Motivating Yourself at Work
Well, same answer, really.
One of my good friends who is a very experienced and effective business coach shared some insights about a recent drop in his own performance. His solution was to invest time and money with one of the country’s most experienced executive coaches and accelerate his return to top form.
The insights go something like this:
When Aversion is the Motivator
He had taken on the funding and development of three long-term projects and his workload spiked. He admits it probably only spiked by 20% but it felt like 100% and he started to talk to himself (he said “whinge”) in those terms. He let his guard down on his self-talk – and on his talk with close friends – and began to paint a picture of having to work harder just to meet the increased requirements for funds.
As he diverted attention and energy to the three projects – and away from his marketing activities – his cashflow underwent natural erosion. That erosion would normally have been topped up by new clients generated by marketing but since marketing was not getting the attention it required, his self-talk gradually became a self-fulfilling prophecy. But, being an experience and resourceful businessman he would periodically jump back into marketing, find a replacement client, return his revenue above the pain point – and then dive back into the projects until the next cash crunch.
Viewed over time his up-and-down performance would have graphed out as a perfect wave form. “And that was the wake-up call for me,” he said. “Any good coach would have recognised cyclic performance as a symptom of performance driven by the desire to avoid pain, rather than the desire to gain pleasure.”
Negatively motivated performance is nearly always cyclic – up when the threat of pain is high, and down when the threat of pain is low or absent. It is typical of the performance of those who work “to avoid being fired” or “to avoid going broke” or “so that my father won’t be disappointed in me”.
“Once I twigged to the trap I’d led myself into,” he said, “I knew I had to displace the painful disincentive of ‘being short of funds’ with a positive and enjoyable incentive that would require a higher cashflow to bring it about – and would feel good in the process!”
When Pleasure is the Motivator
“I didn’t have to look far. I decided I needed a new boat!” he said. “To be honest, I don’t need a new boat, so I had to do a little bit of work to actually make myself want one,” he smiled. “A bit of research; a couple of outings in my boat-of-choice soon fixed that, however!”
“With my desire now piqued and focused on a desirable goal, I put the performance criteria in place,” he said. “I promised myself that once I had restored my revenue to a level that would provide more than enough for my projects, lifestyle and savings, I would place the order for my new boat. Then I told my friends and associates I was getting the boat – just to lock myself in! (I mean, I’d look pretty stupid if I didn’t get it, right?)”
When we set, and emotionally engage with, positive goals that challenge us to perform at the upper end of our capabilities, we create the preconditions for our energies to flow powerfully and that fact alone energises and focuses our unconscious towards achieving it.
In the simple words of sports psychologist Randall Rattan, “Challenging goals, when accepted, result in superior performance.”
Positively motivated performance is nearly always consistently upward and often exponentially so. In fact, once you engage the power of your unconscious with emotionally-driven positive goals, the results of your efforts can sometimes take on an almost mystical dimension, with some resembling very lucky coincidences or pure serendipity.
To finish our story: My friend went on to detail how he had achieved 50% of his performance goal 2 days after setting it; 80% of it within a week; 125% within 10 days; and 225% within a month!
“It was incredible to realise how much I’d been holding myself back with my negative focus. And the funny thing is that since setting – and getting – my goal, I’m working more effectively, getting better results and I have more energy! You can’t believe how much energy negative goals can suck!” he said.
