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Towards and Away From Motivation


Do you tend to procrastinate? Have you asked yourself why?

Motivation causes us to move from one state to another. That means we want to progress from the present state to the ideal future state. To bridge the gap in-between those states requires action. However, not all ideal future states were realized. You might experience that as you progress toward that future state, which is your goal, you began to procrastinate.

The problem lies in what motivates us. There are two kinds of motivation. The first one is called away from motivation. To understand this, think of an emergency situation where you have to respond immediately. Surely, you will move really fast because it is an emergency. That is the away motivation. There is an idea in your mind, that propels you to action. It will make us move really fast. One example is when you touch a hot stove, unconsciously you move away very quickly.


Now let's discuss the towards motivation. This is different from the first one. The towards motivation is focused on the future state while the away from motivation is focused on the current state. On the away from motivation, the current state is pushing you. While on towards motivation the ideal future state is pulling you.


For example, you want to have more money. Ask yourself why? If your answer is I don't want to be poor, then that is away from motivation. If in case your answer is I want to buy a big house with five bedrooms, that is towards motivation. That may sound not have much difference. Right? But the problem with away from motivation is that once you start moving away from the present state, you tend to lose energy to accomplish the goal because you become less motivated. In our example, if you want more money because you don't want to be poor, once you started earning more money you feel that you become less poor so you become less motivated. If that happened you may relax with your goal and start spending more. Now the cycle of earning more and spending more will start to happen.


Although away from motivation is more energetic, towards motivation is better in the long run. On towards motivation, your energy increases as you get closer to the desired state.


One problem however is that away from motivation can be disguised as towards motivation. Going back to the example, you want to be rich because you want a big house. That sounds towards motivation, but if you will be asked why do you want a big house? If, for example, the answer is because I don't want our old house anymore or I'm tired of paying rent, then we can see how the away from motivation is disguised as towards motivation.


We need to ask ourselves what drives us. Am I doing this because I'm obliged? Is it because I don't have other choices? That is away from motivation. However, if your reason is that I'm doing this because I love doing this. I'm doing this because I enjoy doing this, then this is towards motivation.


Towards motivation is usually tied up on high-level values, such as love, peace, and patience. While away from motivation is usually tied up on needs, most of the time on basic needs which can be found on the base of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.


Unless we embrace the towards motivation, unless we go beyond basic needs, unless we are motivated by high-level values, it will be difficult to find success or at least contentment with what we are doing.

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You can also send an e-mail to kbjayme@gmail.com

Author: Kristian B. Jayme, mIGNLP is a Certified NLP Practitioner by the International Guild of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. He is also a Certified NLP Master Practitioner by The Academy of Modern, Applied Psychology.
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