YOUR ENVIRONMENT AFFECTS MOTIVATION: 7 HIDDEN FACTORS MIGHT BE KILLING YOUR MOTIVATION

Your environment affects motivation!

Do you want to understand how your environment is affecting your motivation? 
Are you looking for solutions to build higher motivation levels?
Are you tired of struggling to achieve your goals? 

This article is perfect for you! 

Here you will discover: 

• What is motivation? 
• How you generate motivation.
• How your environment affects motivation.
• 6 hidden Factors in your environment that might be killing your motivation.

If this sounds interesting to you, keep reading! 

WHAT IS MOTIVATION?

Motivation is the emotion that drives you toward anticipated pleasure. Dopamine, activating the pleasure/reward system, is the neurotransmitter that creates motivation in response to a trigger in your environment. 

For example, you see a tasty dessert, and suddenly you have a rush of energy that drives you towards eating and feeling that pleasure! 

THE CORE COMPONENTS FOR GENERATING MOTIVATION

Your beliefs and emotional state act as key drivers of your motivation. It’s your first line of operation to generate motivation. But, as you guessed, there are other factors in your environment that you can harness to take your motivation to the next level.

HOW YOUR ENVIRONMENT AFFECTS MOTIVATION

We’re always consciously and subconsciously connected to our environment. This interaction activates neural circuits related to learned behaviors. Thus, we act based on them to reinforce similar familiar habits that we believe are beneficial. Think of your environment as an information source triggering inner programs that run your behavior.

ENVIRONMENT AFFECTS MOTIVATION: 7 HIDDEN FACTORS KILLING YOUR MOTIVATION

The main components in your environment influencing your decisions are: 

ENVIRONMENT AFFECTS MOTIVATION: PARENTS, CULTURE, AND PAST EXPERIENCES SHAPED YOUR BRAIN

Your parents, culture, and experiences have shaped your brain. 

They installed the neural connections and inner programs driving you to behave in alignment with them: 

• Be motivated towards the pleasurable things you learned from your parents and culture. Keep in mind that these pleasurable things are not necessarily beneficial. 
• Avoid painful things. Again not all painful experiences lived are detrimental. Most breakthroughs and exceptional achievements result from painful experiences. 

Unfortunately, in most cases, family, cultural, and mainstream beliefs are limiting beliefs.
And so, we all have experienced and registered limiting beliefs that run subconsciously to make our lives harder.

Being aware of them and working to transform them into empowering beliefs becomes a must to set ourselves on the track to success. 

YOUR PRESENT SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT AFFECTS MOTIVATION

Your present social circle continuously reinforces these inner programs through ideas and experiences that validate them. 

It also inputs new information and potentially new inner programs that validate what the people around you are doing. Consequently, you start to identify yourself with these actions and mimic them.  

The people you spend the most time with will either: 

• Reinforce the person you are by validating your belief systems.
• Or transform you into someone who mirrors their convictions. 

For this reason, wisely choose the people you spend most of your time with and stay aware of how their belief systems impact you. 

YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ENVIRONMENT AFFECTS MOTIVATION

Social media refers to all the information you get through media like TV, newspapers, apps, notifications, Facebook, YouTube, etc. 

Today, social media is available with a finger’s swipe and holds the most powerful influence on your behavior! Again, It’s critical to carefully select the information you consume because these inputs become outputs (behaviors). They also create desires, a social image, and standards you set for yourself, which become a norm in your life. 

YOUR FOOD ENVIRONMENT AFFECTS MOTIVATION 

Today, our food environment is, for the most part, composed of:

• Fast food restaurants.
• Unhealthy snacks and sodas are available at every corner.
• Fast food delivery services are accessible with a few phone touches.

They entice you to seek them over healthy alternatives because they’re easily accessible, convenient, rewarding, and cheap. 

Eating unhealthy has numerous negative consequences on your energy levels and behavior. Unhealthy foods are stripped of vital vitamins, nutrients, and building blocks. These are critical for the production of neurotransmitters and hormones. Your brain can’t function without them, and you’ll run on low energy levels.
Finally, with low energy, you’ll undoubtedly seek effortless unhealthy alternatives again! 

Here you are trapped in a downward spiral depleting your entire system.

YOUR IMPOSED WORK SCHEDULE AFFECTS MOTIVATION

We all have some sort of work schedule we need to follow. Often, it’s misaligned with our circadian biology and comes at the expense of our well-being. Think of working late to meet deadlines or living in high stress for a prolonged period.
This lifestyle creates intense pressure, narrows your behavior to survival mode, and prevents you from thriving. Without room for creativity and freedom, living a happy life and expressing your full potential is hard.

CURRENT SOCIAL NORMS 

Social norms vary with time and according to how the world evolves. We’re constantly adapting to these social norms by imitating what others do at the expense of creatively exploring novel and better lifestyles. We then become a copy version of society instead of a unique version of ourselves. 

Understand that being different is a strength, not a weakness:

• Succeed by acting differently in your unique way to pave your path.
• Or fail by following what most people do.  

YOUR SLEEP ENVIRONMENT AFFECTS MOTIVATION 

Sleep is one of the most important factors influencing your motivation. Recovery, neurotransmitter recycling, and memory consolidation, all happen during sleep. Sacrifice sleep, and you’ll compromise all these processes. It’s definitely not what you should be doing if you want to learn new behaviors and change your reality.
Sleep is non-negotiable! 

CONCLUSION

I hope I called your attention to environmental factors that might be stripping away motivation and energy. Understand that your culture, society, and family have shaped your belief systems in good and limiting ways. But you have the power to change and figure out the values and beliefs you want to live by to create your dream life. 

Plus, social media, food environment, work pressure, current social norms, and sleep are either depleting motivation or boosting it. Be aware of and optimize these variables to generate more drive toward your goals! 

Any change is possible!

Go for it!