Category: Psychological phenomena

A large part of human behavior is driven by unconscious motives and goals that we aren’t generally aware of. Some go a step further and claim that we have no free will.

Whether or not we have free will is not the topic of my discussion but rather I’d like to throw some light on the nature of unconscious goals and motives so that you may be able to become more conscious of them.

Unconscious goals are the goals that we are not conscious of but they are the real driving forces behind many of our behaviours.

Therefore, the motivation that allows us to reach these kinds of goals is known as unconscious motivation. (see conscious vs the subconscious mind)

How unconscious goals develop

Unconscious goals develop as a result of our past experiences. Every information that we got exposed to since the time of our birth up until this moment is stored in our unconscious mind and based on this information our unconscious mind has created some beliefs and needs.

These beliefs and needs are the main driving forces behind our behaviour whether we are conscious of them or not.

The conscious mind is designed to only deal with the present moment and therefore it isn’t aware of the activities the unconscious mind is carrying out in the background. In fact, the conscious mind tries its best to decrease its workload by handing down the tasks to the unconscious mind. That’s why habits, when repeated enough number of times, become automatic.

When you go through an experience, you don’t just go through it and forget about it. While you might have consciously moved on, your unconscious mind is trying to make sense of the information it just received. It either reinforces a pre-existing belief with this new information or challenges it or forms a completely new belief.

In many other cases, it completely rejects the information that doesn’t match its pre-existing beliefs but that is less likely to happen in the childhood stage where we are highly receptive to new information and have just started forming beliefs.

The point is, your past affects you and sometimes in ways that you may not be even aware of. Many beliefs that guide your present actions are the products of your past.

Let’s analyze a typical case of unconscious goal and unconscious motivation to make things clear…Andy was a bully who kept bullying other guys wherever he went. He was thrown out of many schools and went on causing trouble in college too.

He was very short-tempered and resorted to violence at the slightest provocation. What was the motivation behind Andy’s behaviour?

It is very easy to dismiss him as aggressive and someone who needs to control his anger. But only if we dig a bit deeper into Andy’s past, we can find out the real reasons behind his behaviour.

Why Andy became a bully

When Andy was 9, he was bullied in school for the first time. Then followed a series of incidences of him getting bullied and these incidents were obviously very painful and he felt humiliated.

He was emotionally wounded and his self-esteem got damaged. He just didn’t know how to deal with it and thought that he’d soon forget about it and move on.

Move on he did, but not his unconscious mind. Our unconscious mind is like a friend who is watching over us and making sure that we are happy and free from pain.

Andy didn’t know how to deal with his situation but his unconscious mind was secretly working on a defence plan.

Andy’s unconscious mind understood that getting bullied is harmful to Andy’s self-worth and self-esteem so it had to make sure that Andy doesn’t get bullied again (see pain-avoidance motivation).

So what was the plan it came up with?“Bully others before they bully you! Protect yourself by overpowering them and showing them that you are not the one they should be messing with!”I’m not saying all bullies bully because they were bullied but that’s the story of most bullies.

The trick worked and Andy was hardly bullied because he became a bully himself and no one bullies a bully. But this behaviour caused him a lot of problems.

He himself didn’t understand why he was doing it till one day he came across an article like this one and understood his unconscious motivation behind bullying others. Then things started to change and he began to heal his emotional wound. Awareness is the key to change.

Visualization is the process of forming mental images and pictures of the desired future. Those who have dreams and visions of an ideal future life visualize more naturally than others.

The greatest benefit of visualization is that it can dramatically increase a person’s chances to turn their dreams into reality.

How visualization can benefit you

To our subconscious mind, imagination is real. By that I mean it can’t differentiate an imagined event from a real event and considers both the same. Therefore whatever it is that you visualize or imagine, your subconscious thinks it is actually happening.

That’s why visualizing that you are eating your favourite dish can be mouth-watering because your subconscious mind thinks you are really eating it and hence activates your salivary glands.

Or when you recall a happy memory, for the subconscious mind you are literally ‘re-living’ it and that’s why you find yourself smiling just as you did when it happened for real. 

Our subconscious gets programmed by what it sees i.e. we form beliefs based on the information we receive or the information we imagine.

In the post about beliefs, I pointed out that beliefs are the programs of the subconscious mind meaning that our subconscious mind lets us behave in ways that are consistent with our belief systems.

Once you do a certain behaviour, the program to carry out that behaviour gets installed in your mind. The more you do that behaviour, the more efficiently that program will be carried out.

Now, the cool thing about visualization is that you can form the beliefs you want without actually having to do the actions in the real world. By doing them in your mind, you can still program your mind with the beliefs you want.

Let’s say you have to deliver a public speech. You’ve never given a successful public speech before and you’re feeling reasonably anxious. Here’s how visualization can benefit in this situation:

Before you actually deliver the speech, imagine you are giving it successfully as many times as you can. Imagine every detail- the words you will say, the reaction of the audience as they applaud you, the posture that you’ll hold, the gestures that you’ll make, etc.

When you do that enough number of times, your subconscious mind will be convinced that you are indeed capable of delivering a great speech even if you’ve never done that before!

And when you actually go for the speech your subconscious will let you behave in a way that is consistent with your newly formed belief- “I can deliver great speeches”.

Note that visualization is not some kind of magic that fulfils your desires. It is just a way to prepare your mind for the desired behaviour, to prepare your mind for success.

This can be extended to any type of goal. The images that you form during visualization act as commands to your subconscious mind.

Motivation as a visualization benefit

Okay, so visualization allows us to perform in a way that’s consistent with the way we visualize. Where does motivation fit into the equation?

We are motivated by emotions and when we visualize we also experience the emotions that are associated with the thing we are visualizing. By visualizing how your life will be like if you did or didn’t reach your goals, you can motivate yourself tremendously.

You can both positively and negatively motivate yourself by visualization (see the methods of motivation). 

For instance, if you have a goal of becoming financially independent then you can either visualize the kind of life you will live and the way you will feel when you become financially independent (positive) or you can imagine yourself as a homeless person living under a bridge who failed to attain financial independence (negative).

When you imagine the latter, your mind will scream “NOOO” and you’ll be strongly motivated not to end up like that. In fact, many believe that negative motivation is more powerful than positive motivation.

Another reason why visualization can motivate you is that it brings a distant goal right in front of your eyes. We, humans, are designed to go for short-term rewards.

Therefore, we find it hard to stick to long-term goals. One of the most important benefits of visualization is that it not only allows us to keep our long-term goals in sight but also reminds us how good we’ll feel once we accomplish them.

This article discusses the two methods of motivation that motivate people to take action to achieve their goals.

Human beings are naturally motivated towards pleasure and away from pain. We are reward-seeking organisms and everything that we do contains an inherent reward in it, conscious or unconscious, perceived or real.

For example, if you are a non-smoker you might think that smoking is a harmful and a reward-less activity but to a smoker, it might be a useful way to get rid of his anxiety (a reward indeed).

So no matter how fruitless or harmful an activity may seem to be, to a person doing it there is some kind of a reward in it or it’s warding off some kind of pain (which in itself is a reward).

Based on this information, there are two ways by which we can motivate ourselves.

Positive motivation (rewards)

It is the type of motivation that you use when you perform an activity to gain a reward that usually lies in the future. This future may be immediate or distant. The expectation of a reward is what drives you.

Visualizing your ideal future in which you have received your reward is a great way to positively motivate yourself.

We humans don’t find any difficulty in doing things that result in immediate, short-term rewards (like eating ice cream) but when it comes to rewards that are obtained by pursuing long-term goals, we find attaining them a Herculean task. Well, there’s an evolutionary reason behind that which I’ve explained here.

The most important thing that matters when it comes to pursuing rewards that lie somewhere in the distant future is faith- faith in your abilities and faith in the activities that you are performing to attain those rewards.

After all, if you find that your current activities aren’t taking you anywhere, you’ll quickly become demotivated.

If that happens then the best way to become motivated again is to find a reward in the activities themselves!

Do you love doing what you do? Then that is reward enough for you to keep doing it! That’s a sure-fire way to not quit on long-term goals that matter to you even if you seem to be going nowhere.

Now that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t change your ways in order to find out what works but all I’m saying is whatever you do, make sure you have a reason to love doing it.

Negative motivation (pain-avoidance)

It is the type of motivation that you use when you perform an activity to avoid the pain that may result from not doing it. For instance, a student who studies hard not to fail is negatively motivating himself.

While positive motivation is expecting a reward, negative motivation is avoiding pain or punishment. One important factor to consider while negatively motivating yourself is your capacity to tolerate pain. 

If you have a high pain-tolerance, meaning that you can bear a lot of pain before you actually budge into action then negative motivation won’t be a great tool for you. Until your pain reaches a certain threshold you won’t be motivated to act. In this case, therefore, high pain-tolerance can be a disadvantage.

Compare this to a person who has low pain tolerance- who can’t bear too much pain and whose threshold is low. For him, negative motivation would be a perfect tool.

Another important thing to consider in negative motivation is that if you don’t have a solution at hand, then negatively motivating yourself can cause helplessness and depression.

Negative motivation means running away from pain and in order to do that you must know which way to run. There must be a way first. If there isn’t, then negative motivation will only paralyze you.

If negative motivation itself forces you to find a way out- well and good! But hey “finding a way out” is also a way in itself and that’s better than being paralyzed.