Managing
Motivation and Change
Change is often a fact of life that many people seem to fear
and so when the need for change appears, we often try to hide
from it as long as possible. Finding the motivation to
implement the change is often hard to find. However, motivation
and change go hand-in-hand, and so if you have to do one, you
need the other in order to successfully move from one place to
another in your life.
Motivation and change could be in something very personal such
as in losing weight. You are told by your doctor, for example,
that you must make changes in your lifestyle and diet if you
are to either become healthier, or to help with a medical
problem. Although you have known for some time that you needed
to lose weight and become fitter and healthier, you haven’t had
the motivation to do so.
Now, with the doctor’s recommendation, your health issues give
you that missing motivation so that you are now more receptive
to putting more energy into watching what you eat and ensuring
that you exercise regularly. Motivation and change in this
situation are positive and you know that without implementing
the changes required, there will be a very negative effect on
your health.
Where motivation and change clash however, is when something
happens that you don’t really want but are unable to control.
For example, if your employer decides to change your job
specification so that you are working different hours that
don’t fit your lifestyle, or wants you to start doing
additional work without additional salary, you aren’t going to
be motivated to willing make these changes to your working day
– you won’t have any choice especially if your employer
indicates that if you don’t comply you will be in breach of
your contract and he will replace you with an employee who will
do these things, but although that may motivate you to make the
change, it won’t be in a positive way.
Accepting that motivation and change almost always come
together, and then further accepting that although you can’t
always control the situations that arise that result in the
changes being needed, you can control how you react to them. As
in the case where the doctor tells you that you must make
change in order to keep healthy, you will usually do this, but
will be more motivated to do it well if you approach it with a
positive frame of mind, you are doing it not because you are
told, but because you know it’s the right thing to do, and you
know you will benefit from it.
In the case of the unreasonable employer, you can’t change his
mind, but you can control how you react, you can accept the
changes gracefully – and then keep a look out for another job,
and in the meantime do the best you can with the new tasks so
that you will get a reference which will get you the new job!
You can also use the opportunity of the enforced new tasks to
learn new skills which again will add to your job chances by
having something extra to put on your resume. Acceptance of the
situation doesn’t mean agreement, it just means that you stop
using energy on fighting something you know is inflexible, and
find the best way possible to get on and implement the
necessary change – procrastinating about it will only delay the
inevitable, it won’t stop the change occurring.
Motivation and change doesn’t always happen for the best, but
if you can manage to turn the change into something positive,
you will find that your motivation towards the change will
increase, and the change will not seem as
traumatic.
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