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Understanding What Motivates Us
And how to motivate others.
Motivation is one of the most difficult feelings to muster, especially when it comes to facing a challenging task. To feel motivated to do something, you need to have the desire or willingness to do it, an incentive even. Motivation is something from the outside that compels you to take action as opposed to inspiration, which is something that you feel on the inside.
I’ve always been curious about what motivates people, I mean really motivates them to achieve great success, overcome tremendous obstacles, and keep going when the going gets tough.
The A-HA moment and inspiration for this post came from my pug Stella. She absolutely refuses to walk down the stairs. She’s old and has arthritis in her hips. She wants mama to carry her. She will literally sit at the top of the stairs and stare me down with her underbite until I oblige and pick her up. The only exception to this rule: Food. When she knows it’s puppy breakfast or puppy dinner time, she flies down the stairs faster than Usain Bolt in the 100-meter dash.
Like most dogs, Stella is very food motivated, which is why dog trainers use food as a positive reinforcement training mechanism. It’s also how clicker training is used thanks to Pavlov, his dogs, and a metronome.
