Source 1: Personal Motivation – Is It Worth It?

When we set a goal, or think about setting a goal, we ask ourselves two fundamental questions (whether we realize it or not):
1) Is It Worth It? and,

2) Can I do it?
“Personal Motivation” is the first quadrant in the six sources of influence and is the “is it worth it” box. This source of influence asks the question: Do we take personal satisfaction from doing the required activity (i.e., is it worth it)? That is, does enacting the vital behavior itself bring us pleasure? (Remember, we defined the “vital behaviors” for weight loss as a critical success factor for success right after clarifying the goal results we want). If the behavior itself doesn’t bring pleasure, how can you get people to do things they currently find loathsome, boring, insulting, or painful (read – push-ups, jump rope, lunges, etc. by some lol).

If you can’t find a way to change a person’s intrinsic response to a behavior- if you can’t make the right behaviors pleasurable and the wrong behaviors painful – you’ll have to make up for the motivational shortfall by relying on external incentives or possibly even punishments.
An example of this is getting your kids to take out the trash. You threaten, punish, push and prod and there it sits in the garage on the morning of pick-up. So perhaps you bribe them or threaten grounding until they finish high school. And guess what – the moment you stop bribing or threatening the kid goes back to not doing the behavior they didn’t like doing in the first place.

If we could find a way to make a healthy behavior intrinsically satisfying, or an unhealthy behavior inherently undesirable, then we wouldn’t need to keep applying pressure to ourselves – forever. The behavior would carry its own motivational power – forever.

So the question is – can you actually change how humans experience a behavior? We’re not talking about adding a spoonful of sugar – that’s cheating. We’re asking whether it’s possible to change the meaning of a behavior from loathsome to gratifying. Influencers say not only can you, but you must.

Just because a desire or behavior is natural, does not mean it is unchangeable…it is also to never brush our teeth. yet we teach ourselves to do the unnatural. Another characteristic of human behavior (perhaps one that make us human) is our capacity to do the unnatural, to transcend and hence transform our own nature.
Psychiatrist M Scott Beck

Change is hard because new behaviors are often difficult, uncomfortable, or even painful while old behaviors are familiar and routine. For example, when a leader asks employees to undertake dramatic quality improvement efforts, there is enormous discomfort, conflict, and uncertainty. People are pushed to rethink processes, uncover problems, and reapportion power in the organization. Most people aren’t motivated to do things that are uncomfortable or stressful, which is why most of these efforts fail.

So, how do you motivate someone who isn’t motivated? The short answer is, “You don’t.”

And that’s because it’s nearly impossible to get people to do something they aren’t motivated to do. You might get the behavior you desire on a temporary basis (e.g., bribing or threatening the kid), but eventually, your efforts fail because you haven’t changed how the behavior itself is perceived and the ramifications of that behavior.
So – this “personal motivation” clearly applies to us wanting to lose weight, eat right, exercise, etc. as much as to the kid and the fly-infested trashcans.
How do we link new behaviors to values we already have? How do we find ways to invest new behaviors with meaning and drive home human consequences? In short, how do we put a “human face” to these behaviors that are leading to whatever problems we’ve identified?

We identify how to do this and take care to spend time on exercises that get this most important “quadrant” straight before moving on to the other areas of influence that will help us be successful. But, after we’ve done that and tied our personal motivation to our personal values we have to keep “adding sources” of influence to make our chance of reaching our goal(s) a virtual certainty.

Source 2: Personal Ability – Overinvest In Skill Building