The ability to be
aware of our own motivation level and identify what things move it up and down is critical
to maintaining a high degree of success-oriented performance.
Motivation is the engine that drives our performance, or lack of it. Motivation is a sense
of mood, feeling or energy that may be expressed as an attitude, action, or the desire to
perform. Once you become more aware of this, the more you can control your performance by
doing things that will increase your motivation level.
Bad experiences can cause our motivation to drop, and we
find ourselves literally unable to perform until we’re able to get our motivation
levels restored – in other words, to recharge our batteries. The metaphor of a
battery being charged or discharged is a good way to understand motivation.
An important note: It’s not healthy to charge our
batteries in situations that impact others adversely. One example is sarcastic or
"put down" humor. We may think of some smart remark, but if it puts others down
it may charge us up at their expense.
I believe that if we can increase our average motivation
level by only ten percent, we can double our performance.
