Motivation

This might be overly simplistic, but I have a sense that there are two forms of motivation that give us our drive, positive and negative. Positive motivation turns around what we dream about, as in ‘if I do this then people will be really happy and I’ll get applause and acclaim’, while negative motivation turns around ‘if I don’t do this, then people will be angry with me and I will be booed and shamed’.

Though I think most people are motivated by a combination of both, they do tend more towards one or the other. So far the people around me have demonstrated a definite leaning towards negative motivation. They do what they do because otherwise others will be unhappy with them or, just as common, they will be unhappy with themselves. They do what they do out of a sense of guilt.

I know I definitely belong to this group. I am constantly afraid of wasting my time and it is this that motivates me to sit down to work everyday. I know that there is this theoretical dream of success and achievement somewhere down the road and I do dream of that, but it is ultimately more of a flight of fancy than a motivating force. No, it is the knowledge that if I don’t produce that I’ll hate myself for it that gets me to put pen to paper and thoughts to words every day.

Yet I really do think there might be people motivated largely by positive motivation. The question is, where are they? And, more importantly, how do they work different from people like me?

Is one form of motivation actually better than the other form, or do they come with different benefits? Maybe negative motivation makes you work all the harder when you’re on the brink of disaster, while positive motivation drives you to push your work from the good into the great.

Maybe negative motivation is better described as tenacity and positive motivation as aspiration.

All speculation, of course. I think I must first find a positively motivated person to get a better sense of the truth in this theory. If you know any (or are one yourself) please drop me a line.