My dear niece is thinking about motivation and sharing her thougts with others - U go girl!! This prompted me to make a few comments a priori (that is 'before hand') about motivation because there is so much 'stinking thinking' on this topic.
The main myth about motivation is that it is a characteristic of a person. This manifests itself in statements from one person to another like 'you are not motivated', 'get motivated', and 'I am a motivated person'. I attempt to help my students through this myth with scenes from the movie Rudy. After showing early scenes from the movie I ask, "who is the most motivated perosn in the movie?" Students think this is a trick question given the name of the movie :-)
I then ask, "was Rudy the most motivated student? the most motivated worker? the most motivated to start a dairy farm or to be a priest? to get married or buy a house?" In fact his girl friend Sheri was really motivated to get married and buy a house, maybe more than Rudy was to play football at Notre Dame. I suggest to the students that the movie have been named "Sheri". :-) :-)
The point is that motivation is NOT a characteristic of a perosn but is a psychological process by which a person directs his/her attentional resources toward a specific behavior and its associated outcomes and then the intensity by which they continue applying their personal resources (mind, emeotion, physical energy, etc.).
Thus motivation has no meaning absent an associated targeted behavior. What most people (especially parents speaking to their teenage kids)mean when they say "you are not motivated", they mean "you are not motivated to do what i want you to be doing." While a kid may not be attending to studying for school, they may be intense at playing computer games - just a different targeted behavior.
There's lot's more but enough for now!!
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