The Meaning of Motivation- A Learner's take

A lot of people ask me, "How do you define motivation?"

The Oxford Dictionary provides a concise meaning to the word but fails to convey its actual essence. My answer to this question is "Being in one's natural state is being motivated. The process of bringing one back to that state is called 'Motivation' ". Now, this answer poses two more questions, the first being "What is Natural State?" and the second being "Why do you use the phrase 'bringing one back'? What if its just not there?"

Well, first of all let me tell you about natural state. Our natural state is the state we are born in; stress-free, happy, in-the-moment. But as we grow up, see successes and failures, we lose this natural happy state of ours. We want the occasional trigger of "good" events to bring us to that state and enjoy it before we start looking for another trigger. Our natural state is a state of continuing happiness, no stress, no anxiety, and no fear. In the natural state there is no need of a trigger to make us feel stress-free. We are happy for just being whatever be are, being happy because we are!

Now, over to the second question. If you read between the lines of the previous paragraph, you can infer the answer. The state of being motivated is our natural state, our original state. Any state with a negative emotion is not our original state. So, analogically speaking, when you get motivated, you do not install some alien software into your brain's software, instead you just use an operating system tool which is normally inaccessible.

Well, as the title suggests, this is just a learner's take. As I always say, "Take it the way you want it, but be sure you have taken it that way."

With reference to stress-levels, I shall, in one of the upcoming posts, talk about the relationship of motivation levels and biology.

My cousin Abhigyan Banerjee, an uber-geek and a proficient writer, has started his own tech blog, Technokracy. Do check it out.


Till then,
Happiness... :)