Motivation

Authenticity is the foundation of what keeps you true to living the life you strive for. It is the deep and meaningful measure that keeps you accountable and proves to you that you are on the right track. When it works for you in this way it has a very powerful impact. Authenticity is the fuel that drives motivation.

In his historical paper, A Theory of Human Motivation, A. H. Maslow identifies “5 basic needs” (psychological, safety, belongingness & love, esteem and self-actualisation), each building on top of one another. Once the first two have been satisfied then we can begin to build a life for ourselves and in our own focussed formula for success, we see these as achieving a sense of belonging and love through improving personal relations with others, achieving esteem through conscientiousness, and self-actualisation through the achievement of aspirational outcomes. Motivation is what drives us forwards.

When reflecting on what motivate you, we invite you to think about your values, beliefs and strengths.

Values

Values are the guiding qualities that an individual holds most dear and for which they are willing to stand by, that they live by from the inside out, and in so doing dramatically improve enjoyment, performance and well-being, leading to greater satisfaction with life. Honouring our values (and the choices we make) gives rise to us living authentic lives and therein improving our satisfaction with life. We can live by these every day by putting our values into action by leveraging our strengths.

Beliefs

Beliefs have a powerful influence on our lives, they can be empowering and limiting. They come at us from all angles and rarely do we ever question or explore them in more depth. Amplifying empowering beliefs and reframing limiting beliefs using evidence-based tools will have a dramatic impact on your performance. The great news is that beliefs can be changed and boosted in support of your authenticity.

Strengths

When we talk about strengths we mean “character strengths”. Character is part of your personality that other people tend to admire, respect and cherish, and which makes you trustworthy. Character strengths fall into the 5 virtues of wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and transcendence. Character strengths are often expressed in the important domains of your life and form the basic elements of our identity and we express them through our thoughts and actions we improve our performance and connection to our sense of authenticity, leading to greater satisfaction with life (Niemiec & McGrath).