Are you feeling unmotivated and stuck?

Don’t worry; rebooting our drive system and increasing motivation is a natural ongoing process in healthy brains. Our brain’s innate drive system is “hardwired” to help us survive, conquer, and experience pleasure, and we can learn how to reboot and easily increase our motivation when we feel stuck. Learning how to tap into our internal drive is essential for happiness and success. Thanks to our internal reward system, we can reignite our brains to help us work towards achieving both simple and complex goals.

Why do we sometimes feel stuck and struggle to take the needed action to succeed?

In today’s complex world, our desire to achieve our goals can be derailed by internal conflicting desires and outside forces. If we spend too much time worrying, our system can throw us into a fight or flight state, hindering clear thoughts and actions or causing inaction altogether.

Most of us have experienced the pleasure and rewards of the brain’s reward system, which drives and increases motivation. For instance, receiving praise for a job well done or experiencing the emotional satisfaction of completing a project. So, what puts us at risk of losing our drive? What stops us when we give up before reaching our goal?

In my role as an executive coach and trainer, I have witnessed these three scenarios, which prevent the ability to increase motivation and hinders top performance.

3 Top Motivation Killers

• Negative Stress: Not all stress is bad (it can help increase motivation), but once we reach the tipping point of too much stress and burnout, it is difficult to increase motivate. Burnout can also cause us to spiral downward emotionally. The bottom line is that negative stress can significantly diminish clarity, productivity, and emotional upset.
• Poor Physical Health: What we eat, whether we exercise, and our sleeping patterns directly impact brain health and cognition. Poor choices and neglecting our physical health can dramatically affect our performance.
• Negative Communication: The words we use matter. Our internal thoughts and the language we use with others have associated meanings that impact us consciously and unconsciously. Each word triggers different emotions within us based on past experiences and learned associations. For example, consider the word “No” versus the word “Yes.” Whether you say or hear these two small words, the emotions generated impact your actions. Take a moment to test this concept: Say “No” out loud, followed by “Yes.” Observe your initial emotional response to each word. Note what emotions rise to the surface. When thoughts and words with negative associations outweigh those positive, our performance can be impacted.

Activate and Increase Motivation with Ease 

By understanding the basics of how our brain functions, we can learn to reignite a stalled passion or stay on track to complete a difficult task. A mindful pause, for example, is a powerful tool to refocus and spark motivation.

When entering a state of relaxation, we send fewer signals to our prefrontal cortex (key brain structure of our executive brain) and give our mind space to connect with our intuition and self-awareness. During this pause, we become aware of tension in our body, unhealthy ruminating thoughts, and self-defeating patterns.

As we become aware of mental and emotional roadblocks, we can make conscious decisions to shift harmful behaviors into actions that align with our desires and goals. Thus, creating feelings of success and activating motivation in the reward center of our brain!

By taking a few mindful moments throughout the day to “check-in,” we amplify motivation, improve cognitive performance, side steps “motivation kills, to have more success, fulfillment, and joy in different areas of our lives.

Increase Motivation Through Cognitive Performance

Cognitive Performance methodologies are designed to empower you and your teams with tools to stay motivated and live with more ease and satisfaction ­– while performing at the highest level. Founded in evidence-based neuroscience and neuropsychology principles, the CARE^© framework leverages our executive brain functions to break harmful patterns, enhance motivation, and effect neuroplasticity change.

Download the Become Extraordinary! eBook to learn 7 additional techniques to get unstuck and rekindle your motivation!