"Your own resolution to success is more important than every other one thing. " - Abraham Lincoln

Bianca rose towards the sound of pigeons cooing and traffic grumbling within the street below. As she yawned and stretched, the girl thought about what was waiting for her that day.

She experienced her motivation slowly drain away with each timeline and commitment that zipped through her thoughts. Because Bianca began to wither and wilt internally, she kept in mind the motivation pills she had purchased last week through the Good Value Pharmacy.

There were yellow pills labeled 'Money', red pills labeled 'Pride', green pills labeled 'Family', magenta pills labeled 'Respect' and some ugly grey pills tagged 'Nagging Advice'. The chemist had told her as this individual dispensed the pills that some would work for her and some may not... he could never tell in advance which pills would work which is why customers. With that advice in mind and a smile on her lip area, Bianca reached for the one she knew would be perfect for her...

One of the best things you can do for yourself on your journey of personal discovery is to work out what drives you. The first step would be to identify your values as they provide the fuel for your drive and the drive behind everything you do in life. If you value anything you will always find the motivation and energy to do it. Nearby value something, you will always struggle to find the motivation along with energy to do it.

Values

Your values are what are vital that you you. They are the broad concepts that guide your choices in life and form the basis of your character. Your values furthermore determine how you spend your time. For example , if your most important value is usually health, you will spend your time quite differently from someone in whose most important value is career or family.

Values likewise drive all your motivation. You won't pursue a course of activity unless it relates to something you value at some degree. Identifying your values allows you to kick-start your own motivation, create goals that are appropriate and spend time on things that are important for you.

How Your Values Are Formed

Your values originate from a number of sources including your family, friends, religion, school, educators, country and the media. They are also shaped at any time in your life simply by significant emotional events such as natural disasters, emotional misuse, global depression or war.

Your values change when you grow and evolve. When you change your values, you will also modify some of your beliefs and the way you live life.

How you can Identify Your Personal Values

Identifying your personal values helps you to:

Realise why some issues are a problem for you;
See why some things stimulate you and others don't; and
Identify and overcome troublesome areas of your life.
For example , assume you have weight issues. You figure out your personal values and find that health and fitness doesn't even price a mention within your values. You may have found the reason why you happen to be having weight issues, i. e. health and fitness is not a thing you value. While this remains the case it will be very difficult so that you can lose weight and gain a greater level of health and fitness in your life since you will not have any motivation to do so.

You can identify your prices by asking yourself:

What is important to me in relation to my life, career, human relationships etc?
What would cause me to leave my entire life, career, relationships, etc?
When you have an understanding of your values, it really is useful to see how they affect your motivation.

Motivation

Your own values drive your motivation. If you set goals that are in-line with your values, you will have the motivation to help you achieve all of them. If you set goals that are not in line with your values, it will be a good uphill struggle to achieve them.

When you understand your principles and their impact on how you are currently motivating yourself you will have a fantastic insight into why you achieve the results that you do in life. Additionally, you will know how to motivate yourself more effectively in the future.

Motivation comes possibly from within you (intrinsic motivation) or from an external resource (extrinsic motivation).

Extrinsic motivationis provided by some factor exterior to you. It can take the form of inducements (rewards) or punishments. The actual rewards can be tangible or intangible (such as praise).

Intrinsic motivationis evident when you engage in an activity for its personal sake without any external incentive. It appears from research produced by Albert Bandura that if you have more self efficacy (belief in your abilities to control your environment) you are more highly intrinsically motivated than other people.

As intrinsic motivation is the just one you can take with you and call upon at any time, it is the most important when it comes to battered women.

Intrinsic motivation can be broken down further in to 'towards' motivation and 'away from' motivation. 'Towards' commitment is motivation towards something you want and 'away from' motivation is motivation away from something you don't want.

'Away From' Motivation

'Away from' motivation is driven by simply pain. Pain motivated performance is not pleasant, produces sporadic results and disappears when the pain is no longer present.

'Away from motivation' does, however , give you a strong initial desire to move away from the thing you don't want in your life. A problem along with using this type of motivation is that you wait until things are bad before you do something to change them. Another problem is that you don't have a target or even goal that you are aiming for (just something you are running from) so you don't tend to achieve results.

Sophia uses 'away from' motivation in relation to her weight. As a result she is typical yo yo dieter. Her process goes like this. Sophia looks in the mirror and sees that she is obese. She says to herself, 'I don't want to be fat anymore'. She then goes on a diet to ensure she is no longer body fat. (She is moving away from being fat). At some point she appears in the mirror and sees that she looks amazing and is no longer fat. As she is no longer fat, this wounderful woman has just lost the source of her motivation (to not be fat). As there is no longer any motivation, she no more stays on the diet and discards her exercise regime. She is going to not be motivated to do whatever she needs to stay fit in addition to healthy. At some point in the future she will look in the mirror and once again form the judgment that she is fat and the procedure will start all over again.

When you are motivated away from something that you don't desire in life, you tend to focus upon the very thing you don't need to want and that is what you attract into your life. As examples:

In case you constantly say to yourself, 'I don't want to be broke', your current focus is upon being broke and that is where your own personal unconscious mind will aim.
If you constantly say to your self, "I don't want to be single", your focus is after being single and that is where your unconscious mind will certainly aim.
Motivation away from what you don't want can really encourage you, but it doesn't do so for long and you can not be sure what results you will achieve. It can give you a excellent initial boost of energy, but you can never guarantee where you are likely to end up as you don't have a firm direction in mind, just a place you would like to get away from. If you use away from motivation in your life, you will tend to develop a series of crises to keep yourself motivated.

'Towards' Motivation

If you are using 'towards motivation' you will take action to move towards your goal and you may achieve them more often than not.

'Towards' motivation is the best way to boost yourself. When you are motivated towards what you want, you tend to remain consistently motivated until you achieve your goal (provided you desire this enough).

When you are motivated towards what you want, you constantly arranged and achieve goals each time stretching yourself further. By utilizing motivation towards what you want you give yourself a far greater chance of attaining what you want out of life.

How Do You Know If The Motivation You Use Is actually 'Towards' Or 'Away From' Motivation?

We now know that valuations drive your motivation and that motivation can be either in the direction of what you want or away from what you don't want. Now it is time for you to review your values to discover whether the underlying motivation for each of the values is:

towards what you want; or
away from what you avoid want.
To determine whether the underlying motivation for each value is definitely 'towards' or 'away from' ask yourself, "Why is that benefit important to me? " then listen to your self-talk plus note what you say to yourself. The clues to whether you will be using towards or away from motivation for that value tend to be:

You are probably using 'towards' motivation if you:

talk about what you do need
don't use comparisons in your explanation (better than, worse compared to, more than)
You are probably using 'away from' motivation in case you:

talk about what you don't want
make comparisons in your description or use words such as 'better than', 'more than', 'less than', 'best' etc . (These show you are disappointed with where you currently are)
use words such as 'must', 'need', 'have to', 'got to' etc
As an example, imagine 'money' was your highest value in relation to your career. After this you ask yourself, "Why is the value 'compensation' important to me regarding my career? "

If your answer is, "Because I wish to make a lot of money and live in luxury", the response might indicate 'towards' motivation for this value.

If your answer can be, "Because I don't want to be broke and I have to be in a position to pay my bills", the response would indicate 'away from' motivation for this value.

Your chances of achieving goals associated with 'money' are much greater if you are using towards motivation.

If you find you have identified 'away from' motivation in relation to any of your values, you will discover:

This area of your life is one where you will experience the most difficulties;
You are not achieving the results in this area of your life that you might wish; and
You will find unresolved issues to be cleared away and healed in terms of this area of your life before you will experience the success you desire.
This really is wonderful information to have as it identifies areas of your life that you should focus upon.

Problems With Motivation

We all experience problems with intention at some point. Those times when you just can't seem to find the wish to do things you know you should. The problems can arise simply because:

You are low on energy. There are some easy things I'm certain you do when you are feeling 'low' to get your energy back. Keep in mind too that sometimes in life, you need and deserve an escape.
The thing you are aiming towards is not something you price. (In this case, question whether you should be exerting your energy in this direction); or
You have a problem with your motivation strategy (see below).
If it is your motivation strategy that is causing you difficulties, identify which part of the strategy is causing the problem after which use one of the following techniques to assist you to change it. If you are not inspired because:

You feel overwhelmed, break the goal down into smaller sized steps and do them one at a time.
You are only using 'away from' motivation, identify where you are aiming and focus when the positive outcomes of attaining it.
You feel obliged to go after the goal, either accept the goal is not for you personally and let it go or focus upon the positive final results you will get from achieving the goal.
You are scared, identify exactly what could go wrong and what you would do if it did.