Question: My 18-year-old son finished high school with effort despite being intelligent, but he has a lack of interest or motivation to undertake any activity. He is physically healthy and says that every once in a while he smokes a joint. (LS de B. CABA)
A key experience for the development of the capabilities that allow you to achieve your goals – be they small or big – It is motivation and its level of intensity, fundamental for any action taken, because it is one of the factors that determine the results.
It implies, as Martin Luther King Jr. said: “If you can not fly, run; If you can not run, walk; If you can’t walk, crawl, but keep moving toward your goal.”
Precisely, the word motivation comes from the Latin motivus (movement) and implies the origin of all action. It is an internal state of need, desire or emotion that induces a person to generate the necessary impulse to satisfy them.
Thus, motivation activates, directs and maintains behavior to achieve a goal.
Human beings have two possible sources of motivation:
1) The one that comes from withinto achieve goals, desires or hopes.
2) The one that comes from outside, the result of possible rewards that the environment gives (recognition, money, fame). For many, external motivation is the most common and can even be considered the only valid one. But, although external motivation is important, internal motivation is the determining factor.
For psychoanalysis, it is in the unconscious where instincts, impulses and the source of energy necessary to meet basic needs and desires reside. There would then reside the source of human motivation.
For neurobiology, motivation is the result of processes that occur in specific regions of the brain. There are neural circuits that contribute to the execution of acts guided by desire.forming what P. Kalivas called the “neural circuit of motivation”.
It includes, schematically, the activation of an area called the Ventral Tegmental Area and a chemical substance, dopamine.
Although we can all be unmotivated at some point, it becomes something harmful and harmful when it becomes a recurring or stable disposition, since limits the ability to establish healthy bondsaffects productivity, damages self-confidence, nullifies creativity and prevents taking necessary risks.
Pay attention to it
The lack of constant or prolonged motivation is always an indicator of some abnormality that produces it.
Frequently, it implies the presence of emotional disordersas observed in depression, in states of acute anxiety (panic) or chronic anxiety (phobias) and in personality disorders (introverted, conformist or shy).
Many times it is also a consequence of drug consumption, since it is common that, in addicted people, motivation is almost exclusively focused on obtaining and consuming the drugbecause precisely the mentioned brain circuits are affected or damaged.
Different physical illnesses can also deflate motivation. of a person.
Although it is not possible to mention all of them, we cannot fail to suggest hormonal, metabolic alterations or certain neurochemical alterations.
Demotivation can arise in a single setting (work) or can be so profound that it affects all areas of life.
Any psychological or organic alteration slows down motivation, hence Detecting the cause is a fundamental issue.
