What's Personal Motivation

External motivation comes from outside of our own brain. When you want to do a job because it will impress someone, or because you'll receive a prize for it, or because you'll be punished if you don't--that's an inducement that comes from outside your internal value system. Internal motivation is the driving force that comes from inside us, and causes us to do a good job because we feel good about ourselves when we accomplish something. When we are internally motivated, we operate according to our own values.

Understanding your needs, the hierarchy of needs will help to understand what motivates a particular individual. We all possess needs that are psychological in nature, the need for food, sleep, sex, safety needs driven by the need for protection from bodily harm, and security from threat. Self-esteem needs are driven by a sense for self respect, sense of achievement, love and belonging, which included the need for acceptance, affection, approval, and self actualizing needs which in turn includes the need for autonomy, uniqueness, aliveness, beauty, and justice.

Ideally, children enter into a sport to build competence, be with their friends, discover a passion for the sport, and have fun. When these values conflict with those of a more competitive environment where the emphasis is placed on beating an opponent, burnout and turnover are the natural consequences. Interestingly, the same holds true for the business world. Human beings respond well to positive motivation. We recoil and withdraw under the thumb of negativity. We all respond differently to our environments and everyone is has different degrees of motivation that we aspire to. Motivation is connected to success and achievement. Lack of motivation is also connect...

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...he lottery, but then sabotaging behavior leads the person back into their comfort zone by depleting the wins with bad decisions. We rarely move forth to see the plan through. Any time we try to make changes in our lives, it stirs up resistances inside of us, because we are attempting to move beyond our safe zone.

Taking one step a day towards the goals means success. Having the motivators which help us with our self concepts will put us on the right track and keep us motivated to accomplish any goal that we set. Creating a self image, writing down goals, and acting on the goals are the steps to motivate someone to change their self concept. To answer the question, Can you motivate someone else? It depends on the external motivation and if the person that you’re trying to motivate finds, pleasure, value or interest in the task or goal.