Neurological secrets to motivation
What moves us to take action is connected to what moves us to feel!
I recently read an article by Joel D Canfield in which he asks ‘Why Find Your Why?” In other words, why find out what really motivates you? Here’s a short excerpt of his description of how your brain works to move you to action:
“The part of your brain you’re using to read these words is the neo-cortex. Your neo-cortex understands language, does math when it’s forced to and can even figure out organic chemistry. Your neo-cortex is pretty smart. But it has no feelings. That means it is incapable of making decisions–and it can’t create motivation.
The part of your brain which just reacted emotionally to that sentence, feeling amusement, annoyance, disbelief–that’s your limbic system. Your limbic system understands feelings and is where all the decisions in your life are made. It would be nice if our neocortex, the higher reasoning part of our brain, could have a little chat with our limbic system, to present facts and figures, a reasonable, logical argument, and compel it to make the rational decision our neo-cortex already thinks it made.
That won’t work. The limbic system has no capacity for language.
Despite this enormous barrier, the limbic system and neo-cortex communicate every day using the abstract concepts we call emotions. These two parts of our brain have agreed that certain words represent emotions. This leads us to the question that trumps ‘what’ and ‘how’.”
What we feel is influenced by what we value
The core message of this website and blog is that your values are behind your ability to effectively motivate yourself to achieve peak performance in your profession or business. Joel’s short article explains some of the neurological underpinnings of motivation and how what’s important to you (what elicits strong feelings) largely takes place beyond your conscious awareness – a useful fact to be consciously aware of!
Your values are your unconscious motivators
In practical terms, your values are your unconscious motivators, and all really successful men and women have one thing in common – they are consciously aware of their values. In other words, they have discovered how to be consciously aware of what motivates them and to make conscious, strategic choices about what actions to take, based on living their values.
More than 20 years of research and practical application
I have spent more than 20 years applying the knowledge of researchers from across the globe to help professionals and business owners achieve peak performance in their roles by identifying what REALLY motivates them and showing them how to apply that self-knowledge to achieve high levels of success by working consistently in their Peak Performance Zone. In the next few months, I will be launching a series of online training opportunities that will be exclusive to members of a new online community for peak performers. This will be launched from a brand new website – details to be announced closer to the launch date.