What's the connection?

We all know that motivation is a great thing but how can it be connected to self confidence?
And how can someone claim that self motivated people are more confident than their peers?

In order to resolve that mystery lets first try to understand how motivation happens. You might think that motivation happens randomly or out of the blue but in fact it happens when your mind decides that the energy its going to help you allocate won't be wasted for nothing.

OK let me explain more. Your subconscious mind will only motivate you if it made sure that your efforts will yield some results. If for example your mind made sure that you will get good grades if you studied then it will motivate you to study while if it wasn't sure about your performance then it might prevent you from getting motivated.

Remember the last time you was really excited about something? This happened because your mind gave you the needed energy because it was sure that you will be able to do that thing.

In my article about why indifference happens i explained how people lose enthusiasm when their minds believe that their efforts will be in vain. In other words motivation is all about conserving your energy and putting it in the right direction.

Why self motivated people are more confident than others

Based on the previous facts we can conclude that a person won't get motivated before:

1) He is sure he can make it
2) He knows about the steps he should take in order to reach his goal or at least the starting point
3) He is sure he won't be wasting his time for nothing

In other words motivation doesn't happen before a person feels confident in his abilities, skills or himself.
But does this mean that people who lack motivation aren't self confident?

The short answer is no simply because you can be confident about your ability to do a certain task but lack confidence when it comes to another task. In other words a person's self confidence is not fixed but it changes according to the task he is doing.

For example you can be very confident about studying but lack confidence when it comes to making friends and this is why you might be very motivated to study but lack motivation when it comes to meeting new people.

Why do i lose motivation fast?

Ever wondered why you sometimes start a new thing with a lot of enthusiasm then lose your motivation few days later?

This happens because your beliefs about your ability to do a certain task can sometimes change. If for example you were so excited to start a new business because you believed you can become rich fast then after few days some new facts appeared that made you believe that it might not be that easy then you might lose the motivation you had earlier.

Because motivation is strongly connected to your beliefs about your ability to achieve a goal or to do a certain task it can swing wildly if your beliefs changed. (see also Are you afraid to get motivated?)

When this energy becomes negative

You might not be motivated to do a task that is not that important to you and this won't affect you much. For example you might not have enough motivation to wash your car. In such a case you might experience a little bit of guilt for keeping your car unclean and that's it. But what if the task you can't find motivation for is extremely important to you? What if you are not motivated to do something that really matters to you?

The short answer is: Depression happens. In my book, The ultimate guide to getting over depression i explained how depression happens when we lose faith in our extremely important plans.

After all if your mind thinks that you will never be able to reach an important goal why will it bother to motivate you or provide you with enough energy to pursue it?

So the takeaway is, if you want to get motivated work on building your self confidence in that life area that matters to you.

The book The ultimate guide to getting over depression was released by 2knowmself, the book provides a 100% guarantee for feeling better else you will be refunded. 2knowmysef is not a complicated medical website nor a boring online encyclopedia but rather a place where you will find simple, to the point and effective information that is backed by psychology and presented in a simple way that you can understand and apply. If you think that this is some kind of marketing hype then see what other visitors say about 2knowmyself.

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