What is Motivation?

Welcome to the return of my regular blog. This is a project which is designed to assist practitioners with additional information to help them be better at their work as well as for clients to learn more about therapy and the therapeutic process. I hope you will find it informative and helpful to you.

There are many theories of motivation, and I have utilised the ones that I believe are the most useful for my work as a Hypnotherapist and Hypno-Psychotherapist in our book Motivational Hypnotism. Here I will highlight a few key ideas:

Motivation is about why we do things, what our incentives are, what drives us. We are motivated to act when that action fulfils a need, or moves us in the direction of fulfilling a need. Without this, there is little chance of action.

Let’s look at some specific examples of needs motivating action:

·       A woman who needs to be accepted may be motivated to do everything for everybody

·       A man who needs to be respected may be motivated to work long hours to earn enough to buy a nice car

·       A teenager who needs to feel they are one of the crowd may be motivated to smoke

·       A woman who needs to prove herself to her father may be motivated to get a PhD

·       A man who needs to feel better about himself may choose to bully his employees

Motivation is about:

·       Direction: towards the positive or away from the negative

·       Persistence: sticking to a task

·       Continuing motivation: long term motivation

·       Intensity: strength of the desire for change

All of these can be ascertained by the therapist, and maximised using hypnotic interventions.