Human body is a complex machine that exists in nature, carrying out so many different processes simultaneously that it becomes quite impossible to fathom the rarest of the rare possibility that such a thing could exist in reality. One of the greatest and most important feature of this system is to keep the body alive. To do this, our mind has found very creative ways to motivate us to keep doing things which are essential for us, though in present times, functioning of this system has become rather complicated and non linear.
Talking about prehistoric times, the two important tasks a person had to carry out was to find the food and to sense out the danger that lurked around in the environment such as sabre tooths and different predators that would kill us in an instant. The brain had divided a particular task in two steps. Let us take the example of gathering food, that was primarily hunting. The first step was to actively search for food. In this process the food is considered the end result that you achieve when you search for it, stalk the prey and then hunt it down. To motivate a person to carry out this rather laborious process the brain releases chemical known as dopamine. Now, what this chemical does is that it increases anticipation and makes us believe that we will get something extraordinary at the end of the process, thus making us do all the hard work. Note that it does not provides any satisfaction or sense of achievement. On the other hand if released in excess it can have a quite negative effect. The second step of the process is when we had actually acquired the food. Then a new chemical is released known as GABA. It helps us get that high which we get from the sense of achievement. It helps us feel like we have succeeded in our task. So every time we carry out a certain task, dopamine ensures that we keep following our path, cause we cannot see the final reward but as we have experienced it once in the past, what we do is anticipate and when we finally get it GABA ensures that we get a feeling of fulfillment. This is basically the main principle of psychological motivation. Also when we did the physical work endorphins are also released which are basically the painkillers. Oxytocin, which is helpful in promoting team activities and generates the high from belonging to a group, a sense of teamwork is also released during the process.
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Now this bodily process gives rise to the concept of reward and punishment system which in technical terms could be extrinsic motivation. When we do something according to society, we get a reward.It gives us pleasure, it makes us feel good and dopamine ensures we repeat the process. On the other hand when something wrong is done by us we associate it with pain, that is a negative feeling, thus in future we try to avoid doing the same thing again.
The thing about extrinsic motivation is that it becomes predictable and is quite short lived. It also works only when the task is rather straightforward. Remember how parents give their kids rewards when they do good in studies. It promotes certain kind of favourable behaviour. This is good for kids, but as a grown up person this is not the case. The adults can see through these traps and might not do those necessary things. In these situation comes another type of motivation, that is the intrinsic motivation.
This type of motivation is dependent upon a person’s internal reasons. This is actually a type of self motivation system. It depends on things like autonomy over an individual’s life and work, the happiness achieved from mastery of a required skill and the ever present question of the purpose of one’s work and their life.
In big firms and organizations, to this day, the method of motivation employed is that of extrinsic one. They focus on external factors rather than internal. This creates an unmotivated workforce that becomes quite stagnant and decreases productivity. Instead of this the companies should try to align the individual’s vision and and mission to their vision and mission, resulting in a self motivated employee, which can take on challenging tasks and projects for the organization. Also, intrinsic motivational factors cost less but can have a lasting effect on the performance of the staff. With the advancement in studies, focus is going towards this issue and many multinational companies are putting their efforts in this.
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