Motivation Is What Keeps Us Going

There will always be times in your life when you have to perform tasks that you deem unpleasant for one reason or another—working with a co-worker you don't like, going to work on Mondays, taking the garbage out, driving to meet the in-laws at the airport, having dinner with the spouse's friends...

Doing these things just siphons whatever motivation you have inside you and makes you feel sad, tired, sorry, even annoyed. But did you know that there are also things inside you that actually make it difficult to feel excited and enthusiastic? Get to learn the factors that make you hard to motivate:

1) Your mindset: Your mindset is a major factor that can make you hard to motivate. This is because it can severely limit your understanding of the world and all experiences in general. Your mindset can sometimes be composed of growth-inhibiting beliefs, prejudices, biases and standards.

If, for example, you believe that nothing good can come out of your staff, you'll fail to see that there is a clerk there that actually has management potential.

If you refuse to believe that you can actually write for a famous magazine because you're a person from a small town, you'll miss out on an opportunity to expose your talent and reap its rewards.

2) Your comfort zone: We all have certain limitations in our minds. These limits are things we decide on based on our own personal beliefs, ethics and standards. Within these limits, we feel comfortable in and can pretty much do as we like.

Once we approach the outer edges, we begin to feel discomfort, shyness, embarrassment or annoyance. We do not wish to go further because we do not like what we don't know or haven't experienced. Because we have a fear of the unknown, we'd rather stay within our comfort zones because we feel safe there.

The problem here is that a narrow comfort zone can be a major factor that makes you hard to motivate. Each time you are presented with a new idea or experience, you check to see if it fits into your comfort zone.

If it doesn't, then you simply refuse, no questions asked. This is unfortunate because many of these ideas and experiences can be good for you. But you'll probably never know because you don't have the motivation to try them.

3) Your past experience: Did you get burned by the stove? That's probably why you hate to cook. Did your former bosses fail to show appreciation for your hard work? That's probably one reason why you don't feel motivated about your job.

Your background—personal, social and professional experiences—has a lot to do with how you decide things in your life. They can also be factors that make you hard to motivate. If these experiences are negative, they tend to make you more hesitant and unsure of yourself because they affect your self-esteem and confidence.

If, for example, you've only been met with rejection or ridicule in your life, it wouldn't be hard to imagine if you don't feel a strong need to excel or to improve yourself. You'll probably be thinking "So what? Nothing I ever did was good anyway. Why would things change now?"

Unless you consciously make an effort to identify these past experiences and then refuse to let them rule your life, you will always be hard to motivate.