Role of Motivation in Success

Motivation is the word which is originally derived from the word ‘motive’ which means the needs of a person and his family, desires, wants or drives within the individuals. Motivation is a psychological feature that empowers a human or provides energy to act towards a desired goal, controls, and sustains certain behaviour of an individual which may be goal oriented. Motivation influences our behaviour and our ability to accomplish some predefined goals. It can be considered as a driving force; a psychological drive that empowers an individual to think positively that it is possible for him to achieve his goals. It may also be the process of stimulating people actions to accomplish their goals and achieve success at right time. Hence motivation is the key to success.

Motivation is the combination of desire, values, and beliefs that drive you to take action, it is an inner drive to behave or act in a certain manner towards the achievement of any task or goal. It's like the difference between waking up before dawn to pound the pavement and lazing around the house all day. These inner conditions such as wishes, desires, goals, activate to move in a particular direction towards the success. These three motivating factors, and/or lack of them, are at the root of why people even after working hard are not able to achieve their respective goals. That motivation is something that provides fuel for you to sharpen your skills and provide the intelligence to apply those skills in such a way to achieve overall market success and satisfaction. Without motivation, you may tend to lose control of your own future. There are also theories of motivation given by various scholars:

• Goal Setting Theory
• ERG Theory
• McClelland’s Theory of Needs
• Reinforcement Theory
• Equity Theory of Motivation
• Expectancy Theory of Motivation

Types of Motivation 

Intrinsic or Internal Motivation: Intrinsic motivation or internal motivation refers to motivation that is driven mostly by an interest or enjoyment in the task itself, and mostly exists within the individual rather than relying on external pressures or a desire for reward. The source of motivation lies within. Intrinsic motivation has been studied since the early 1970s. Students who are internally motivated are more likely to engage themselves in the task willingly with their own interest and work to improve their skills themselves, which will increase their capabilities and help them achieve their academic goals. Students are more likely to be internally motivated if they keep in mind few of these:

• Identify your beliefs, desires and needs. Believe in yourself, that you have the skills to be effective agents in reaching your desired goals and no one can stop you from achieving your dreams.
• Recognize your strength and weaknesses and establish your goals accordingly.
• Have curiosity to learn something new and work hard towards the attainment of goals.
• Attribute your educational results to factors under your their own control.
• Always be interested in mastering a topic, achieving good grades is not the only purpose of education, instead of learning is the main motive behind. Go for knowledge, not just grades, and this doesn’t mean that grades are not important. Grades are equally important.

Extrinsic or External Motivation: Extrinsic motivation means that the motivation factor is some outside force hence it refers to the performance of an activity by an individual in order to attain an outcome, whether or not that activity is also internally motivated and generally comes outside of an individual. Basically, our desire to perform a task or achieve something is majorly governed by outside factors. Common forms of extrinsic motivation are rewards for showing some positive work output, appraisal in the form of some prize or financial bonus or threat of being fined or being punished in the case something goes wrong. Supporters of a team cheering in a hockey match, for a particular is the team is also external motivation. Some of the common examples of external motivation are:

• Bonuses
• Reward program
• The employee of the month
• Man of match trophy in a game
• Fear of being punished

Importance of Motivation

• The Relation between Emotion and Motivation: Emotions and motivation move parallel to each other. Emotions play an important role in the life of human beings and also in the process of self-improvement. Most of the successful people in the world are one who is in good control of their emotions and utilizes their emotions towards the attainment of positive goals if used wisely, your emotion and motivation can be a powerful force which may help you to achieve great things in life. Control of emotions is a very important quality, and a person who can control his emotions at right time can be very successful. Emotional motivation plays an important role for players playing an international match for their country with thousands of people cheering live in the stadium. One who can utilize it in a positive way is the one who achieves career heights.
• Leads to Achievement of Organizational as well as Individual Goals: Motivation inspires and empowers a person to perform well and achieve goals. The basic function of motivation is to create zeal to perform and be the first one to achieve, there is the best possibility of utilization of resources of a firm or an individual and lead to best of results and co-operative environment among a team. Goals can be achieved if co-ordination and co-operation take place simultaneously which can be effectively achieved with the help of motivation.
• Improves the Level of Performance: The level of a subordinate or an employee does not only depend upon their qualifications, training and abilities but an important factor determining the performance is the desire to achieve. For getting best of the work performance, the gap between ability and willingness to perform has to be filled which helps in improving the level of performance of subordinates as well as other working staff. Proper motivation may result in the increase in the productivity of a firm and hence leading to overall efficiency gain and reducing the cost of production.
• Motivation a Path to Success: Motivation is directly related to the success. You can increase the odds of an organizational success or of your success by first, defining what is important to you, establishing goals based on these values, desires, and beliefs, and finally, tailoring your achievement expectations to match your circumstances. The overall driving force for all this is the motivation. If you fail in any of these steps, you will undercut your motivation, fail to work up to your abilities, and diminish your chances of success. Hence proper motivation is the key to success.
• Achieving Work Stabilization: Stability of workforce is very important from the point of view of reputation and goodwill of a concern and the only way to escalate performance. The employees can remain loyal to the enterprise only when they are also involved and have a feeling of participation in the management. The skills and efficiency of employees will always be of a great advantage to employees as well as employers. A good public image in the market which attracts a competent and qualified people into concern. As the old saying goes, “Old is gold” which emphasize the role of motivation here, the older the people, more the experience and their adjustment into a concern which can be of benefit to the enterprise as there is not much need for training or building trust with the experienced employees, hence motivation helps stabilizing which further have advantages of its own.
• Increased Product Value: With motivated employees, an organization will have a better product or service; because the staff will feel like this is their product and its success would be their achievement and will want to make sure that it provides real value to the customers. They will go the extra mile to make your product stand out of from the rest of the competition and achieve the desired goals with perfection.
• Help Overcome Test Anxiety: Anxiety at the time of test or before the exam has been found to be negatively related to expectancies as well as to the performance. Test anxiety is thought to have two basic components: a worry, or cognitive component, and an emotionality component that leads to the anxiety or fear. The worry component refers to students’ negative thoughts of failing or forgetting topics that disrupt performance, whereas the emotionality component refers to effective and physiological aspects of anxiety. Cognitive concern and preoccupation with performance are found to be the greatest sources of performance decrement and sometimes may prove to be great performance hindrances. Training in the use of effective learning strategies at the right time and test-taking skills or mock test should help reduce the degree of anxiety and can be very effective in performing well during the exam. Proper motivation helps reduce the anxiety and fear of exam, in effect leading to an elevation in performance level.
• Self Motivation: It is not necessary that you always require an external source for the motivation. It is also possible to motivate yourself on your own, known as self-motivation. There are some people who just can’t get their morale to the high level and have a low level of motivation. This is not something to worry about, like all other skills and qualities like leadership or management etc. motivation can also be developed with time and hard work. It is not necessary that you should possess motivation as inborn quality. Talking about any successful athlete and they will say that their natural talent is important, but what got them that far are all their training and practice sessions which that means it is their internal self-motivation that actually got them to put in all the hard work into training and practice to get to where they have reached. If someone does not feel motivated, he or she acts as if that is the end of their life and nothing can be done about it. Motivation is the most important ingredient of success.

Techniques for Self Motivation

• Goal Setting: Motivation and goal setting has a strong interrelation. When a person set goals, it increases their motivation because now the person has a target to pursue and a path to follow towards success. Having done your detailed goal setting research, you would know what you are working towards to achieve your goals, why you are working towards it and the details of how you can achieve it and what you would do towards the achievement of your goals.
• Look Around and Motivate Yourself: You cannot motivate yourself sitting idle at your home, move around and look out for opportunities which would motivate you towards working for a certain goal. Move around show more excitement towards life and motivation in your movements and you’ll become more motivated.
• Make use of your Interest and Likes: One of the best ways to motivate yourself is to make a list of your interest, likes and pleasures and work out a career plan accordingly. Associate your qualifications and interest and formulate something that you enjoy you. Doing something you enjoy would be a great source of self-motivation. For example, if you think of going to the gym and you may drop your plan because of the pain associated with the exercising would be considered as a negative motivation. Whereas if a person thinks about the fact that this would have an effect in the long run and health benefits associated, this would be a positive motivation.
• Rewards: Another way of motivation is to use motivational rewards. When something is at stake, when there is a reward involved, everything changes around changes, motivation levels and work speed. Make a pact with yourself and set some form of rewards for added motivation and boost your morale with those rewards in mind. Find a fact that will really motivate you and let it drive you towards continued success and improvement.

Conclusion
Motivation is an important aspect of achieving goals; advisors may find it helpful when working with unmotivated students to approach the problem from a motivational constructs framework.  The identification of motivational issues based on the constructs of expectancy (self-efficacy and locus of control beliefs), value (goal orientation or task value concerns), or affect (test anxiety), may be helpful in developing specific strategies toward greater success. Motivation is very important to empower a person to look upon their capabilities and make full use of it.