MOTIVATION By S CHAKRABORTY

Motivation is no button that you press and lo behold the subject(s) are motivated!

I know very well that I am not motivating you one bit to read this article by crashing your motivating dreams. But then, all things big and beautiful in life works with a bit of bitter, after which everything seems sweet. Let us evaluate in correct terms what “Motivation” is and is not.

Motivation and Leadership advice is getting more common and we might be confused as to what maxims and teachings we should follow. Every day, members of various, Whats App group, will forward you, yet, another motivational message, and the forwards get more and more prolific in this complex world of ours.

Often, in my training workshops, I come across many participants, confident of motivating their team members and subordinates by “Motivating my team”, and I can’t help wondering, What in God’s name, is this new tool called “Motivation”. Let us closely, examine, what Motivation is and how do we actually, Motivate?

Motivation is Internal and external factors that stimulate desire and energy in people to be continually interested and committed to a job, role or subject, or to make an effort to attain a goal.

Motivation results from the interaction of both conscious and unconscious factors such as the (1) intensity of desire or need, (2) incentive or reward value of the goal, and (3) expectations of the individual and of his or her peers. These factors are the reasons one has for behaving a certain way. An example is a student that spends extra time studying for a test because he or she wants a better grade in the class.

WIKIPEDIA: Motivation is the reason for people's actions, desires, and needs. Motivation is also one's direction to behavior, or what causes a person to want to repeat a behavior. An individual is not motivated by another individual. Motivation comes from within the individual. Motivation has been considered as one of the most important reasons that inspires a person to move forward.

Biologically, Motivation as a desire to perform an action is usually defined as having two parts, directional such as directed towards a positive stimulus or away from a negative one, as well as the activated "seeking phase" and consummatory "liking phase". This type of motivation has neurobiological roots in the basal ganglia, and mesolimbic dopaminergic pathways. Activated "seeking" behavior, such as locomotor activity, is influenced by dopaminergic drugs, and microdialysis experiments reveal that dopamine is released during the anticipation of a reward. The "wanting behavior" associated with a rewarding stimulus can be increased by microinjections of dopamine and dopaminergic drugs in the dorsorostral nucleus accumbens and posterior ventral palladum. Opioid injections in this area produce pleasure, however outside of these hedonic hotspots they create an increased desire. Furthermore, depletion or inhibition of dopamine in neurons of the nucleus accumbens decreases appetitive but not consummatory behavior. Dopamine is further implicated in motivation as administration of amphetamine increased the break point in a progressive ratio self-reinforcement schedule. That is, subjects were willing to go to greater lengths (e.g. press a lever more times) to obtain a reward.

Lately, I have been noticing, a lot of pictures on Linked in and Facebook of workshops, where in a lot of pumped up Jam and shouts of encouragement in chorus as a motivating spirit to motivate one and all in an outbound. Lots of jubilation, lots of noise, lots of pumped up energy and a sense of Esprit de Corp, but the question is the whether it is the sole mode of motivation? Yes, indeed this process of boosting the Adrenalin does help you jump or run faster at the moment, but in the long run you need to build up the definition to a more tangible means to an end. Does it work in the shop floor sometimes or always? Today, motivation is an over rated term, perhaps, even over used.

QUESTION: Does a lot of hemming and hawing, empty noise really motivate a subject in the long run?

Case in point are some of these terms that are often used in the office and shop floor or the reception in the corporate world such as:

1. You are awesome!
2. You are gonna be successful!
3. Oh! That’s easy!
4. Easy solution!
5. Just do nothing and ride with the tide!

Some correct means of being successful without much hype of the term are:

1. Don’t Try to Be Better Than Someone Else; Try to Be the Very Best You Can Be!
2. The Importance of Constant Self-Improvement!
3. Just be true to yourself!
4. What advice would you give to yourself?

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation” in Psychological Review. Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. His theories parallel many other theories of human developmental psychology, some of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans. Maslow used the terms "physiological", "safety", "belonging and love", "esteem", "self-actualization", and "self-transcendence" to describe the pattern through which human motivations generally move. The goal of Maslow's Theory is to attain the sixth level or stage: self-actualization needs.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is often portrayed in the shape of a pyramid with the largest, most fundamental needs at the bottom and the need for self-actualization and self-transcendence at the top.

The most fundamental and basic four layers of the pyramid contain what Maslow called "deficiency needs" or "d-needs": esteem, friendship and love, security, and physical needs. If these "deficiency needs" are not met – with the exception of the most fundamental (physiological) need – there may not be a physical indication, but the individual will feel anxious and tense. Maslow's theory suggests that the most basic level of needs must be met before the individual will strongly desire (or focus motivation upon) the secondary or higher level needs. Maslow also coined the term "metamotivation" to describe the motivation of people who go beyond the scope of the basic needs and strive for constant betterment.

The human brain is a complex system and has parallel processes running at the same time, thus many different motivations from various levels of Maslow's hierarchy can occur at the same time. Maslow spoke clearly about these levels and their satisfaction in terms such as "relative", "general", and "primarily". Instead of stating that the individual focuses on a certain need at any given time, Maslow stated that a certain need "dominates" the human organism. Thus Maslow acknowledged the likelihood that the different levels of motivation could occur at any time in the human mind, but he focused on identifying the basic types of motivation and the order in which they would tend to be met.

The idea of writing this article is not to deride anyone of the beauty of Motivation but to understand and appreciate the fact there is more to it that meets the eye. Motivational stories have the ability to lift us up, make us smile, encourage, motivate, and teach us valuable life lessons. Here are some motivating stories that will hopefully help you spark that motivational feeling. They give us an empowering sense of hope, that if ‘he/she’ can do it, so can I.

The important thing to remember when reading these inspiring stories and forwards, is that, when you get that feeling of motivation, where you want to do something, do something! JUST DO IT! Nothing is more of a waste than to be inspired and motivated and not take any action. Your life will only change as a result of taking focused action. An inspirational story is nothing if it doesn’t cause you to do something or at least make you believe in yourself a bit more. Hopefully, these inspiring stories will change your life in some way.