What Motivates You

We all have preferences—whether for a given food or fad—that are rooted in our personalities and prior experiences.  Motivation is no different.  We are motivated to do some specific things and not to do others.

Since motivation is a very complicated concept that cannot be addressed comprehensively here, I want to introduce only one single idea to help you understand your motivational style.   That way, you will be much better able to make self-selected health-enhancing changes.

Consider interpersonal relationships.  Presume that you want to meet someone new.  Why might you?  What specifically is it that would make that effort worthwhile?  Please be as concrete as possible about plausible advantages of meeting a new person.  It would be particularly helpful for you to write your thoughts on an electronic device or on paper so that you can refer to them later.  After you are done, continue reading this blog.

Okay.  Let’s resume.

Psychologists divide reasons for change motivation into two categories: promotion versus prevention.  Promotion-oriented motivation emphasizes advantages that you would expect from meeting someone new.  You, for instance, might have written that the new person would be an interesting conversation partner or would provide someone attractive to visit.   A prevention orientation emphasizes disadvantages that you would avoid by meeting a new person.  For instance, you might want to establish a new relationship to overcome loneliness or to have an alternative to the undesirable person with whom you presently interact.

Since perceived advantages mostly are subjective, how one frames an event is determinative.  The advantage that you perceive reveals your personality.  If you chose a promotion reason, you are “eager’ about the outcome that you expect will derive from your healthful change.  And if you chose a prevention reason, you are “vigilant’ about the outcome that you fear from not making your healthful change.  Eager anticipation suggests that you have a more hopeful orientation and vigilant anticipation, that you have a more fearful orientation.

Whenever you consider a healthful lifestyle change, evaluate it in terms of prevention-promotion and apply the insight that you achieve from making that promotion-prevention discrimination.  If your motivation for a change is more promotion oriented, think about all the advantages of making your new healthful lifestyle change.  Conversely, if your motivation is more prevention oriented, think about all the disadvantages that you will avoid by making your new healthful lifestyle change. Knowing and applying your motivation style can make the difference between change success and change failure.