How to use psychology to increase your motivation

When you first start your business or head into the world of entrepreneurship, there is a real excitement about it.

But what happens if, over time, your excitement turns a little flat?

You lose your mojo and you can’t seem to maintain a consistent level of motivation? What happens when your business feels a little out of alignment and you aren't sure how to reboot your motivation around that? 

What happens when YOU are motivated but your team just aren’t?

For many entrepreneurs, the answer to a lack of motivation ends up as doing things like:

The problem with all of these ‘answers’ is they don’t really deal with the core of the problem.

Understanding motivation means understanding what drives motivation from the inside out.

One way of understanding your own motivation is covered in of Episode 4 of the Inside Out Entrepreneur® podcast which you can listen to HERE. 

For those those of you who prefer to read, this article will walk you through a really well established principle of psychology known as Self Determination Theory. This is a theory established by two very well known psychologists called Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. 

In this article, I will explain how self-determination theory works when it comes to motivating YOU and keeping motivated when running your business. 

Self Determination Theory (SDT) is a psychological theory that is based on an assumption that your (human) need for growth of some form drives your behaviour.

The theory is based on you being responsible for what happens and how much you grow (or not).

This can be a tough pill to swallow in Western culture where we are trained to look outside of ourselves for reasons why we might not be succeeding or growing.

SDT firmly turns the spotlight back to you.

The premise of SDT is that if you are self-determined, you feel content and in control of your life which impacts your wellbeing whereas if you are not self-determined, you feel a loss of control and you feel that other people control your life. 

If you were to look at this through an energetic lens (which takes it beyond the original SDT theory conclusions), it might be said that with strong self-determination, you may see life as happening FOR YOU. Whereas with weak self-determination you might see life as happening TO YOU.

If you believe life happens TO YOU, it instantly puts you in a lower energetic frequency whereby you end up feeling like a victim of your circumstances.

If you believe life happens FOR YOU, you are in a higher energetic state and you are more likely to feel in control and see life’s adversities as potential opportunities.

SDT says that all human beings are driven by 3 psychological needs and that your sense of wellbeing and contentment with various aspects of life are based on these three needs.

In other words, for you to experience psychological growth and feel motivated when building your business, working with your team or just generally interacting with others, you need these 3 needs. 

The three essential needs that you need (and which underpin your motivation) are:

To help you remember these, these spell out C.A.R (and if you want a visual story to remember that with, listen to the podcast HERE as I explain how you can remember this more visually during that episode). 

Competence is about knowing what you are good at and knowing what you can master.

Competence is not to be confused with excellence. Or, the most common slip up for many female entrepreneurs  - complete perfection or comparison to others which can both impact on your feelings of competence. 

If you are interested in learning more about the things that cause you to slip up, see my Emotional Survival Patterns® Quiz here).  

Competence doesn’t mean only doing what you know already. It also includes stretching yourself to learn new skills. Mastery is closely related to competence but Mastery is a slightly higher level. Competence is simply a feeling that you have enough skills or are able to acquire enough skills to achieve the goals you want to achieve in your life and business. 

As you can imagine, for entrepreneurs, having a sense of autonomy is very important. It is likely one of the major reasons, you aren’t actually an employee because employees tend to have lower levels of autonomy.

Autonomy is a feeling rather than a thing. It is when you feel that you are fully in control of your own behaviour and you can take action, and be in the right state to manifest what it is that you are trying to do in your business. 

Relatedness and connection are the third element and pull on a very strong human need to belong. A lack of belonging can result in mental health challenges.

Relatedness or connection with others is about feeling you are able to make connections with others and then successfully doing so. That could be with your team, your prospects, your clients or contractors and it could also be with your family and peers.

Two of the Emotional Survival Patterns® that often get in the way of this are the Hider ESP (which shows up when you become afraid to comment, show up or engage with others) or the Isolator ESP (which shows up when you push others away because you find it hard to trust others). You can find out more about the ESPs here (or you can join the Wait list for my courses that show you how to live a life and build a business free from the self-sabotage that comes with the ESPs. 

The easiest way to show you this is to give some examples of a person who has a high self-determination and someone who has a low self-determination in a business context.

Typically, if you are low in self-determination you look to the OUTSIDE world if you are struggling in business or life. You might be very reactive, you might easily get angry and blame others for your struggles. Or, you might be lethargic or in victim mode (“why is this happening to me?”). A low self-determination may also show up with a refusal to take responsibility for your actions (especially mistakes) and an inability to move forward as a result.

By contrast, if you have high self-determination, you will typically look to your INNER world if you are struggling in life or business. If there is a problem, you would recognise your part in it, know you can do something about it and then take action to correct your path to facilitate change. Someone with high self-determination will take full credit for their successes but full responsibility for their failures too. 

To put some flesh on the bones, here are some concrete examples of how self-determination should show up in your own business: 

What underpins all of this is that you are aiming to ensure that you set up an internal locus of control so you feel like your behaviour (or your teams' behaviour) will have an influence on outcomes. So much of this is about self-belief and self-worth which are covered in my programs (here). 

Building more self-determination requires focusing on building up the core principles that under pin it ie: Competence, Autonomy and Relatedness. 

Some of the steps you can take are:

To summarise, here is a comparison of self-determined behaviour vs non self-determined behaviour: 

Self determination theory can really help you understanding your own motivation or lack of.

Knowing how well you are managing the 3 element of CAR (competence, autonomy and relatedness) will help you to avoid burning your business to the ground when you are having a tough moment or your motivation drops.

You might just need to tweak one of the 3, for example, increasing your autonomy or competence. 

Awareness of the inner workings of determination is the very first step. But often work on your mind alone isn't enough. Here are some other simple resources you can use: 

If you have any questions, just visit the Contact Me page and you can reach out there.