Today I want to talk to you about motivation and why we do what we do.
Now, I am not a morning person, so for me, I know that to get my day started right I have to take a good shower. It wakes me up and energizes me.
So does motivation.
Motivation wakes up our mind and gets us going.
You know how your stomach growls when you are hungry, wouldn’t it be great if our minds growled at us the way our stomach does, to tell us when we are slowing down and starting to slip.
To tell us when we are losing motivation.
We know that motivation can be external or internal, and the two most well-known forms of motivation are the carrot and the stick, both external.
But the most powerful motivation is less obvious, and it is internal, specifically growth, personal growth.
For many of us, when we are employees, our motivation is a paycheck, our motivation is our family because we have bills to pay, our motivation is our boss, because we have expectations, this is pretty much how most of us operate our lives right.
When you start out, you’re in school, you’re expected to perform to your teachers’ expectations, you’re expected to perform to your parents’ expectations, you have all types of expectations throughout your schooling where you’re expected to perform for other people, so it’s really ingrained in us to perform to the expectations that other people set for us.
We’re really trained in this mindset of taking actions and doing things that are expected of us by other people who are in a higher rank or higher position of authority, like a parent, a teacher, a coach or a boss.
Whatever the situation, there’s often a highly influential outside force, some external force, some person that is setting expectations or guiding us on the journey that we are on, and we are trying to perform to achieve those expectations.
And the initial motivational factor that most people experience is fear.
Fear is a big stick and can be a huge motivator.
When I started my first professional job after college, I was an entry level product engineer, and in the beginning, I was really bad at my job.
I had a mechanical engineering degree, but I had no idea what I was doing,
I was lost, I didn’t know who to talk to, I didn’t know how to find answers and overall, I didn’t know what I was doing.
But I showed up because I was scared of losing my job.
Even when I didn’t feel good, when I made a mistake or missed a deadline, I showed up,
Because the fear of losing my job was so high that it overcame everything else.
Well really, it was a fear of losing the money, right?
Not so much a fear of losing the job; the job I could take it or leave it, but the money I needed.
And most people in our society live in this fear.
They go to work for a paycheck because they are scared that if they don’t go to work, they won’t have a job and won’t get weekly money.
So, fear is a powerful motivator. But it wears off, it fades.
Just like you can only beat a dog with a stick for so long before he gets used to it, you can only threaten an employee’s job so many times until he becomes numb to the threat, you have to find a better way.
So then there’s the carrot.
You hang the carrot out in front of the donkey, and he takes a step.
He gets close, so he takes another step.
Hopefully he continues to take steps, but at some point, the donkey has to get the carrot, or he will eventually give up.
When he finally gets the carrot, maybe that’s enough for him,
Maybe he doesn’t want anymore. What if he is satisfied for the moment?
How do you keep him moving forward once he gets the reward?
Unfortunately, incentives wear off just like pain.
Then you have personal growth.
How do you become the best? How do you grow?
You have to work on yourself – you have to work on your head and your heart.
You can work on getting better at your job with professional training – working on business skills, industry knowledge, reading or watching the blogs at Spray Foam Advisor, and other sources of industry training that focus on knowledge and skills.
Whether you are a helper, the CEO or someone in between, there is a lot of information available to help you get better at your job, you just have to seek it out and put it into action.
But maybe more important than professional training, is personal development.
Working on yourself – your mindset, your thought process, your attitude, your desire, your leadership.
Because there is no status quo, you are either getting better or getting worse, you are either going forward or going backward, there is no status quo.
You see it in nature, plants they either flourish or they wither and die, right.
So, you have to work on yourself and create internal systems to help your employees improve their own knowledge, skills and personal development. These are the primary paths to motivation, external motivation from the carrot and the stick, and internal motivation through personal development, creating a strong sense of self and desire to be successful.
