The Motivation that Causes Burnout
Burnout often manifests as a paradoxical lack of motivation — a mix of desire and a simultaneous sense of hitting a wall between that desire and the motivation required for action. Not all motivation is equal. I regularly make the difference between superficial and deep motivation. The difference is not straightforward to all but crucial. Read the full article…
Culture’s Motivation
Culture is a complex set of ‘living patterns’ that unifies/binds a group of people. This group can be an entire society or any concrete organization. Being motivational means that it has its own volition ― a challenging situation. Please read first: Motivation at the Center of Life Culture ― motivation ― life? Several insightful philosophers Read the full article…
Motivation at the Center of Life
Motivation is life. Life is motivation. More than a philosophical nicety, this is relevant to everyone, everywhere, always. Please see beyond the philosophy and into the crucial pragmatic importance. From the start of life Life starts where some structure (such as the precursor of a proto-bacterium) tries to consolidate itself. To do so, this structure Read the full article…
What People Want or Need
Surface-level wanting is frequently very different from deeper-level needing ― even fundamentally different. This hampers inner growth and can lead to burnout and depression. Fundamentally With some openness, everybody can feel that in-depth wishes and desires somewhat differ from what shows at first sight. For instance, attaining a slightly deeper level during coaching may already Read the full article…
Deep Motivational Check-Up
This is – in the idea stage – a yearly check-up (small concrete trajectory of one by default or one + five coaching sessions) that can, in principle, be interesting for every employee. It is a win for everyone: employee, employer, and broad society. A Deep Motivational Check-Up (DMC) aims to let the coached person Read the full article…
Can Motivation be Purely Conscious?
Motivation as we know it is present in a system (you, me) that is partly conscious, partly non-conscious. Thus, the question is much more difficult than it appears at first sight. Nevertheless, towards future A.I., it will need to be solved. Purely conscious? This is also purely (even though possibly partly fuzzy) conceptual. Motivation would Read the full article…
Deep Motivation – Read&Do
This is the foreword to my book ‘Deep Motivation’ that you can find on Amazon. A conceptual not-knowing As a matter of fact, motivation stands prior to any human action. Yet in academia, where leaders are taught how to motivate their people, there is an acknowledged ignorance. The leaders themselves also frequently don’t know how Read the full article…
28. Motivating Crowds in Corona Times
September 26, 2020 Daily Total Cases worldwide 318,804 32,753,099 Deaths worldwide 5,818 992,978 A crowd is like an organism composed of organisms. If treated as a mechanism, it will not behave optimally, especially over time, especially concerning much-needed motivation. ►►►This is already crucial and will become even more important over the next six months.◄◄◄ Read the full article…
21. How to Make Someone Take His Vaccination – The Friendly Way
A little story of long ago At 23 years of age, I went to Brazil for a few months, to do medical work in a favela (shantytown) of Salvador Da Bahia. Ow, impressionable youth! As part of my documentation, I read a book about medics in the tropics. One story in this book was meant Read the full article…
Why and How to Wear a Face Mask
There is a difference between motivation and coercion, even when using scientific arguments. If one wants people – including oneself – to wear and continue wearing face masks, one needs to motivate them. This is: to provide them with the means by which they can motivate themselves. There is no other way. Besides, it’s an Read the full article…
Difference between Motivation and Manipulation
Motivation originates in the heart of the motivated. All the rest is manipulation. The human psyche is not a box of building blocks. On the contrary. It is a hugely complex ‘organ’ that is, in addition, constantly moving. We are only partly aware of this. That explains why it sometimes resembles a box of building Read the full article…
Delayed Gratification, No Frustration
The ability to delay gratification is important in any well-functioning society. Can it be fostered with little frustration? Western culture evolves towards a cult of ‘immediate gratification.’ Is this healthy? Marshmallow In a 1960s experiment at Stanford, a number of kids got one marshmallow and could get three if the child wouldn’t eat the one Read the full article…
Moral Motivation
If morality doesn’t lead to action, then what’s the use? Let good people do good things. How? I guess the doing should not be the focus of an additional endeavor. It should be part and parcel of the moral communication itself. For instance, telling a child what is moral behavior, should deeply touch the child Read the full article…
Beyond ‘Carrot and Stick’
Carrot and stick have a long history. Going beyond, one can foresee a future based on a more realistic view on human being. Reward and punishment are efficient means to make someone comply to rules and authority. So has always been thought and taught. Reality may have been quite more complicated. In the face of Read the full article…
‘Willpower’
And then … there is still place for ‘willpower’. The power of the will to fight against … the will. Different ‘parts’ of yourself apparently want different things. Or without speaking about ‘parts’: apparently there are different, conflicting motivations present within you. You want this and you want that. You want to eat (too much) Read the full article…
Wanting to = Being Able to?
“Where there is a will, there is a way.” “Willpower moves mountains.” “Where autosuggestion and willpower are present together, mountains respectfully move aside.” For example with regard to smoking cessation, using the AURELIS method: “I want to, but I cannot (yet).” is just a gross underestimation of the unconscious power of ‘wanting to’. It would Read the full article…
Inside Values, We Find Pain and Joy
In our values, we find our worth and deepest meaning, our ‘energy’ which is no more than deep motivation. Our values are our morality. Valued gain for pain and source of joy. Inner values lead one to voluntarily accept pain. For instance: the soldier fighting for his country, the mother giving birth, the athlete going Read the full article…
‘Doing Your Best’ is Good Enough
The title of this piece can be seen as a ‘categorical invitation’, an (auto-)suggestion to strive and keep striving and at the same time not ego-wisely strive at all. The goal is to be human. People do not act morally consistent much of the time. An often used example is about a natural disaster striking Read the full article…
When Respect Ends, Manipulation Starts
The border between motivation and manipulation is fuzzy. Yet they are very different in cause, essence and consequence. As I see it: the one big difference between ‘motivation’ and ‘manipulation’ lies in deep human respect. Even if at the outside a specific attitude (motivation? manipulation?) may look pretty much the same, deep respect can bring Read the full article…
Motivational Team-Leading?
Motivational speakers, team-building events… Cheering up the crowd… It can all seem superficial. An open leader looks further. Such ‘energizing’ is not necessarily effective in motivating the workforce. It may even be a de-motivating surrogate out of want for real motivation, construed precisely to ignore the real problems at the workplace. In any case, synthetic Read the full article…
Why Motivation Doesn’t Work… and What Does.
Deep motivation is invitation, no push nor pull. Ancient Greeks talked about ‘willing obedience’. Knowledge about this was deemed to be the quintessential leadership quality. As indeed it is. It’s also the issue that ‘leaders’ have the most difficulty with and questions about. How do I motivate these people who do not want to listen? Read the full article…
Building Consensus at the Level of Deep Motivation
Superficial consensus may create resentment. Deep consensus brings people closer to each other… … as well as to their own true motivation. Building consensus is about finding true motivations. What motivates people may be quite different from what they think to be deeply important to them. Much research points to this fact. For instance, at Read the full article…
Real Goals Point Towards Deepest Motivation.
Goals that really motivate are seldom those that readily come up when asked. Going deep, you may encounter the ones that energize you. There is no motivation but inner motivation. The inner in this phrase is the region deep inside your mind where ‘everything is formless’. If you could go there in your imagination, you Read the full article…
Deepest motivation is an ocean of energy
The more one goes into motivation behind motivation, the more one gets into an area of the human mind that is different from the surface. It’s a bit like diving into the depth of an ocean. At the surface, one can get the impression that there is nothing but surface. Getting deeper, truth reveals itself. Read the full article…
There are no extrinsic or intrinsic motivations. There are inner motivations.
There is a well-known difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. The latter is seen as being much more truly motivating. One more step to inside may be needed though. This is related to ‘subconceptual processing’, being mental processing that happens beneath the level of what can readily be put into concepts. It cannot easily be Read the full article…