It is not easy to be motivated in general, but even less in times of crisis. Our personal history, our personality, our education or the context in which we evolve play a determining role on the way we react to events but also on our level of motivation.
So let’s take a look at what can help us move forward with the drive to get involved, especially when times are tough.
REGENERATING ONESELF: GET ENERGIZED
Motivation is an expression of our level of vital energy. This energy has been shattered in recent weeks. Worrying about our health, our financial situation, not being able to move around freely or meeting our friends and sometimes our family for an extended period of time, having no visibility about the future … that can make us more vulnerable. We cannot therefore approach the question of motivation without considering our energy.
Managing properly our energy is an essential prerequisite for engaging enthusiastically in life and in our projects. Doing it in a smart way involves implementing a range of means, including:
– A healthy lifestyle: how we breath, eat, move, recover, relax, laugh, recharge makes a big difference at the end… Our five senses also offer us great windows to regenerate, providing us with music, images, smells, physical sensations…
– A healthy mind: the way we deal with situations mentally plays a decisive role in our energy level. It helps us reduce the feeling of being subjected to events, decide and act, sort out what really matters and what is incidental, make the difference between useful and useless thoughts…
– Good management of our emotions: we should learn how to seize the slightest opportunity to bring joy to our life, to see the bright side of things, understand and accept what makes us angry in order to overcome it better…
MEANING AND PLEASURE
In any kind of situation, finding in yourself the energy to be committed implies finding meaning and / or pleasure in what you do. AND / OR because the two are not always combined…
It is sometimes the meaning that sets us in motion and justifies the efforts required. When the issue is aligned with our values, taking action and even surpassing oneself becomes natural.
Pleasure also naturally drives us to move forward. The mere prospect of having fun or living an exhilarating experience awakens treasures of motivation.
And when meaning and pleasure combine, then motivation can reach new heights! The usual limits are then old memories, pushed back by new highly stimulating perspectives. It is in this ultimate association that the state of « Flow », also called « the optimal experience », most commonly occurs. Theorized by the Hungarian psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, it generates both well-being and performance and results in a state of total absorption by the activity we practice. This state of grace, to which we all aspire, results from several factors among which the right definition of the objectives that we set for ourselves, neither reductive nor inaccessible …
FOR A LONGLASTING MOTIVATION: THE IMPORTANCE OF AUTONOMY
Variable motivation can be complicated to manage emotionally. In particular because it emphasizes the periods of lack which we will then seek to compensate for. Therefore, the question is not only to become motivated but to stay motivated!
It is our capacity for autonomy that will allow us to regain motivation and maintain it. In other words, not our dependence on external circumstances or on other people, but our ability to self-motivate. It can only be reached through intrinsic motivation (also called autotelic, i.e. motivation containing its own purpose), and not extrinsic, linked to external stimuli, which is neither transcendent nor lasting.
Self-motivation thus requires a certain maturity to no longer expect from others what they cannot always give us. In addition, this is what a manager should aspire to cultivate within his team so that everyone takes charge and grows in their autonomy. It is also a way to develop not only leadership at all levels but also the happiness of one’s employees.