Motivation is a psychological process which initiates, directs and supports the purposeful behavior. It appears from the certain goal (a thought in your head) that you desperately will to achieve and develops with the help of actions required to make the goal come true.
Anything can be that goal: happiness, relationship, money, health, education, flight to Mars, writing an essay. No matter if humans understand that or no, everyone of us has a bunch of goals even if they are not marked that way.
Any action or move has the intention. A person feels the wish or the need, then they take an action in order to get what is wanted: when there is a feeling of thirst, a person takes the bottle of water and drinks. The move of a hand is the purposeful action, or, as psychologists say, action which is oriented on purpose.
As a rule it is quite easy to achieve short-term goals. The example with the bottle is fine here:
There is the need -> There is the possibility to get what is wanted -> Action Performed -> The need satisfied.
If to talk about long-term goals, it is much more difficult to achieve them. You need not only one action in order to do that, but tens, hundreds or even thousands of them in order to do that. What to do in that case? Physics and its inertia & impulse laws will help you find out the answer.
Inertia is the property of the subject to maintain calmness or movement status until any outer power changes this status.
Impulse is a vector physical value, which is the measure of body’s mechanical movement.
Psychic laws are in some ways similar to physical ones in this case. If you are in a calm status, you feel it difficult to go out of it, to overcome your inertia. Yet if you get the impulse and start moving, you can’t stop. This is what can be called the mechanics of motivation.
Let’s take a closer look onto inertia and impulse.
Overcome Inertia
Cam object remains in calmness until power inflicts it. This statement is fine for both physics and psychology & motivation.
Your life is often stagnating, remaining stable: days are full of same actions, habits, behavioral and thinking templates. Until you decide to change something.
There are two types of powers, which can cause changes:
- Internal power. It is a power that comes from the joy of activity and exists inside every person. It is not caused by outside factors.
- External power. The power that comes from the outside: a reward or an escape from punishment. Money, marks, social pressure.
Both powers are valuable. Yes, internal power is much stronger, but not everyone has it. Those who want to get it have to work on their personalities a lot in order to call it out instantly.
Internal power comes from knowing your internal values and main life goals. It is easy to find motivation if you know what you want.
External power can be used in order to change or get habits. Use outside rewards in order to teach yourself to do something.
The best result comes when both powers are used simultaneously. It is really important to understand what you want, but pleasant external rewards are useful ways to get additional motivation.
All that you need is a little amount of power in order to start moving. When you overcome starting inertia, you become unstoppable. Appetite comes while you eat.
Maintain Impulse
While the object is on the constant move, it keeps moving until another power influences it.
So, motivation means not only the ability to make yourself move, but to maintain impulse despite all other powers that can stop your movement and development of your potential.
There will be mistakes, unlucky accidents, failures and circumstances on any way to the goal. Those are frictions; you need to learn how to overcome them if you want to reach success in your life.
Here are several important actions you can do in order to maintain your impulse:
- Pay attention to everyday victories. Support your motivation by paying attention to small victories you get every day. You always proceed towards your goals gradually; great success never comes at once.
- Change “obstacle” to “possibility”. Many obstacles should be treated as additional sources of experience you need to gain. Ask yourself: “what can I learn here and what will it give me?”.
- Try new things and remain curious. Always be ready to try something new in order to keep your mind fresh and ready to explorations.
- Develop your long-term mentality. Always think about two periods of the future: the next day, and the day that comes five years later. This is how you can understand that everything you do now has attitude to your future success.
- Stay calm and relaxed. Motivation doesn’t work when you are scared, or you have bad mood. So, smile and relax.
As you can see, even elementary knowledge of physics allows you to know more about yourself. Let it become your motivation for learning other subjects and use them in life.