concept as in starting a business with a business plan. Any business without a plan, vision or mission will find it difficult (not that they will certainly fail) to succeed. The same can be reflected upon our motivation to start a task and complete a task with confidence and determination.

Preparation is the most important element to succeed in any task. May it be taking up a course, degree, job, learning etc. The mind and the soul must be prepared to face failures and hardship.

My personal experience, at the age of forty four (44) to do my degree.

In my speech to potential in-take of students for Loughborough University in PSB, I would inform them that the course is hard and not easy to succeed. That they would need to put in a lot of effort in the three (3) years of the course and it is not going to be easy compared to other university courses. Having said that, I would tell them that the first cause of interest to come for the preview and seminar, sets the chances of success to be higher.

I can inspire them. I could motivate them, but it all depends on them to be motivating themselves in gaining knowledge and wanting to learn (proper Purpose). They would need to build confidence, focus and strategize their progress.

The basic element(s) is a need to build the tools to manage your task, such as planning, organizing and controlling. Scheduling time and then you will have to lead yourself to the task. You have to build your character. 

As you grow you will build and grow with problem solving skills, decision making skills, stress management skills and so on.

Although I did not fail my exams and was fortunate to have so many of good friends who would coach me and mentor me and push me through the lectures, there were others who have failed or had to slow down. I admired their steel of determination. Successful people build that steel in them. They also build in them the character and attitude to be self-motivated.I hope through the journey of Motivation, Motivator, Motivated and Inspired we have understood how to achieved self-motivation. As Sun Tze would say,

 “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemies nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Most of the ideas to write this blog were done from lots of reading research materials both online and from books. Here are the references from some.

REFERENCE

MindTools -  https://www.mindtools.com/

Father Tricks Son Into Becoming a Top Student by Scoring Zero on Tests - http://www.visiontimes.com/2015/12/26/father-tricks-son-into-becoming-a-top-student-by-scoring-zero-on-tests.html

Helping People to Motivate Themselves and Others - http://managementhelp.org/leadingpeople/motivating-others.htm

Center of teaching – Motivation - https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/motivating-students/

Motivation and the brain – How to harness student motivation. New research points the way. - http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3758277

The Ultimate Guide to Motivation – How to Achieve Any Goal - http://zenhabits.net/the-ultimate-guide-to-motivation-how-to-achieve-any-goal/

Motivation and the brain – How to harness student motivation. New research points the way. - http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3758277

9 ways to motivate kids - http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/9-ways-motivate-kids

Adults in modern society are on a lifelong educational journey by Raymond J Wlodkowski - https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/motivating-students/

Character motivation - http://study.com/academy/lesson/character-motivation-definition-examples.html

Flipping the Switch – Motivation vs Manipulation by Jack Dunigan - http://thepracticalleader.com/motivation-vs-manipulation/

Inspiration Leadership and Aspiration Management Drives Business Success : Motivation Shifts – Inspire, Aspire, Achieve – Business Trends - http://bizshifts-trends.com/2013/06/27/inspiration-leadership-and-aspiration-management-inspiration-leadership-and-aspiration-management-drives-business-success-changing-paradigm-of-motivation/

Scholastic Professional Paper – Raising students who want to read – By Phyllis S Hunter - http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/authors/pdfs/Raising_Students.pdf

Motivating Students - https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/motivating-students/

Academic Diversity : Ways to Motivate and Engage Student with Learning Disabilities - http://www.council-for-learning-disabilities.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Weiser_Motivation.pdf

ADULT LEARNING – Adults in modern society are on a lifelong learning educational journey. - http://userpages.umbc.edu/~koconne1/605TheAdultLearner/ivse.htm

CENTER OF EDUCATION POLICIES - Can Money or other rewards motivate students? - file:///C:/Users/Michael%20r%20s%20Morgan/Downloads/UsherKober_Background2_Motivation_5.22.12.pdf

Motivation : A literature Review - http://images.pearsonassessments.com/images/tmrs/Motivation_Review_final.pdf

Understanding motivation : A review of relevant literature - http://carleton.ca/slals/wp-content/uploads/5_Understanding_Motivation_BARKER_CPALS_2004_05.pdf

Adult Leaner – The definitive classic in adult education and Human Resource Development - https://books.google.com.sg/books?hl=en&lr=&id=1We2BQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=The+Adult+Learner:+The+Definitive+Classic+in+Adult+Education+and+Human+Resource+Development&ots=C7HU5nKvpR&sig=jYsloS120YYTgqnbLUfqviSLoY8#v=onepage&q=The%20Adult%20Learner%3A%20The%20Definitive%20Classic%20in%20Adult%20Education%20and%20Human%20Resource%20Development&f=false

Don’t Confused Motivation and Inspiration to be the same - http://www.chrmglobal.com/Articles/313/1/Don-t-Confuse-Motivation-and-Inspiration-to-be-the-Same.html

How to get motivated when you don’t feel like it. - http://jamesclear.com/how-to-get-motivated

How to get motivated according to science - http://theweek.com/articles/445446/how-motivated-according-science

How to get motivated to study - http://www.planetofsuccess.com/blog/2010/how-to-get-motivated-to-study/

How to stay motivated and accomplish anything - http://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2013/07/19/how-to-stay-motivated-and-accomplish-anything/

But a wrong mindset leads to wrong reasons for working out. Some people may work out because they want to look like that celebrity on TV or someone they see in the gym and then get frustrated because they don’t achieve the results they want. This constant idolisation of other people will only lead to disaster. – https://sg.sports.yahoo.com/blogs/fit-to-post-sports/body-positive--it-s-all-in-the-mind-075401358.html