Essay on Unlock Your Goal-Setting Power: Motivation & Self-Regulation

Motivation can be defined as the personal decision to willing to fully do all that it takes to achieve a specific goal that you have set in life. Different motivation theories explain how people work to meet the goals that they have set in life. Goals are the necessary foundation of all motivations. The typical self-regulatory theory deals with people's self-regulation and organization to meet the goals you have set in life. According to this theory, feedback is essential. The feedback motivates someone to work and achieve their goals. It also gives them the energy to continue working on even in times of difficulty.

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The feedback embodies four essential sub-functions, which include; a reference, value, comparison, and an output. The reference is the big goal that one wants to achieve. It is the more significant treasure that you want to accomplish in your life within a given time. On the other hand, reference can be the desire you have to work very much and avoid some undesired thing in life. For instance, a student may study very much not because they want to pass, but because they fear failure.

The input is the reflection of indications coming in. These indications show how far you are from achieving the goal that you have in life. It shows you whether you are on the right track towards the achievement of your goals or you are working against your goal. The input also shows you how far you are from the anti-goal or the undesired things in life. It will either motivate you or demotivate you towards achieving your goal.

In the case where you are moving towards the goal, you will feel motivated to work towards achieving your goal. On the other hand, if you are not making the right steps towards achieving your goal, you will feel demotivated towards working on your goals. The output is the behavior that someone adopts to achieve their goals. It is more of an internal feeling which drives you towards your goal and against your anti-goal. It helps one correct the mistakes you have made in life or avoid activities that may hinder you from achieving your goal. The output shapes your purpose and the steps you are taking in achieving your goal.

Comparison is an indicator of how far you are from achieving your goal. It also tells you how now you are from the undesired purposes of life or the things that work against your goal. The signal that one gets from comparison will directly affect their emotional state either positively or negatively. You will receive a positive emotion when you realize that you are making the right process in life. You will even develop a sense of self-love and boost your self-esteem. On the other hand, when you realize that you are making negative progress, you will end up developing a negative emotion and a feeling of self-denial. At this stage, it is upon you to decide whether you are going to change your actions and follow the right path of life or even give up on the goal you were working on (Baumgartner, 2008).

There are two types of feedback loops. The reference is the state you want to assume at the end of the day. The benchmark helps you shape your behavior and adopt the right track towards achieving your goal. Feedback loops include the goals, the desired state you want to assume at the end of the day, the opportunities that you meet on your way while working on your goals. The foundational motivation pushes you towards achieving your goal (Baumgartner, 2008). For instance, the burning desire for one to buy food will force them to get out and work to get something to eat.

The discrepancy-enhancing loops use an undesired end state as its reference. This is the end which one works towards avoiding in the best way possible. One works very hard to increase the gap between the behavior one is assuming and the undesired anti-goal they are working against. There are two ends of achieving a goal. One may work towards a given reference or work against a given dictionary. The two ends push one towards achieving their goals. For instance, the push towards finding food is different from the drive to avoid an enemy. However, some goals may apply both in the case of preventing anti-goal and working towards a given purpose. For instance, one may look for money to avoid poverty. At the same time, the same person may look for money to become rich in life. One may be motivated towards working on a goal because they feel it is nice to have something or associate with it. For instance, one may prefer buying a car because they feel good when they are driving their vehicle.

On the other hand, one may work on a goal because they just have to do it. For instance, a parent may work hard to feed his children because he just cannot live with hungry children. The ideal part of motivation drives one towards a given goal they have set in life. In the perfect concept, one has a good picture in mind. On the contrary, the "ought to" sense generally insinuates the sense of avoidance in a person (Swain, 2015). In this reasoning, one has a negative picture in their mind. For instance, a father will work to prevent poverty in his family. People may be motivated by the approach motivation when they see the different opportunities they have in life. They may work on something because they have seen a better chance. One may also work on something because they have seen other people succeed in the same way.

People may also chase their goals in life because they fear the threats associated with not working on their goals. For instance, one may work on their goals because they fear seeing how other unsuccessful people in society are suffering. Success brings about the feeling of excitement and happiness. On the other hand, failure brings about a sense of self-denial, anger, and sadness in an individual (Gruber, 2012). The fundamental emotional factors are; valence, arousal, dominance, and predictiveness. Valence ranges from the pleasant side of life to the unpleasant side. People cherish pleasant things in life and avoid nasty things. Arousal ranges from the love of something to hate and hostility. Dominance differs from a feeling of being in control of everything to developing a sense of anxiety and loss in control of activities around you.

Predictiveness ranges from the unpredictability of events, which leads to surprise on many occasions to the predictability of facts, which often leads to a sense of guilt in somebody. Sometimes the environment may work for or against the achievement of a given goal. The environment may provide you with the opportunity to pursue a goal. The same climate may not present you with the opportunity to pursue your goal. In most cases, people give up when the environment does not offer them the opportunity to pursue their goals (Lang, 2013). However, sometimes somebody is forced to seek a given purpose even if the environment does not allow them to do so. For instance, when someone is in dire need of money, the person may end up doing all they can even though the environment does not present them with the opportunity to do so (Lang, 2013). Some incidences push you to decide whether you should work on a given goal or not.

You will ask yourself if it is worth working to achieve the given goal. When the environment presents you with the opportunity to work on a purpose, and you miss working on the target, you will end up developing a feeling of sadness and regret in life. You will wish to have another opportunity to achieve the goal. On the contrary, when the environment presents you with the opportunity to pursue the target and you end up achieving the goal, you will develop some sense of self-love and happiness. Joy comes in when you feel like life has presented you with a given opportunity, and you end up utilizing the opportunities you have in your exposure. You end up feeling good about yourself. Sadness takes up the better part of you when life presents you with a chance but you don't utilize the opportunity in your exposure. You will, therefore, develop a sense of missed opportunity and end up regretting not using the possibility that you had.

You develop a sense of attentiveness when you feel like life has not presented you with the right opportunity of growth. You will always be on the outlook to ensure that you don't miss prospects in life when they are present in the future. This gives you some sense of hope for better things to come in the future. Anger comes about when you feel like life did not present you with the right opportunity, and you still don't have hope for better things in the future. You feel wasted and develop a sense of dislike. In connection to the life matrix presented, you create a sense of self-assurance when you feel like there is some threat in life, but you successfully avoid it (Baumgartner, 2008). Fear comes in when you think that there is some fear in your life, but you have not yet come up with an avoidance technic to avoid the threat. You develop the fear that the danger may catch up with you and ruin your life.

Surprise comes in when you feel like there is no threat in your life; therefore, you don't indulge in activities geared towards avoiding the danger, and consequently, you realize that threat did not ruin your life. Guilt comes about when you think that threat is not present, but you are suspicious that the danger might be there in the future. This way, you end up developing an avoidance technique to avoid the threat. Later on, you will realize that the danger was not there and hence create a sense of guilt within yourself.

References

Baumgartner, Hans, Rik Pieters, C. Haugtvedt, C., Herr, P., & Kardes, F. (2008). Goal- directed consumer behavior. Handbook of consumer psychology, 367-92. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230794595_The_Handbook_of_Consumer_Psychology

Gruber, A. J., & McDonald, R. J. (2012). Context, emotion, and the strategic pursuit of goals: interactions among multiple brain systems controlling motivated behavior. Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, 6, 50. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22876225

Lang, P. J., & Bradley, M. M. (2013). Appetitive and defensive motivation: Goal-directed or Goal-determined? Emotions Review, 5(3), 230-234. doi: 10.1177/1754073913477511

Swain, D., Scarpa, A., White, S., & Laugeson, E. (2015). Emotion dysregulation and anxiety in adults with ASD: Does social motivation play a role?. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 45(12), 3971-3977. doi: 10.1007/s10803-015-2567-6