Motivation is the main driving force behind any undertaking. What is its nature, can it be put to the service of one’s own goals, and how can one manage it? About this on the example of three stories.
Over the past year, Ali Shoshak lost eight large X and one L. They left his life, more precisely, from the labels on his clothes. For more than ten years, he weighed 180 kg. He is 36, he is a swarthy bearded man with a warm look. He often hears compliments, but the previous ten years he could not boast of this.
In Ali’s life, it happened more than once that he ate 4 large shawarmas a day, had a bite of pizza, and drank 7 liters of carbonated drinks every day. This is not to say that he has not made attempts to lose weight before: Low Carb, SlimFast, Fit + Feelgood – he tortured himself with a dozen different diets. But after a few weeks, he slipped back into the old set of dishes. During the last battle, he dropped 15,4 kg in the first week.
He achieved such success thanks to the motivation that spurred him on at the right time and did not leave him later. Now he says: “In life, you need to come to the point where you understand: if you don’t help yourself, no one can help you.”
Motivation gives you the energy to keep going. She is the spark that ignites us when we think, “Rise or stay down, give up or hold on?” Motivation is the force that brings us closer to the goal. If it is strong, then it is capable of making a university graduate out of an illiterate person.
Competition spurs one and leads to maximum results, the other is paralyzed by such pressure
Behind the desire to understand the secret of motivation lies the hope of better control of one’s own behavior and the behavior of others. However, it is not so easy. It’s not just educators, parents, politicians, marriage counselors, tamers, leaders, and psychologists who know this.
One competition spurs and leads to maximum results, the other is paralyzed by such pressure. When one is ready to give his life for a goal, the other is apathetic and not interested in anything. Sometimes motivation comes out of nowhere and disappears when you need it most. It does not matter if you want to lose 85 kg or only 5.
Motivation cannot be seen, only its results or their absence. The question “What motivates a person and other living beings to function?” has long haunted scientists and philosophers.
Many publish articles and tutorials that become bestsellers. There are lectures, trainings, video tutorials. Thousands of websites dedicated to motivation are full of quotes calling for action. They say that even from the stones lying on the path, something beautiful can be built.
To better understand the mechanisms of motivation and use its power for ourselves and others, consider three areas of life in which people test their willpower. Typical topics for good undertakings, where they most often fail: lose weight, go in for sports, learn a foreign language.
Lose weight
When Ali was 14, he started playing American football. He trained five times a week, played in the Bundesliga for six years, and in 1998, together with the national team, became the European champion. In those years, he weighed 90 kg (serious sports require serious weight). At 23, he ended his sports career and put on weight.
“I’m not used to motivating myself, this function has always been performed by the team,” says Ali. “I didn’t know what it was like to pick yourself up and go swimming or running.” He worked in the kitchen of a Texmex restaurant, moved very little, and smoked a pack of cigarettes a day.
At some point, he stopped looking in the mirror while brushing his teeth. I bought clothes on the Internet, since not a single store offers the size 8XL. Today Ali speaks of the “second birth”. He does not pronounce the word “diet”, but says “restructuring of life.”
Researchers have identified various motives that drive our behavior. Some of them lie in the field of biology, such as hunger or thirst, fatigue or pain. These basic instincts drive you to do the things necessary to keep your body alive and healthy.
Others, such as curiosity or revenge, develop more out of social experience and needs, i.e. partly learned (like a lesson).
A well-known theory about motivation is the “big three” of psychologist David McClelland. In the early 60s, he identified three dominant human needs: success, power, and belonging. McClelland also proved that the body responds positively to their satisfaction: the concentration of immunoglobulin, the protective substance of the immune system, increases in saliva, and dopamine is intensely released into the brain, which causes good health.
He divided different motivations into two categories: extrinsic – due to external circumstances (from the Latin “extrensicus” – from the outside), in which a person does something to receive a reward.
And intrinsic motivation arising from our inner world, for example, because we get pleasure from something.
You can be glad for Ali’s endurance. But most people fail even when they want to lose only 3 or 5 kg. Most often, it’s not even about changing your whole life. It is enough, for example, to reduce the consumption of sugar. Or eat more vegetables. How can you deal with it if you won’t even get one euro for it?
Professor of Psychology Gabriele Oettingen has been researching and teaching the topic of motivation for over 20 years at both Hamburg University and New York University. In one experiment with 23 overweight women, she explored what thoughts make dieting successful.
All of these women signed up for a diet program. Before starting it, Ettingen asked them how much they would like to lose and what their chances of success are.
She then divided the participants into two groups and asked them to imagine the following scenarios: One group had to imagine that they had successfully completed the program. The other must have thought she could not resist the temptation.
It is not enough to imagine achieving a goal, as advocates of positive thinking preach. In order for a dream to become a reality, you need to really look at things.
Result: The group members with especially positive fantasies, who imagined how thin they would become and how easy it would be to give up sweets, lost 12 kg less than those who did not think of themselves in a positive way.
Obviously, it is not enough to imagine the achievement of the goal, as advocates of positive thinking preach. In order for the dream to become a reality, you need to really look at things.
therefore along with the goal and the positive feelings that you will experience in case of success, you must also remember about obstacles and traps, recommends Öttingen. She calls this technique “mental contrasting.”
Another technique is the established routine: in everyday life, a person habitually does many things in between times, for example, brushing his teeth or buckling in a car. Anyone who manages to turn something good into an established habit, such as not adding sugar to coffee or eating an apple in the afternoon instead of a muffin, does not need to gather strength every time.
But up to this point, it will take a lot of endurance and a lot of repetition from day to day. It’s great to have someone to support and encourage you in your endeavor, but the unfortunate truth is that you’re always alone at the crucial moment.
“But people can learn mental strategies to find the power within themselves to motivate,” says Oettingen.
In Rocky, Sylvester Stallone plays a poor, unknown Philadelphia boxer who ends up defeating the reigning world champion and winning a woman’s love. There is a scene there: it’s four in the morning, the alarm clock rings, the hero gets up, he has to train. However, he doesn’t get up right away.
For eight seconds, Rocky continues to sit on the edge of the bed. He must motivate himself to go outside at minus two and run, realizing that he has a minimal chance of success. Eight seconds later, he still gets up, drinks a cocktail of five raw eggs and runs out into the street.
Workout
Stefan is a 25-year-old bodybuilder with a large G and J on his workout bag, which stands for Gym-Junkie. Stefan has been working on his body for 8 years now. To do this, he goes every day to a fitness club in the industrial area.
He needs to climb 52 steps until he is in front of a wall of mirrors. And he goes this way, whether he is tired, whether he worked until XNUMX a.m. or is sick and can only do endurance cardio.
“I don’t like cardio,” he says. “But I can get over it, because then I ask myself: what is your long-term goal? What do you want more?
The goal of avoiding something unpleasant is contrasted with the goal of having a well-sculpted body with lots of muscle and no fat. It is not necessary to share Stefan’s ideals, but it can be stated that he is a master of self-motivation.
You say to yourself: when I finish my work, I will go straight to the pool. After a while, this “if-then” sequence will become an established habit.
A survey of the fitness club chain, of which he is one of the 1,4 million members, showed the following result: only one percent of clients attend training daily. More than half train no more than twice a week. This is what this business is built on. If all members wanted to practice at the same time, there would be queues in front of each branch.
Most people are far from remembering the seven workouts a week, they can’t even manage to take the stairs instead of the elevator on their way to the office. Or start running at least once a week. Or attending a yoga class you signed up for a few months ago. The excuse that something constantly interferes with this is too primitive.
Psychologist Walter Michel recommends that such people make an if/when-then plan for themselves. You say to yourself: when I finish my work, I will go straight to the pool. Or: if I wake up broken in the morning, then I will put on my running shoes. After a while, this “if-then” sequence will become an established habit.
If you have mastered this, then you have outsmarted the limbic system in the brain (psychologists call this the “hot system”). She is responsible for appetite, desire or fear. It is the hot system that is “to blame” for the fact that we do not keep our promises to ourselves to start running or go on a diet.
The threshold at which we decide on some kind of action is different for everyone: for someone it is decided that he will go in for sports as soon as he put sports shoes in his bag, others cross their Rubicon as soon as they get on the treadmill
Its opposite is the “cold system”: thanks to it, we are able to weigh the advantages and disadvantages, to make plans. Psychologist Jens Kleinert believes that the more precisely we formulate goals, the better.
“This week on Tuesday and Thursday I will cycle to and from work” is more effective than “this week I will move more”. Or, “I will forego dessert during lunch in the cafeteria” will help more than “I will eat less sweets in the future.”
This is the so-called motivational-psychological Rubicon model. Scientists named it after a small river near the city of Ravenna in Italy. One day Caesar crossed it with his armed troops, heading south.
It was an irreversible transition and a declaration of war against the Roman Senate. Named after this river, the model says that everyone who pursues a goal goes through four phases: weighing, planning, acting, and evaluating. Once you have decided on an action during the weighing phase, there is no turning back, you take that action.
The Rubicon, the threshold at which we decide on some kind of action, is different for everyone: for someone it is decided that he will go in for sports as soon as he put sports shoes in his bag, others cross their Rubicon when they get on the treadmill or left the dining room, refusing dessert. Anyone who wants to learn how to motivate themselves needs to find their inner Rubicon.
Learn a foreign language
Nearly 2 million people in Germany enroll in foreign language courses every year. Thomas Müller from Munich is one of them. He is 47 and has been learning Indonesian for 7 years. Let’s face it, Muller’s motivation was love.
He met his current wife in a resort town in southern Bali. But she did not speak German, and very little English either. And Müller was a tourist who, when ordering at a restaurant, pointed to colorful pictures on the menu.
He bought dictionaries and programs for learning languages, signed up for a course. Since then, every Thursday from half past seven to nine in the evening he has been learning an unfamiliar language.
Whoever learns languages is connected with love, he can consider himself lucky. In this case, motivation is related to emotions. There is hardly anything better for motivation than the desire to better understand a partner or the opportunity to communicate with friends and relatives. But no one will start a relationship for the sake of learning a foreign language.
How can 99% of the unloved who just want to improve their English or learn Italian motivate themselves? Philologists and psychologists have been discussing this topic for many decades. And this is not only about academic curiosity, but also about the big money that people pay for foreign language classes.
The good news is that the lack of talent for languages (politically correct is called language ability) can be compensated for by high motivation, regular practice and diligence. But what is the best way to motivate yourself or students?
We study a foreign language for two reasons – to better understand people of a different culture or to benefit – to negotiate with foreign partners, to get a job abroad
In the early 70s, Canadian psychologist Robert Gardner developed a theory that adds two more motivations to the many different motivations. A foreign language learner, Gardner said, is motivated either “instrumentally” or “integratively.”
Integrative motivation means: you learn a foreign language because you are interested in the language itself and the culture. You would like to better understand the people of this culture, or maybe become part of it, integrate into it.
Conversely, those who are “instrumentally motivated” learn the language because it can be useful – you can negotiate with foreign business partners or get a job abroad, and while spending a vacation in another country, you can communicate freely with local residents.
Philologists have criticized Gardner’s theory. Many people are motivated both instrumentally and integratively, they cannot be clearly separated from each other.
The new guru in foreign language studies is the Hungarian psycholinguist Zoltan Dörni. Motivation is a dynamic process. It is not static, but mobile. With failures, it decreases, and during experiences of success it strengthens, for example, when, thanks to the learned language, you better navigate abroad or on the Internet.
High self-confidence promotes intrinsic motivation. A good teacher develops extrinsic motivation. But it also depends on the individual and the environment, and cannot be generalized.
There is no general recipe. But the bottom line is: Become an explorer of your motivation. Imagine that you can already speak the language you want. How do you see yourself at this moment? Such mental pictures are stimulating, says Zoltan Derni. He developed, which you can use to study yourself (for now it is only available in English).
Motivation is a dynamic process. It is not static, but mobile. With failures, it decreases, and during experiences of success it strengthens.
Linguist Claudia Riemer, who interviewed more than a thousand German learners in 20 countries, advises creating experiences of success for yourself. Best of all – while communicating with native speakers. Language institutes provide language partners for this.
But even “deciphering” a web page or ordering a dish from an Italian in Italian are those small steps that motivate.
“That’s how the language becomes part of your life,” says Riemer, speaking of a group of sixth graders who were asked, after a year and a half of English classes, to interview foreigners arriving at the airport. For the children, this was a key experience.
And our hero Müller, meanwhile, lives with his Balinese wife in Munich. At home he cannot speak Indonesian because his wife wants to improve her German. Since then, Muller’s motivation has declined. But when he travels to Bali with his wife, he can tell her mother which dish he likes.
Stefan is now going through the next diet stage. When he returns home after a workout around midnight, he pre-prepares his own meals for the next day. He eats potato and chicken every day or salad with rice waffles.
Ali now weighs 96 kg, he has maintained the weight for several months. He has a plan for the week in which he writes down what he can eat on which day and how much he needs to exercise. He quit his job at a restaurant and is now a certified fitness trainer. He wants to have cubes on his stomach in nine months. It looks like he can handle it.