MOTIVATION THEORY
Needs cause motivation. Deep-rooted desires for esteem, affection, belonging, achievement, self-actualization, power, and control motivate us to push for what we want and need in our lives.
It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.
There are at least five sets of goals, which we may call basic needs. These are briefly physiological, safety, love, self-esteem, and self-actualization.
In addition, we are motivated by the desire to achieve or maintain the various conditions upon which these basic satisfactions rest and by certain more intellectual desires. If we do not fully understand and visualise these basic human needs then motivation is not possible.
These basic goals are related to each other, being arranged in a hierarchy of pre-potency. This means that the most prepotent goal will monopolize consciousness and will tend of itself to organize the recruitment of the various capacities of the organism. The less prepotent needs are minimized, even forgotten or denied. But when a need is fairly well satisfied, the next prepotent ('higher') need emerges, in turn to dominate the conscious life and to serve as the centre of organization of behaviour, since gratified needs are not active motivators.
All human beings are understood to be either motivated, unmotivated or ready to be motivated. These depend on biological, cultural and situational aspects.
Thus man is a perpetually wanting animal. Ordinarily the satisfaction of these wants is ‘Not altogether mutually exclusive, but only tends to be.’ The average member of our society is most often partially satisfied and partially unsatisfied in all of his wants. The hierarchy principle is usually empirically observed in terms of increasing percentages of non-satisfaction as we go up the hierarchy. Reversals of the average order of the hierarchy are sometimes observed. We all have appetite or hunger drive and that is a starting point for our motivation. We want recognition, attention, importance and appreciation but we need to work for them and do something.
I was bored flying from Brisbane to Nadi so I decided to open my newspaper and read about what was happening in the world. As I continued to read, it seemed that everywhere I looked there were stories of injustice, pain, suffering, and people losing hope.
Finally, fuelled by my tired, irritable state, I became overcome with compassion and frustration for the way things were. I got up and went to the bathroom and broke down. With tears streaming down my face, I helplessly looked to the sky and yelled to God.
“God, look at this mess. Look at all this pain and suffering. Look at all this killing and hate. God, how could you let this happen? Why don’t you do something?”
Just then, a quiet stillness pacified my heart. A feeling of peace I won’t ever forget engulfed my body.
And, as I looked into my own eyes in the mirror, the answer to my own question came back to me…
“Stop asking God to do something. God already did something, he gave you life. Now YOU do something!”
Also it has been observed that an individual may permanently lose the higher wants in the hierarchy under special conditions. There are not only ordinarily multiple motivations for usual behaviour, but in addition many determinants other than motives.
Any thwarting or possibility of thwarting of these basic human goals, or danger to the defences which protect them, or to the conditions upon which they rest, is considered to be a psychological threat. With a few exceptions, all psychopathology may be partially traced to such threats.
A basically thwarted person may actually be defined as a 'sick' person, if we wish or an unmotivated being.
It is such basic threats which bring about the general emergency reactions and desire not to seek inspiration or motivation.
The stronger the intellectual desire to achieve better things in life and at work makes a person truly inspired and motivation follows.
Hence, I contend that there is an urgent need in our increasingly competitive world to motivate the unmotivated. Let us all do something.
There are six reasons anyone does anything: Love. Faith. Greed. Boredom. Fear and Revenge.
Leadership is all about caring, daring and sharing!
Caring for people, Daring to Act fearlessly,& Sharing the success with all.