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Achieving Your Goals – Negative Motivation VS Positive Motivation

When it comes to motivation, it can be broken down into two categories: negative motivation and positive motivation. Negative motivation is "push" motivation… you are trying to push something you don't like away from you. Positive motivation is "pull" motivation… you are trying to bring something that you DO want closer to you.

Each has an area where, generally speaking, it is more effective. Negative motivation is good for getting you started, for getting that initial movement that is often the hardest part to achieve. It does not, on the other hand, last all that well. Positive motivation is just the ticket for that… positive motivation can be a lifelong thing, but in general is not as great for getting the first sparks together to "light your fire".

Negative Motivation

Negative motivation is very good for getting you moving. It provides a sharp stimulus that is congruent with out instincts… that thing is unpleasant, get away from it. Our instincts don't make a distinction, in this case, between physical unpleasantness and mental unpleasantness… either way, our instinct is just to get away.

This can work very well… if your doctor tells you that you have cancer, and that unless you do what they say you are going to die, that provides some really strong motivation to change your ways and do what they say. The motivation is sharp, strong, and focused… do what you need to (what the doctor tells you) in order to avoid something unpleasant (dying of cancer). Since motivation is linked to action by way of a cost/benefit ratio, you can see that the cost (doing what the doctor tells you) is very low in comparison to the benefit (not dying).

Negative motivation has a very definite weakness, however. It can be quite strong, enough to get you moving when other things wouldn't, but what happens when you take the negative stimulus away? The motivation dries up almost instantly.

In other words, once you feel like you are safe from whatever the unpleasantness was, there is no more motivation from that source, though you may keep up whatever changes you have made out of habit.

Positive Motivation

Positive motivation is generally not quite as good at getting you moving. The natural instinct to avoid unpleasantness is not triggered, thus leaving you without the added boost that brings. Even if there is something you really, REALLY want, unless the path from here to there is pretty obvious, there may be some doubt, some fear, about your ability to achieve that thing, making it harder to get started.

On the other hand, positive motivation doesn't necessarily have a defined end, either. If you lose weight because your doctor tells you that you have to or suffer some really unpleasant problems, then once you lose enough weight, that motivation goes away. If you lose weight because you want to feel more fit and healthy, however, that motivation doesn't really go away. You're still going to want to feel fit and healthy, even after you've achieved your original goals.

Positive motivation gets stronger as you go along. Seeing progress toward your goal, whatever it may be, reinforces your positive motivation at the same time that it weakens your negative motivation… after all, you're getting closer to your thing you want (positive, or "pull" motivation) and farther from the thing you want to avoid (negative, or "push" motivation). Positive motivation can also help you conserve momentum when moving to a new goal after completing your current one.

Summary

The trick of motivating yourself is to know how to combine the two, and which to use when. Negative motivation is good for getting started, which is why many people who speak about reaching your goals will tell you to share your goals and time frames with someone else. This induces the negative motivation of not wanting to look bad in front of that person. That can range from a medium to a very strong negative motivation. At the same time, however, it makes you start framing the way you look at your goal in terms of that negative light. This can lead to you looking for ways to avoid both working on the goal and the person with whom you shared that goal.

That's where positive motivation comes into play. Once negative motivation gets you moving, you can start to see your progress toward your goal, which helps to strengthen your positivel motivation into a force that can support further progress. As you make more progress, and the end point (your goal) becomes clearer, positive motivation becomes even stronger, getting to the point where it can really drive you to the next goal once the current one is achieved… as long as you don't slow down too much. Once you slow down, you may need the kick from negative motivation once again.

So… that's a really simple look at the differences between negative motivation and positive motivation. Do you find that you use one more than the other? Will you change how you attempt to reach new goals after thinking about the difference? Let me know in the comments.

Author

October 10th

Energy, Feed Your Mind, Goals, Motivation, Perseverance, Planning, Polarity

The Most Essential Ingredient Of Success

Peaceful Scene

There are an incredible number of books, articles, videos, and any other kind of media you can imagine selling you "the secret of success". Most of these methods are questionable… after all, if it were easy, then everyone would be successful, and that's clearly not the case. There is one thing, however, that IS critical to success… success in ANY field.

That one thing is awareness. There are many kinds of awareness, but there is one kind that has greater impact on your path to success in anything you attempt. That kind is awareness of self… awareness of how you make choices, how you change your subconscious tendencies, and how that determines how you see the world.

We all face an uncountable number of choices each day. With each choice that comes, you have two levels at which it can be made: subconscious or conscious. The default is subconscious, as you can plainly see if you think about it. You don't consciously choose when (or whether) to breathe, at least not normally. You don't, generally speaking, choose which letters to read in which order. Your subconscious handles all of these types of decisions…. EXCEPT when you become consciously aware of it.

When you read the paragraph above, you may have suddenly become aware of your breathing, and made a choice to hold your breath, or breathe more deeply. If you did decide to do one of those things, then your conscious mind made the decision to take over that choice temporarily from your subconscious. It will shortly pass the choices back to the subconscious as your awareness of your breathing fades.

When you become aware of a choice your conscious mind has the chance to pick the option that best aligns with your conscious goals, rather than your subconscious goals. That means that you have a much better chance of achieving success in the area where you are aware. Your conscious mind has the ability to prioritize goals much better than your subconscious… for instance, your subconscious will seldom, if ever, decide that something is more important than taking care of hunger. Your conscious mind, on the other hand, can see that going to an interview during your lunch break, and thus missing lunch, will satisfy higher priorities, like getting a better job.

Your subconscious mind makes choices based on the history of how your conscious mind has chosen in situations similar to current circumstances. Any time it doesn't have enough related decisions, it passes the choice on to your conscious mind by bringing it to your awareness. It also brings things to your awareness that your conscious mind has taught it are important.

You teach your subconscious about what is important to you by giving it your conscious attention. Whenever you think about something, you are giving it importance "points" in your subconscious. That is, if you think about something in passing one time, it will barely register as important, and your subconscious will only bring things to your awareness concerning it if they are huge, and if it's shortly after the thought. If you are constantly thinking about something, however, your subconscious will interpret that as you telling it that that something is very important, and it will pop even minor things relating to it into your awareness.

Your subconscious is not terribly smart… it's more like a computer. It does what you tell it to do, but can't make intelligent decisions on its own. What that ends up meaning is that it takes not only the content of your thoughts when determining what's important to you, but also the "polarity". That is, if you think about something in a negative way, it will bring things that relate to that thing in a negative way to your attention. If you think about it in a positive way, it will bring things that relate to that thing in a positive way to your attention.

One example of this is finances. When you think about how little money you have, what things you don't have, and how you don't seem to be getting anywhere, that's what you're telling your subconscious is important. That means that it will make you aware of things that relate to (and reflect) how little money you have, what things you don't have, etc. If, on the other hand, what you think about when it comes to your finances is how you can invest time or money to bring added benefit, that is what your subconscious mind will bring into your awareness.

For instance, let's take a situation and look at it from each perspective. Let's say a coworker tells you about his new fishing boat. Someone who looks at what they don't have feels bad, or jealous/envious, that the other guy can afford to buy a boat when they can't. Someone who looks for opportunities, on the other hand, might see it as a chance to make a friend and go fishing with them, or from a more financial side, might offer to buy the fish the coworker catches for a set rate, knowing that he can sell them for more than that.

That's the same situation, the coworker with the new boat, and two completely different ways of seeing it. The same thing happens in other areas, too, like relationships. If you think more about what's wrong with your relationship (or what's wrong with the other person), your subconscious is going to bring more of that to your attention. If, on the other hand, you think about the positive aspects of the relationship, or positive attributes of the other person, your subconscious will make you aware of things related to that. It's pretty obvious what a difference that can make in a relationship.

The good news is that you can intentionally choose to think (or not think) about a specific thing, or in a specific way. That is, you can consciously choose to look at your relationship from a positive perspective, and start teaching your subconscious that THAT is what you want brought to your attention. You can turn your thoughts away from what you lack any time they head that direction, and that will make that of less importance, thus bringing less of your lack to your attention.

By doing this, you are choosing what to be aware of. That means that you make choices in that area consciously, thus also setting "the history of how your conscious mind has chosen in situations similar to current circumstances", and changing how your subconscious handles similar situations in the future when your conscious mind is too busy to deal with it.

You can set the patterns of success consciously, and then your subconscious will automatically reinforce those patterns. You can also set the patterns of failure, and your subconscious will automatically reinforce THOSE patterns. The difference between the two is awareness… when you become aware, you can set the pattern of your choice. That just leaves choosing what success means to you… and focusing your thoughts and awareness on that meaning.

Author

August 27th

Awareness, Energy, Goals, Patterns, Polarity, Relationships, Subconscious

Which One Runs Your Life – Love Or Fear?

Polarity

Steve Pavlina recently wrote an article on Achieving Peak Motivation through use of polarity.

In it, he writes:

                    Love polarization means you adopt the mindset of unconditional love                    for everything that exists.  You center your life around serving the                    highest good of all.  This commitment stems naturally from the decision                    to align yourself with the polarity of unconditional love.  Think of                    this as an outward flow of energy.  Your focus is on giving and on                    making a contribution.

                    Fear polarization means you become unconditionally self-centered,                    driven by greed, power, and lust.  Your commitment is to make your life                    the best it can possibly be, purely for your own self-gratification.                     Think of this as an inward flow of energy.  Your focus is on acquiring                    and absorbing all that life has to offer you.

While I don't disagree with his two types of motivation, I disagree with his labels. I think that what he is really describing is a positive (what he calls love) and negative (what he calls fear) aspect of the love polarity. I think the real love and fear polarities go deeper than that, that they have a more fundamental difference than whether you love yourself most or all people equally.

When you orient yourself toward the love polarity, you look at things from the perspective of wanting to bring certain things INTO your life, whether it be love, money, or something else. You are seeking an inflow of energy, of life, bringing things into yourself. Your focus is on bringing the good things to you.

When you orient yourself toward the fear polarity, on the other hand, you are looking at things from the perspective of wanting to keep something OUT of your life. This can be loneliness, or poverty, or any number of other things. You are expending your energy outward, pushing things away (though you may be doing it by trying to bring certain other things into your life, your focus is on keeping the bad things away).

As Steve says when talking about polarities, love and fear can both be incredibly powerful motivators. If you understand them, and use the power of conscious choice to make one a cornerstone of who you are, it can provide sustained high motivation in a way that little or nothing else can. Choosing the one that conflicts with your natural tendencies (read subconsciously learned tendencies) is one of the most difficult decisions to make stick, but it can still be done, you just have to keep at it.

If you choose the love polarity, you can then choose within that polarity from the two aspects Steve presents. If you choose the fear polarity, though I'm not certain that anyone would ever make that choice consciously, then there are probably similar positive and negative aspects, though I have chosen love, so I can't be certain. Either way, make the choice consciously… don't leave it up to your subconscious, or you may not like the results.

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