How to motivate oneself with the most basic principles

Idleness makes life dull. One must indulge in whatever good work one can lay his hands upon. Blessed is he who has found work. He needs no more blessing. If one has no work in hand and feeling dull about it, one must write. Write whatever one can. If one cannot write anything, then even, he can write that he cannot write anything, and possibly with the reasons why he cannot write. That will do.

Reason to do work: Private or public. Private reason is doing something because one has to, mainly to earn his livelihood, or at times, to get out of idleness.

Public reason is doing something on the public sphere because one opts to improve one's private function. Although someone may find his job or function disagreeable, the task must be completed for society to flow consistently.

1. Intellect: It is a property of the mind that improves one's overall ability to perform better. It involves understanding, communication, learning, learning from past experiences, planning, and problem solving.

2. Reasoning power: This tells us how one builds up his logic to draw conclusions or arrive at decisions. Such decisions must not be impulsive.

3. Wisdom: It is how one understands and realizes people, entities, things, events, happenings or situations in order to choose or act consistently and produce the optimum results by spending a reasonable period-of-time and amount-of-energy. Wisdom is the ability to effectively and efficiently apply perceptions and knowledge and produce the desired results. Wisdom also includes comprehension of what is true or right.

These three will help one to ascertain what is a good work. Subjectively, Work may be divided into two basic parts,

Physical work and mental work.

Physical work involves our body more, while mental work involves our mind more. Too much emphasis on any one of the two is not good. Too much of physical work makes the body suffer. Too much of mental work makes the mind, and consequently the body, suffer. One must strike a balance between the two, as mind and body are highly interlinked.

Physical work improves one's nervous system and precision power, which in turn helps the brain to think better and perform better. Balanced improvement of these two helps one to think more analytically and perform with greater precision. Knowledge goes a long way to help one in this regard.

One needs rest after work. Again, rest also may be either physical, or mental. Mental rest is best achieved through sleep. Some light entertainment can also bring mental rest. That improves the involuntary systems of one's body, thereby improving one's physical ability to perform better.

Driving a screw through the wood can be of great help to improve one's involuntary systems. Mending a torn book may be another example. Writing is also a great exercise of the brain, as well as of the hand. Writing improves one's rhythm and poise. One must write at least two pages everyday. Taking dictations from someone and improving one's writing speed does a world of good. Take up any job you find handy, even if you do not find it joyful. Keep engaged. Tomorrow you may find another job, which will be very much to your liking. In life, most of the times it is not selection of the best, but it is rejection of the worst. Remember this.

After all the theoretical discussions, we now need to come to the point. Let us take up the most obvious question. Why are we lacking in motivation? What is keeping us away? We can devote al our time, brain and energy to do something only when we know that we will be rewarded adequately.

1. Money is a big motivator.

2. Ambition is also another great motivator, which some people have very little, while some have immense. The majority falls in between.

3. Doing something for others works as a big motivator for some people. They do not find joy in doing something for his own. Are you of this kind? Ask yourself and recognize yourself. It may be a loved one, your entire family, or the neighbourhood, or an even bigger group.

4. Creating something of everlasting value works perfectly well as a motivator. Creativity motivates us immensely.

5. Desire for fame, honour or power also work as good motivators.

Just try to find what motivates you the most. Once you find it, your job is half done.

6. Lastly, try to drive away memories of past failures from your mind. That kills motivation. No harm if you have failed in the past. That does never mean that you will fail this time also. So drive all such thoughts away.
If we can clearly see that by accomplishing a task we can reach a certain goal, obviously we will devote all our energy towards it. So we must first try to find the goal, the aim or the objective.

Positive Thinking: One must have the inner urge to take up a job. Then, one must think positively in so far as finishing the job successfully is concerned. Positive thinking will bring in courage. Courage will bring in faith. Faith, in turn, will bring in confidence in oneself. Confidence will boost up one's overall skill and ability to perform better and better. One's chances of success will improve dramatically.

Courage is the sum total of one's intellect, reasoning power and wisdom. These three makes a person autonomous. Autonomy gives courage. When a person becomes autonomous, he attains maturity, and gets enlightened. One must also never get afraid to think about oneself. It is not selfishness in any way, as long as he thinks about other's well-being also.

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