Written by: Maya Zack, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Not all motivation is created equal. Motivating yourself to do stuff you know you ‘have to do’ or to keep going at taking action for your business takes a lot of determination and it’s not easy. But it can be done, and the type of motivation driving your actions can make all the difference to your experience. In this article, I’m going to explain the three main types of motivation. There’s no right or wrong here – people are motivated by different things and one is not better than the other. You can also often experience a combination of these.
The key here is to be aware of what’s driving you, and to reflect on whether you can energise yourself even more by bringing in more driving energy to take action around your goals.
So here the 3 types of motivation. I call these your 3 Driving P’s.
The Push Driver.
This is when your motivation is wanting to push something away from you, or you want to push yourself away from something. It’s fear & aversion based.
You want to avoid an experience, feeling or situation. For example, you might want to achieve success with your business because you want to avoid financial lack or being seen as a failure.
Even though this is a ‘negative’ driver, it can actually often be a very high energy force. But since it’s based on fear & avoidance, it can also be filled with stress, anxiety & lack of clear focus – since you’re simply moving away from something but perhaps unsure where you’re actually heading to.
This is unsustainable in a healthy way in the long term. Not saying you won’t succeed at achieving your Push goals, but your journey might be quite a joy-free one, and you might also experience stress-related lower performance & burnout at different points along the way.
The Pull Driver.
This is when what’s motivating you is wanting to pull yourself towards, or pull something towards you. It’s achievement & attachment based.
You have more specific & clear goals that are around getting or having something. For example, you might want to make lots of money so that you can buy your dream home or travel the world. Or maybe you’d like to be seen as a top expert in your field with power & influence.
Surprisingly, even though this is a ‘positive’ driver, this type of motivation can often have fluctuating energy. As there might be less ‘urgency’ to it than Push and it’s less about your ‘safety’ or survival, it can depend on the progress you’re making. You might get discouraged when you’re not moving fast or close enough to your target.
And since you’re focused on & attached to wanting a specific outcome or reward, you might feel a sense of lack along the way. The Passion / Purpose Driver.
This is when your motivation is not pushing anything away or pulling towards, but rather you’re driven by something internal.
It’s based on love, passion, self-expression, meaning... So your work is important to you because maybe you strongly care about a cause, or you simply want to be in a state of joy or creativity.
Your goals may or may not be clear, but they’re focused on creating or expressing rather than avoiding or having, and that kind of giving or sharing is in itself your greatest reward. You do it because it feels good.
This type of motivation can also have fluctuating energy sometimes. Again, you might feel discouraged or frustrated if you don’t find the right way to express yourself or bring out your intentions.
But, in moments of high energy, the action can feel the most effortless. Because you enjoy the process more since it’s the work itself that fulfills you.
So in the long term, and when you have the support of people around you and the environment you’re in, out of the 3 types of motivation, this type is the most easily & healthily sustainable.
This is because the energy source and the importance of taking action are independent of external rewards. So it simply feeds itself.
Ultimately, regardless of which of these 3 types of motivation is driving you, what’s even more important and what will really keep you going is commitment.
These two are not the same. Motivation naturally goes up and down. Its energy moves. Real commitment on the other hand, doesn’t move or fluctuate. It’s there to stay.
And it’s what enables you to allow for the motivation to have its higher & lower energy states while sticking to your path, no matter what.
With commitment, you accept that days of doubt, frustration or discouragement are a natural part of the process.
So understand your driving forces and decide to commit to your goals. You’ll get there.
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Maya Zack, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Maya Zack is an award-winning personal development & mindset coach, peak performance specialist and hypnotherapist.
Based in the UK, she works internationally, mainly with women entrepreneurs as well as with businesses to create high-performance teams that aim to make a positive impact on people’s lives.
She helps business owners, leaders and teams free themselves from mental & emotional habits or blocks that prevent them from experiencing more success or slow it down. She has developed her unique signature 8-week step-by-step mindset makeover programs for aspiring as well as already established entrepreneurs that change thinking & feeling patterns on the deepest, subconscious level, reprogramming their minds for success so that new habits & behaviours quickly become automatic and effortless.
She believes it’s so important to our lives, joy and fulfilment to be doing what we love and daring to go for it regardless of the outcome. So many are held back by fear and she wants to change that. She believes success happens from the inside out alongside mindset mastery, and that as humans with imagination, we have the incredible capacity to become free, powerful creators of ourselves and our lives.
