separateurCreated with Sketch.

The power of motivation to transform your life

Man on Bridge
whatsappfacebooktwitter-xemailnative
Javier Fiz Pérez - published on 01/16/18
whatsappfacebooktwitter-xemailnative

Form your emotional intelligence so you can fulfill your dreams.

Help Aleteia continue its mission by making a tax-deductible donation. In this way, Aleteia’s future will be yours as well.


Donate with just 3 clicks

*Your donation is tax deductible!

Motivation is the will to strive, to achieve the goals that we set for ourselves, and to exert the effort to meet personal needs. Its presence is the cause of our actions and its absence leads to non-action. To move forward, to motivate ourselves to action, we must overcome our mental and emotional limits and, above all, focus on concrete interests.

How to change your life, and where to start

The power of emotional intelligence is fundamental for embarking on a new path and for maximizing our potential on our current one. Thanks to it, we can detect and identify priorities and needs, and create the conditions to activate our will.

Intelligence is not sufficient for success in today’s world: to get ahead, we need creative ideas and, above all, determination. We are all creators of our own life according to our beliefs and our values.

Today, getting ahead is not necessarily granted to the best or the smartest, but to those who dare to develop their dreams and make them reality with clarity and determination.

Benefits of strong personal motivation

  1. Perseverance and self-confidence
  2. Capacity to transform one’s view of the past in a positive way
  3. Managing negative thoughts to stimulate the creation of new solutions
  4. Managing change with flexibility, and constant personal adaptation
  5. Flexibility and error correction as a means of learning more
  6. Creativity so as to be the artisan of one’s own life

The psychological theory of the “Big Five”

There are five important dimensions of character that help us to better understand our own personality:

  1.  Extraversion. This trait is related to the overall well-being of our relationships with other people.
  2.  Agreeableness. This characteristic describes one’s tendency to adapt to others, shown in behavior that demonstrates trust in others, cooperation, or sympathy.
  3.  Conscientiousness. It refers to a person’s capacity for discipline, responsibility, persistence, and an orientation toward achievement.
  4.  Neuroticism. A trait related to a person’s emotional stability and resilience, or lack thereof. The least neurotic, most stable individuals are carefree, self-confident, and relaxed.
  5.  Openness to new experiences. This indicates an appetite for novelty, use of imagination, curiosity, and openness to change.

A variety of free on-line tests are available to help you measure yourself on each of these five factors; there are also more professional, paid tools, which might be more reliable. Most tests also give you a more in-depth analysis of your results that can help you identify some of your personality strengths and weaknesses.  This, in turn, can serve as a guide for recognizing and naming the things that truly motivate you and the ways you can best contribute to the good of your family and society; it can also help you see what internal obstacles you need to overcome. This knowledge, if applied to your everyday life and tasks, can help you orient your actions towards what really makes you happy and fulfilled, and there is no better motivation than that.

The most important thing is to keep in mind that, regardless of our personality type, we all have the capacity to give the best of ourselves. We just need to activate our will to pursue something worthwhile in our personal lives and in our social, family, or professional development.


WOMAN ANGER
Read more:
How to turn your 5 common weaknesses into strengths

This article was originally published in the Spanish edition of Aleteia, and has been translated and adapted here for English-speaking readers by Martha Fernández-Sardina and Matthew Green.

Did you enjoy this article? Would you like to read more like this?

Get Aleteia delivered to your inbox. It’s free!

Aleteia exists thanks to your donations

Help us to continue our mission of sharing Christian news and inspiring stories. Please make a donation today! Take advantage of the end of the year to get a tax deduction for 2024.

banner image
Top 10
See More
Newsletter
Did you enjoy this article? Would you like to read more like this?

Get Aleteia delivered to your inbox. It’s free!