If you have any goals in your life that you are yet to achieve, the likelihood is that you lack motivation. But what is motivation, why is it important and how can it be generated?

If you check out the “verywellminded.com” website , you will note that they qualify the meaning of “motivation” as being the process that begins, steers, and fuels behaviours that are in line with achieving specific goals. These goals can either be personal or professional; to do with our private or our working lives.

The three important elements of motivation

Unless you happen to be very lucky in a particular situation, it is unlikely that you will achieve your goals; especially if they are worthwhile. Let’s take a quick look at the crucial elements of building motivation. There are in fact three separate, important facets that go to becoming motivated. They are:

  • Activation
  • Persistence
  • Intensity

Activation is the part of motivation building that means making the initial decision to begin doing something, such as going on a diet to lose some weight for example.

Persistence is continuously renewing your efforts toward achieving a specific goal and being prepared to negotiate your way around any obstacles that might lie in your path. You might, for example, want to run in the next Sanlam Cape Town Marathon. To do so, you may have to lose weight, get into a practice regime, and buy some quality trainers.

All these things are obstacles to your goal, and you need to display persistence in navigating around them if you are to successfully complete the marathon.

Intensity is the third essential element when it comes to the make-up of motivation. It describes the concentration and determination that you will need to achieve your goal. If either of these two components is not present in your motivation building, you are likely to fail.

Some goals you may give yourself will require finance. You might decide for example that you would like to buy a mountain bike and take up regular biking. A decent one will cost money, and if you don’t have enough, this could be one of those obstacles we mentioned.

You may, therefore, need to organise a loan as part of your intensity to ensure success in meeting your target. There is nothing wrong with loaning money for any purpose, although a good purpose like buying a bike for regular exercise, is more beneficial than say buying something more fanciful like a fashionable handbag or pair of shoes.

The only thing you need to be aware of is, of course, to make sure that you can afford the loan repayments. If you can, and the purpose of the loan is to benefit your health or livelihood, this is considered a good debt rather than a bad one.

Whatever it is you want to achieve in your life, you will need to be suitably motivated. Before you set a new target, however, it will pay you well to find out more about how to build motivation.

The good news is that building motivation is not too difficult, and once you are appropriately motivated, reaching the goal you’ve set yourself will be much more likely.