Greetings to the students and teachers gathered here. We have always periods of time in life when we have thought that it is difficult to move forward and that everything would cease to exist at that moment. However, despite these difficulties, we always managed to come out of them and lead normal lives later.
We have heard many stories of people who have overcome difficult situations to achieve great things in life. All the instances point out to a basic human trait that is motivation. From the point of the discipline of psychology, motivation would mean something that is innate in human beings.
Motivation from a psychological perspective is a drive to satisfy a need. To break it down into the ways in which it manifests in humans and other organisms. There is the existence of a need or the absence of something that is needed in the individual. This absence or the need in the individual creates a sort of a discomfort and difficulty for the person which then drives them to seek for means to fulfill that need. For instance take thirst, the absence of hydration creates a need for water and causes discomfort and this discomfort is overcome by drinking water. Needs can be as basic as this or could be psychological and social ones set to attain a bigger goal. For instance, the ambition to become a leader could emerge from a need for power and this would put individuals into a course of action where they seek to attain that goal.
The problem associated with larger social and psychological goals is that the motivation needs to be sustained over a period of time. In the case of a student wanting to become a doctor, the process is a long drawn one which requires the motivation to sustain for a very long period. The problem here is that there may be many problems on the path that would make it difficult to sustain the motivation. For instance one poorly done test scores could affect the motivation of the student. The second problem associated with it is that the returns to the sustained motivation and effort are not felt immediately. The efforts that a student puts into studying for many years are felt only at the end of graduating from the course.
One of the most successful ways of sustaining motivation is to break down the bigger goal into smaller sub-goals and visualize them. When we break down the larger goal into smaller one would help the individual to see the bigger picture and also to visualize the path towards the bigger goal. Another important way is to keep in mind the ways in which one would handle disappointments. It is important to have backup plans in case we face with obstacles and this would make one stronger. This would help the person visualize the ways in which setbacks can be overcome without having to give up the main goal. As a conclusion to this speech, I would like to reiterate the fact that staying motivated can be a difficult task but sustaining the motivation can have big rewards and benefits.
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