Motivation

Everything that you do in life requires motivation. Reading a book takes motivation, taking a bath takes motivation, wake up early in the morning to go to school takes a huge motivation, writing this blog takes motivation. For each and every tasks that a person does each day, there's usually a reason behind that makes the person does it, whether he likes it or not.

But that's not all what motivation can do. People who have something that strongly motivates them are more likely to success in what they do or to achieve their dreams, even though they might face many challenges along the way. So what motivates people, and how can we use them to solve world issues? That's what I'll be taking about today.

When it comes to the subject of human motivation, there have been dozens of theories trying to explain it, classify it, and rank it. In this vast pool of knowledge and predictions, two theories shine and become well-known in the field of human psychology: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Aristotle's Seven Causes of Human Action.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, developed by Abraham Maslow in 1943, describe the 5 levels of human needs: physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. He believes that everyone is motivated to reach the top, however only a few made it. This is because if you want to reach higher levels, you have to satisfy the lower ones first. It can then be derive from his research that the reason human are motivated to do something is to satisfy a certain level of needs so they can move on to the next one.

Aristotle's Seven Causes of Human Action, developed by Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle, said that all actions are due "...either to emotion or reason and that we seek pleasant things and act to reduce pain." (changingminds.org) In his theory, the seven causes that result in all human actions are: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion and desire. These seven causes have many practical usages in many aspects of our life. From marketing, philosophy, to psychology and psychiatry, Aristotle's Seven Causes of Human Action helps us understand the motivation behind human actions.

How can we use these theories to solve world problems? Let's take pollution as an example. In my country, everyone litters because there's no reason why they shouldn't. Even though most people know that pollution is bad for the environment, there's no signs or indications that it's directly affecting their lives. Therefore, they don't have any motivation to stop littering. Companies released waste into rivers because it costs a lot to have those waste treated properly. In a business perspective, it's financially more benefit to just dump trash into the water. There's no motivation for companies to recycle or build waste processors (I think that's what it called). So if we find a way to help people see that protecting the environment from pollution is directly benefit to their lives, then we can help make the world a cleaner place.

It's kind of sad to know this is how we treat Earth

Polluting our source of water? What's wrong with people?

Same thing is happening to water shortage. Since many of us get access to water so easily, we don't generally think that we should save water. What we didn't know is that 783 million people in the world don't have access to clean water. But since that doesn't affect our life or is one of our needs, we simply don't care. If we can get people to realize the potential benefit in saving water (save water = save money), then we can slowly, but surely stop shortage of clean water around the world.

While we waste water in our every task,

These girls have to walk for miles just to get 1 bucket of water

People aren't the only ones lacking motivation in solving world problems. Leaders of governments around the world, according to Global Risk 2015, procrastinates and act very slowly when it comes to finding a way to solve problems in the world economy. This is partly because world economy is very complex, therefore when you're trying to solve a problem, you have to be careful not to create 15 more of them. So maybe hardness is the real problem behind the sluggish behaviors of our leaders. Or maybe the reason is because they aren't passionate about making their country a better place but instead trying to help themselves gain more power. If this was true, then it would explain why a leader who is passionate about achieving his goal (like Martin Luther King) is more likely to success than those who only say that they are.If our educational system can improve so that every single citizen is motivated to help their country become a better place, then maybe we'll get better world leaders, therefore world problems can be solve.

Motivation is a strong tool that can help a man achieve the impossible. Therefore, no matter how great or difficult a task is awaiting for you in the future, just remember that if you're motivated to face it, you'll be more likely to achieve success.