When a person attends a motivational session or seminar, his performance, after the initial high, often falls back again to lower levels. Companies also wonder why many such efforts to motivate employees don’t work.
Some people confuse the effort itself with the goal and assume that motivation alone is enough.
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The mother of a rather dull youngster was somewhat disturbed at his below par performance. She wanted to see him succeed, but wasn’t quite sure what could keep him interested and motivated. Finally, she decided to enroll him for a series of motivational sessions.
As the sessions progressed, the fond mother explained, “Soon we’ll know what you will be happiest doing when you grow up.”
“Oh Mother, I already know that,” the boy replied. “I want to keep attending these motivational sessions. I just love them.” |
The means becomes an end in itself. We keep moving in circles. We travel to reach nowhere.
People do need motivation, but they need something more than that, something that can ensure tangible results.
When we are under the spell of motivation, we feel all fired up to perform. At that moment nothing seems impossible. But as reality sinks in, we become gloomy and start doubting our competence.
Motivation has effects similar to the energy boost one feels after consuming sugar. After sometime, the energy level dips back again. The problem lies with the undue expectations that we build without grasping reality.
We all build our dream castles in the air, but we forget to put foundations under them. Like gas balloons, we let our imaginations fly high. After a while, when the gas is exhausted, the balloon of our aspirations falls back to the hard ground of reality.
Our life is highly stressed due to increased pace and complexity. Illusive goals set under an external superfluous influence put us on a roller-coaster ride with sharp highs and lows.
Suppose a person has reached a considerably appreciable level in performance at a given point of time. He gets a shot of motivation and immediately starts feeling euphoric. He perceives that his performance has risen to a much higher level of a superlative degree.
However, he often realizes that no matter how hard he tries, there is no material change in his actual performance, because his success depends on the environment too, which may not always react favorably.
After sometime, this person starts feeling like a dwarf and his self-esteem falls. He becomes depressed and assumes that his performance has deteriorated to a level much lower than the actual one. Just as the system didn’t allow much increase in his performance level while he was in a euphoric state of mind, in the same manner, the system didn’t allow his performance level to go much below his average performance level. Gradually, he gets back to normalcy.
External motivation and force may not generate a performance level that is required for excellent results. For these reasons, people, who are forced into careers by parents or by circumstances, often turn out to be failures.
External motivation can work if the performance level needs to be raised for a short span of time. However, during this phase, if you set some goals that require a consistently high performance level over a long time horizon, you might face disappointment unless motivation gets transformed into inspiration.
Feelings and emotions can exist in the unrealistic world of imagination. Action happens only in reality.
People often confuse intent with action. They judge themselves with what they intend to do and others with what others do or achieve.
Motivation can be called effective not on the basis of what gets started, but on what gets finished.
The need for motivation arises only if a person doesn’t love what he is doing. This happens when a person is forced to achieve a goal he doesn’t identify with. A SELF-MOTIVATED person loves what he does. For this reason, excellent leaders and good marketers focus on fuelling the passions and desires of people instead of preaching them.
Motivation cannot work if people don’t feel a SENSE OF OWNERSHIP towards the goal.
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There once lived two tribes whose enmity was legendary. While one tribe lived in the mountains, the other lived below in the valley. One day, the people from the mountains invaded the valley people and kidnapped one of their babies.
The valley people sent some of their strongest men to track down the baby and to bring it home. These men didn’t know how to climb the steep slope of the mountain and had no knowledge exactly where the mountain people lived. Still, they kept trying for some days, but could not climb more than a few hundred feet. Disappointed and exhausted, one day they decided to return to their village.
While they were packing for the return journey, suddenly they saw the mother of the baby coming down from the very mountain they had failed to climb. As the woman came closer, they could see the baby safely strapped to her back.
They greeted the woman and one of them said, “We are very happy to see your baby. But we fail to understand how was it possible for you to climb this mountain which we, the strongest of men from the village, could not. Will you please, explain?
The mother looked fondly at her baby and said in a low voice, “It wasn’t your baby.” |
What we see here is the difference between internalized goals and superimposed goals. Most efforts by an organization to motivate its employees fail because they are not aligned to the dreams and aspirations of the employees.
Organizations view motivation like a sprinkling of holy water that is expected to cure the employees. Since many leaders and motivators fail to appeal to the emotions of employees, the employees don’t develop a belief in the organizational goals. The entire exercise goes waste.
Through this blog of mine, we are going to discuss various aspects of human behavior and psychology that affect the performance of the people not only in the field of Multi Level Marketing, but also in almost all the activities and situations in life, thus creating a platform for development of strategies based on a proper understanding of the human nature, including the negative side.
