Do you know one of the biggest fallacies in modern psychology? It is the idea that theories on human behavior, and even human brain chemistry, can be tested on animals. The scientific community is having a very difficult time coming to terms with even the notion that people use the same part of their brains for different things, and yet it would explain so much.
People who have excellent logic and people who have excellent emotional intelligence may be using the same parts of their brain but putting said parts to use in a different way. We may be able to map the primitive part of our brain, such as the part that monitors chemical production, but we may never be able to measure and map which parts of the brain do what because people are just too different. So the question begs, what does all of this have to do with staying motivated when working from home?
A Biochemical Machine with Different Brain Schematics to Other People
Working from home requires a massive amount of motivation because no matter how fun your job is, it will always turn into a grind because you have to do it all the time. Tobogganing is great fun, but it is not so much fun if you have to do it eight hours every day. Every task eventually turns into a daily grind.
To combat this grind, people take all sorts of advice from motivationalists. They plan, they self-talk, they keep a positive mental attitude, and so forth. And, the weird thing is that these pieces of motivation advice work… for a while… and then they stop working and you feel like you are back on the treadmill. What’s the deal with that?
Forcing a Square Block into a Round Hole
The fact is that you are trying to use other people’s motivational methods to push yourself to work, which is no more intelligent than trying to force a square block through a round hole. As overly emphasized in the introduction, there is a growing belief that the way people’s minds work are very different from one person to the next, which explains how people like Freud can be 100% right and 100% wrong. It explains how some people gain weight because of boredom and others because of thanatophobia, and others from childhood trauma, and others from depression.
What Other Answer is There?
If there is no cookie-cutter way to motivate you while you work from home, then what alternatives are there? Firstly, you need to understand what “not” to do. You need to know how NOT to beat the grind because bad advice is more damaging than doing nothing.
Secondly, you need to start concentrating on your success. You need to forget silly advice about learning from your mistakes and make a concerted effort to learn from your successes so that you may replicate them more often.
Learning from Your Losses is What Losers Do
People examine their losses and learn from them, whereas they never examine their successes because “why try to fix what is not broken.” Yet, a full understanding of why you did succeed is what is needed in order to repeat your success.
Take a look at the movie industry. Why is the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie so great and the others so lackluster?
Go back and watch it and you will see it is nostalgia. The reason is because the creators “thought” they understood the reasons why the first one was a success, and they created the subsequent movies based on that false premise. With the second movie, they thought it was the mysticism, so they pumped up the goofy ghost stuff. For the third, they thought it was the swashbuckling, so there were more action-packed swordy set pieces. They even thought it was Captain Jack who was the reason for the first movie’s success, so they made a movie with just him in it and it was terrible. If the creators had taken the weeks and months required to fully examine “WHY” they succeeded the first time, they wouldn’t have messed up so many times trying to repeat their success.
Point Your Sails in This Direction
Think of it as a personal study, and cite the last few times you worked hard, long and without cease. What motivated you on those occasions? What went right? What promoted your motivation and success? Why did you complete a paid bookkeeping course but not the free one? Why did you agree to present at a conference despite your fear of public speaking?
Do not concentrate on why you stopped or failed, concentrate on what pushed you in the first place. Craft and create your own “personal motivation” methods based on your previous successes. In this way, and only in this way, will you ever create a pattern of success that perpetuates your personal motivation while working from home.
