Why Your Motivation Matters More Than Ever

"With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts".

This quote by Eleanor Roosevelt is especially relevant during ambiguous times.

What is it that enables us to break through the struggle of yesterday?

How do we build new strengths and new thoughts for today and beyond?

By being motivated.

But where do you start?

As an accredited practitioner of Motivational Maps, in this article, I share my perspective of motivation, drawing upon the Motivational Maps Model and the work of its founder Mr James Sale.

Why is it critical for us to understand and boost motivation, particularly in times like these?

Motivation and You

Motivation is your internal energy.

So what is willpower? Drive? Determination? Desire? And how do they relate to motivation?

It's my view that they are all parts of our being and related to our internal energy - our motivation. 

Ultimately, you are most motivated when you are in the process of satisfying your purpose. 

Your purpose can be a mix of your immediate short-term goals, your longer-term plans or your entire identity. Furthermore, it's common for us to be satisfied with one part of our life and dissatisfied with another.

So what is happening when your energy is low, and you lack drive, or willpower or even discipline to take action?

You are not serving your purpose. 

How does that occur? There are two possible scenarios: you don't know your purpose, or you are out of alignment with your purpose.

You Don't Know Your Purpose

People who don't have a vision for their future, nor set goals to achieve it often experience significant variations in their motivation. 

They are often searching for something to hold onto.

When their circumstances are by chance aligned to their unknown purpose, they may feel highly motivated.

But their motivation will drop when those circumstances change.

When the purpose is unknown, it's not surprising it's a big "A-HA!" moment when people learn more about what matters to them. Now that they know what's important they can understand why they think, feel and behave the way they do.

More importantly, they can now design their life to meet their purpose.

You Are Out of Alignment With Your Purpose

In addition to not knowing your purpose, you may not be serving your purpose if circumstances limit your life choices.

For most of us engaged in the world, we can only control moments. 

As each moment passes, change of all sorts of shape, size and impact impacts our world and disrupts our status quo. And sometimes our alignment with our purpose.  

At times the change is so significant that we have no choice but to sacrifice or suspend parts of our purpose (i.e. short term goals) as we deal with unstoppable change.

Consequently, you're unable to serve your purpose and this results in demotivation.

What You Can Do To Connect With Your Purpose 

Firstly, you need to know your purpose and understand its drivers.

Secondly, you need personal self-awareness to realise your circumstances are not serving your purpose.

Finally, it would be best if you were sufficiently objective to accept the need for action to change your circumstances. 

But most important of all you need to know your purpose and understand its drivers first!

The Nine Drivers of Motivation

According to the Motivational Maps model, you are most energetic when you have a positive belief about yourself and your future. 

So you can see why our motivation can suffer when there is uncertainty about change. In such moments, our anxiety will test our beliefs about ourselves and our futures. 

What should we focus on to boost our beliefs about our self and our future?

At any time, we will have particular preferences for any of nine needs or motivational drivers as defined by the Motivational Maps Model. 

Once we know our primary drivers in the current context of our work and personal life, we can build strategies to satisfy our primary drivers and boost our motivation.

What are the nine drivers?

Based on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Edgar Schein's Career Anchor Model and the Enneagram Model, the Motivational Maps Model defines nine motivational drivers.

Depending upon our current context, each of us will have a profile of primary drivers. That is, we will have drivers that will be more or less significant for us at a point in time.

Here is my most recent profile. 

Each of the drivers has needs; here is a simple definition of each of the nine drivers.

Defender: "A Defender's need is for security. They need to believe that what they are doing is contributing to a solid and predictable future." 

Friend: "A Friend's need is for belonging. They want nourishing relationships with other people at work – they want to be part of a community." 

Star: "A Star's need is to be recognised, admired and respected in their workplace and by the community at large. Recognition is important." 

Builder: "A Builder's need is for material satisfaction, income and realising a desirable standard of living – achieving targets is very important."

Expert: "An Expert's need is for expertise and mastery of a subject. They seek to be an expert at what they do to achieve technical mastery." 

Director: "A Director's need is for power and influence – they want to be able to influence the way things happen – the people and the resources." 

Searcher: "A Searcher's need is for meaning in their work and seeking to make a difference to the quality of their work for themselves and others." 

Creator: "A Creator's need is for creativity. This motivation is for innovation – to be identified with original output particularly through adversity." 

Spirit: "A Spirit's need is for freedom or autonomy. This means they seek to be independent and are able to make key decisions for themselves." 

Boosting Motivation

As you can probably imagine, there are numerous strategies you can implement to boost any of the nine motivational drivers.

However, there are only four actions you will take to realise the benefits of those strategies:

1. Get: obtain something you don't already have.
2. Give: provide something to people you don't provide now.
3. Start: begin doing something you aren't already doing.
4. Stop: cease doing something you are doing.

Remember that boosting motivation is about increasing your internal energy so you can maximise your performance. 

Particularly during times of heightened anxiety due to uncertainty, it is important that we are aware of what energises us.

The Motivational Maps model provides people with a clear understanding of their primary drivers.

Armed with this knowledge, people can direct their focus on the right actions to boost motivation, fulfil their purpose and realise their most significant performance ever.

Craig Stephens is a certified Motivational Maps Practitioner. If you'd like to learn more about your motivation, click here to schedule a complimentary session to discuss your motivation.