I've dubbed March "Motivation Month". With the first quarter of the year almost complete, it's a great time to check in on those new year's resolutions, career goals or other personal challenges you kicked 2011 off with. Soooooooo? What's the progress on your goals?
If you're not as pleased as you'd like, it may help to check your motivation. In my observation, motivation can fall into one of two categories: pleasure seeking or pain avoidance. Many of us can be motivated by both depending on the situation while others have a strong leaning toward one over the other. One approach isn't necessarily better than the others (I'm always a fan of balance) but it can bring clarity to your goals when you know where your preference lies.
The first step to conquering or, more positively stated, leveraging motivation is to step back and reflect on which part of the pleasure/pain motivational divide you fall on. Goal attainment can be a difficult and challenging process that will require you to use all tools at your disposal--motivation being one of the most powerful.
When embarking on a particular goal, the first question to ask is "why" do you want it. I call this "understanding the why". For example, if the goal is "I want a new job", challenge yourself to articulate why this is important to you. I've heard a range of answers to this from "I want to pursue something I'm more passionate about" (pleasure seeking) to "I cannot stand getting up and going to work each day" (pain avoidance). Drilling down to this level of specificity with motivation is critical for staying focused on the end game.
Here's how it works. If you're tempted to not complete the tasks necessary to pursuing your goal--in this case let's use networking--you can circle back to your motivation. For example, is not networking more valuable to you than the pleasure of pursuing a passion or, alternatively, the pain at work each day? If the answer is "yes", not doing the task is more valuable, then you need to go back and ask yourself if you really want your goal. Or, you'll need to decide if there are other tasks that would be equally as effective. Or, if they are not equally effective, you will at least understand that you are making a trade off. Either way, it provides clarity which is another important tool in your goal seeking quest.
Of course, this all requires being aware that you are in what I call a Moment of Choice or MOC. Stay tuned as I've now been inspired to make April "Awareness" Month.
