Discovering My Motivators?
Heads-up! A processing post.
Lately, I have been thinking of ways that people get their motivation. I never seem to respond in the same ways as others do in this area. (As well as other areas, but I am focused on motivation today.) Money has never been a great motivator for me. Awards do not normally motivate me. Compliments are good when they are genuine. I am still learning how to accept those – they can be hard for me.
I do feel a short moment of happiness or “feel good” spurts when I receive any of them.
However, they do not give me that drive to keep pressing on. I watch some people receive a compliment, even ones that everyone knows is not a true compliment, and they blossom into some energy force that gets them going. I do not respond like that. I have also observed people do some amazing feats out of fear, anger, or jealousy. Insecurities are great motivators for some people. I do not relate /connect to those negative emotions the way in which some people do. Emotions force an outburst or shutdown in me. I have been redirecting the negative feelings into productive ways lately. It is still new for me.
I do better with more positives motivators.
If I feel any sort of negative pressure, it can send me into a shutdown. I will step back and not participate. For instance, when I did play sports such as softball, I would refuse to play if the coach yelled at me for any reason. When I am in spin class, my aunt motivates the class (and her other classes like boot camp and TRX) with an attitude that is much like Jillian Michaels. I appreciate that type of motivation. I have seen it work in powerful ways for others. It does not work for me.
I have struggled with motivation my entire life.
Many times my whole motivation was stemmed from my desire to help others. It transpired into an unhealthy “servant hood” type mindset. This made me not see any value in myself unless I was serving others in some capacity. It has been a powerful motivator for me, but I did not have balance of self between the others. It was morphed into, “I must serve others in some way to have existence.” I hope that makes sense.
Since, I have been trying to pull myself into my own identity it seems fitting that I would seek what motivates me.
When it comes to my children I am extremely motivated, I think that does come from a place in me wanting to provide them with as much help and opportunity that I did not have growing up. My primary motivator is to provide them a childhood. As well as giving them all of the tools, I can think of to help them succeed. I am talking specifically about my individual goals at the moment. What can motivate me to achieve my personal goals and desires? I have thought about it (kind of) seriously, off and on for about a year.
I have wrestled with trying to figure out how to achieve the goals that I have wrapped in my head.
Years ago, I took Strengths Finder 2.0, during my many quests to try to understand myself. My strengths were input, achiever, learner, intellection, connectedness in that order highest ranking to lowest. Some of the outcome surprised me because at that time I considered myself to be of low intellect, solely based on how I did not do well in school. I knew that I was an achiever, but I kept it in the context of physical/work related achievements. I knew that I loved to learn and that I normally knew more about my topics of interest than others did. I did not realize that my connectedness could be considered a strength.
I had (Still trying to break out of it.) black-and-white thinking when it came me.
I knew that I was intelligent, but I had separated being of intelligence into another category. It is a little hard to explain, bottom line was I did not feel that I was allowed to learn certain topics of interest because I had been made to feel like I was stupid in school for asking so many questions. I now understand that one of my motivators is “curiosity” when it was continually squelched throughout my life I gave up in some areas – a little bit. Obviously, not all together. I learned to place my curiousness into “safe” filters where I felt as though I was allowed to be curious. This is a faulty belief that runs on both sides of my family. I am not going to go into that though.
I did not understand my strengths or how they motivated me.
It has been a hard task to filter the voices that I have heard all of my life. Without reassurance, the proper tools to help me learn, or build into my strengths, I followed a line of thinking that my strengths had no value because they did not look the same as others. Had I been surrounded with people who understood, or even a couple of people who saw my strengths without manipulating them, I may have been able to understand that it was ok to be different. I may have understood that my strengths were good and had value. (I am not really sure if I am explaining myself very well. I hope others understand and can relate in some ways to what I am sharing here.)
I do know that many people share similar strengths as myself, AND that motivates me!
I cannot explain why. I just love to learn from others. I especially, enjoy learning from people’s strengths that I relate to. It helps me gain inspiration in other ways. It helps me connect to myself, in turn that helps me see and appreciate the strengths in others that I do not have.
I also took this test back in 2009 Jung Typology Test™ here were my results.
Humanmetrics Jung Typology Test™
Your Type
INTJ
Introvert(44%) Intuitive(38%) Thinking(25%) Judging(44%)
You are:
- moderately expressed introvert
- moderately expressed intuitive personality
- slightly expressed thinking personality
- moderately expressed judging personality
My hope was to help understand myself more.
However, I have taken so many of these types of test for workplaces that I pretty much knew the outcome. Yet, my feelings had not changed much – I have felt disconnected from myself even after reading ALL about my personality type and strengths/weaknesses. I am happy to announce that this is slowly changing. I do enjoy taking these types of test though, so I took the test again to see if the outcome would change at all. I have gained more understanding about myself, so I wondered if anything had changed. There was not much change other than; I think I may trust myself a bit more. Here are the results.
Humanmetrics Jung Typology Test™
Your Type
ISTJ
Introvert(44%) Sensing(25%) Thinking(25%) Judging(44%)
You are:
- You have moderate preference of Introversion over Extraversion (44%)
- You have moderate preference of Sensing over Intuition (25%)
- You have moderate preference of Thinking over Feeling (25%)
- You have moderate preference of Judging over Perceiving (44%)
I feel it is good for me to reevaluate these things in light of my new perspective about myself. (Still learning)
This is what changed my intuition went to sensing.
N – Intuition preferred to sensing: INTJs tend to be more abstract than concrete. They focus their attention on the big picture rather than the details and on future possibilities rather than immediate realities.[9]
S – Sensing preferred to intuition: ISTJs tend to be more concrete than abstract. They focus their attention on the details rather than the big picture, and on immediate realities rather than future possibilities.[7]
I am learning to see my strengths as positives things about me.
I can read about them with new eyes and learn how to use them properly while shedding negative associations. If negative associations arise, I have a better understanding how to handle them in a positive way – redirect my thinking. This is another round of self-actualization for me. I am getting “in tune” with how my brain works, why it does what it does, and accept it as good. My motivator here is for myself, but it is also for my kids. I know that with Daniel he may have similar struggles in processing things as I have had. I also see it in Ariel and Joshua in some ways. They have different ways of being motivated as well. I want to help them understand their motivators to understand the pros and cons about them.
My hope is to be able to help them when/if they begin to have struggles with identifying with self in anyway.
Since, I wanted to understand motivation I went on a search. I will only share a few things below. I understand it. I understand that I can be a great motivator for others. I have the ability to get people excited about their goals. I am good at that with others. I did make a good manager as long as I could have my focus directed toward work and not on the other social aspects of the jobs. (Some places I felt as though I was in a live Soap Opera!) I have not understood why I can build into others, see what motivates them, and use it to help them achieve success, but I have not been able to do that in certain areas of my life.
More specifically, areas of my life in that are my desires.
I have been successful and achieved things that I am proud of, but I cannot tell you what motivated me to do it. Half the time I really did not care if it turned out to be successful or not. Somehow, I have managed to stay motivated to write this blog for several years. I continued on my poetry and short story blog too.
I suppose I could say writing and creativity motivate me.
I feel good about the things I produce on them. I enjoy it. It makes me feel like a whole person, much more than anything else in my life. They help me to evaluate my way of thinking. I am motivated to do better as a person and with being creative. Motivated by, mental change? I do have great motivation in learning new things, being creative, and applying what I have learned.
Learning about mindfulness, along with other tools to help with negativity/anxieties has definitely motivated me to keep writing.
I have seen tangible change in my life, how I see my world, and my mental state because of that. It has helped with my self-esteem. (Work in progress.) Through these last few years, I have allowed myself to share more of my personal interests in science, literature, numbers, spirituality, philosophy, etc… I have let bits of my inner world out, but not with many people in my physical world. It has been virtually. I think this has given me the motivation to share more in the physical.
I am working on that.
Other people sharing their stories motivate me. I gain such inspiration from others and it motivates me to be creative. It motivates me to challenge my worldview. It gets me excited when I encounter new people with different backgrounds than me. I am motivated by sharing and relating. I am motivated by connecting people, places, things, history, ideas, and interests. (Just to name a few.) I knew this, but for some reason I felt that I was wrong. I felt that I should be motivated by what others are motivated by and if I am not then, something is not right with me.
The more I went on this mind adventure, the more I wanted to understand more of myself in this area.
I have mentioned it before, but will add it again for any new readers, I share many resources. I collect information and what I share comes from my information gathering. I do have more things that I read and watched, but I believe my information downloads can be a bit much for others. 
I like to gather a lot of input, process, filter it through my own thinking, and apply what I learn based on my perspective at the time that helps me. This is always subject to change based on new information. That is why many times I do not share my opinions about certain topics or resources – it takes me a long time to process and get settled.
Question of The Day: What is your primary motivator?
Motivation: The Why’s of Behavior
Psychological Dualism: Intrinsic-Extrinsic Motivation
