In December of 2011, I gave a talk to an audience of scientists, Pentagon officials, politicians, and CEOs on the secret of life and how I’d figured it out the previous summer. Afterwards, people came up individually and told me how much what I’d shared meant to them. This book is based on the truth I spoke about. It’s something I learned from within myself, something I believed saved me. And more than that, the way I set about to do it. This is a collection of thoughts on what I learned, what worked, what didn’t. Where I succeed and importantly, where I fail daily. The truth is to love yourself with the same intensity you would use to pull yourself up if you were hanging off a cliff with your fingers. As if your life depended upon it. Once you get going, it’s not hard to do. Just takes commitment and I’ll share how I did it. It’s been transformative for me. I know it will be transformative for you as well.
Category: Motivation
Motivation: A Biosocial and Cognitive Integration of Motivation and Emotion
Motivation: A Biosocial and Cognitive Integration of Motivation and Emotion shows how motivation relates to biological, social, and cognitive issues. A wide range of topics concerning motivation and emotion are considered, including hunger and thirst, circadian and other biological rhythms, fear and anxiety, anger and aggression, achievement, attachment, and love. Goals and incentives are discussed in their application to work, child rearing, and personality. This book reviews an unusual breadth of research and provides the reader with the scientific basis for understanding motivation as a major variable in human and animal life. It also offers insights that can be applied to immediate and practical problems. Various areas are examined in depth, such as the relationships between reward, incentives, and motivation. The discussion of biological rhythms shows that humans and animals are more alert at certain times than others, and these rhythms also affect performance. The topics in the book span the ways in which motivation connects with many aspects of contemporary psychology. Basic issues of design and methodology, details of research procedures, and important aspects of definition and measurement, are discussed throughout the book.
Motivation: A Biosocial and Cognitive Integration of Motivation and Emotion examines the way motivation functions and how it interacts with other important variables: physiological processes; learning, attention, and memory; rewards and stressors; the role of culture as well as species characteristics. The presentation makes clear in what important ways motivation, as a construct, contributes to the scientific understanding of behavior. The book offers advanced undergraduate and graduate students a broad overview of motivation. It also is of value for the professional psychologist who seeks an integrated overview of the classical and contemporary literature in the field of motivation. The book provides information on a broad range of issues and thus can be used also as supplementary reading for courses on cognition and biological as well as social psychology.
Intrinsic Motivation at Work: What Really Drives Employee Engagement
In today’s organizations, employee engagement is vital–more is being required of workers than ever before. In this new edition of his classic book, Kenneth Thomas draws on the latest research findings to identify the key to employee engagement: intrinsic motivation. Only intrinsic rewards–rewards that come directly from the work itself–encourage the profound commitment and sense of ownership needed for a truly engaged and innovative workforce. Thomas identifies four intrinsic rewards, explains exactly how and why they build engagement, and provides a diagnostic framework to evaluate which need boosting and how to boost them. The second edition has been revised and updated throughout, with an expanded section on how leaders can identify their own intrinsic rewards and new tools, tips, and practices for encouraging intrinsic motivation in others.
Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development (Essays in Social Psychology)
This innovative text sheds light on how people work — why they sometimes function well and, at other times, behave in ways that are self-defeating or destructive. The author presents her groundbreaking research on adaptive and maladaptive cognitive-motivational patterns and shows:
* How these patterns originate in people’s self-theories
* Their consequences for the person — for achievement, social relationships, and emotional well-being
* Their consequences for society, from issues of human potential to stereotyping and intergroup relations
* The experiences that create them
This outstanding text is a must-read for researchers in social psychology, child development, and education, and is appropriate for both graduate and senior undergraduate students in these areas.
Motivation, Language Identity and the L2 Self (Second Language Acquisition)
With contributions by leading European, North American and Asian scholars, this volume offers a comprehensive anthology of conceptual and empirical papers describing the latest developments in L2 motivation research that involves the reframing of motivation in the context of contemporary notions of self and identity.
Motivation in Education: Theory, Research, and Applications (4th Edition)
The academic standard for texts on motivation in educational settings. Clear and engaging, Motivation in Education: Theory, Research, and Applications, Fourth Edition presents the major motivation theories, principles, and research findings in sufficient detail to help students understand the complexity of motivational processes, and provide it provides extensive examples of the application of motivational concepts and principles in educational settings.
From reviews of Motivation in Education:
“I find it essential that students have access to such strong representations of the basic theories and work in the field of motivation. . . . This book goes a long way toward reinforcing the voices of experts who make data-driven decisions about how to foster motivation. . . . There are no available books [on motivation] as excellently crafted as this one.”
—Theresa A. Thorkildsen, University of Illinois at Chicago
“This book is certainly the most comprehensive treatment of motivation. There are several others I have perused but they often take a certain approach to motivation whereas this book covers ALL approaches. The authors present a very complete and unbiased treatment of the literature.”
—Daniel H. Robinson, University of Texas
Choose Yourself!
The world is changing. Markets have crashed. Jobs have disappeared. Industries have been disrupted and are being remade before our eyes. Everything we aspired to for “security,” everything we thought was “safe,” no longer is: College. Employment. Retirement. Government. It’s all crumbling down. In every part of society, the middlemen are being pushed out of the picture. No longer is someone coming to hire you, to invest in your company, to sign you, to pick you. It’s on you to make the most important decision in your life: Choose Yourself.
New tools and economic forces have emerged to make it possible for individuals to create art, make millions of dollars and change the world without “help.” More and more opportunities are rising out of the ashes of the broken system to generate real inward success (personal happiness and health) and outward success (fulfilling work and wealth).
This book will teach you to do just that. With dozens of case studies, interviews and examples–including the author, investor and entrepreneur James Altucher’s own heartbreaking and inspiring story–Choose Yourself illuminates your personal path to building a bright, new world out of the wreckage of the old.
The Motivation Breakthrough: 6 Secrets to Turning On the Tuned-Out Child
Any child can be motivated to learn.
“If he only would apply himself…”
“She can do it if she puts her mind to it.”
“He just doesn’t seem to care.”
“She’s just not trying.”
Motivation is the key to learning. But very few parents and teachers have an effective arsenal of techniques at their disposal. Enter educator and acclaimed author Rick Lavoie, who arms all those who deal with children with proven, effective tools and strategies they can use to encourage any child to learn and achieve success.
Lavoie’s practical, innovative approach begins with a quiz that helps a parent or teacher identify — using six different possible models — a child’s motivational style.
Is she motivated by power?
Does he need prestige?
Does praise mean a lot to this child?
Does contact with other people inspire this child?
Does he like to do projects?
Does she enjoy receiving prizes?
He then explores each motivational style in depth, presenting proven techniques, strategies, and scripts that can be used in the classroom and at home to break through a child’s apathy and discouragement and inspire him to succeed and achieve.
Along the way, Lavoie explodes some common myths about motivation: for instance, he demonstrates that rewards, punishment, and competition are not effective motivational tools. He gives specific advice throughout for parents and teachers of children with learning disabilities and provides detailed instructions for how to create a motivated classroom. He outlines the parent’s role, the teacher’s role, and suggests ways in which they can work together to encourage children to reach their potential. The book’s final chapter, “What Does Madison Avenue Know…That Maple Street Elementary School Doesn’t,” reveals what parents and teachers can learn from some of the most powerful motivators in our children’s world: advertisers.
With empathy and understanding, backed by decades of experience in the classroom, Rick Lavoie gives parents and teachers the key to unlock any child’s enthusiasm and responsiveness. The Motivation Breakthrough will revolutionize the way parents, teachers, and professionals reach out to and motivate all children.
Any child can be motivated to learn.
“If he only would apply himself…”
“She can do it if she puts her mind to it.”
“He just doesn’t seem to care.”
“She’s just not trying.”
Motivation is the key to learning. But very few parents and teachers have an effective arsenal of techniques at their disposal. Enter educator and acclaimed author Rick Lavoie, who arms all those who deal with children with proven, effective tools and strategies they can use to encourage any child to learn and achieve success.
Lavoie’s practical, innovative approach begins with a quiz that helps a parent or teacher identify — using six different possible models — a child’s motivational style.
Is she motivated by power?
Does he need prestige?
Does praise mean a lot to this child?
Does contact with other people inspire this child?
Does he like to do projects?
Does she enjoy receiving prizes?
He then explores each motivational style in depth, presenting proven techniques, strategies, and scripts that can be used in the classroom and at home to break through a child’s apathy and discouragement and inspire him to succeed and achieve.
Along the way, Lavoie explodes some common myths about motivation: for instance, he demonstrates that rewards, punishment, and competition are not effective motivational tools. He gives specific advice throughout for parents and teachers of children with learning disabilities and provides detailed instructions for how to create a motivated classroom. He outlines the parent’s role, the teacher’s role, and suggests ways in which they can work together to encourage children to reach their potential. The book’s final chapter, “What Does Madison Avenue Know…That Maple Street Elementary School Doesn’t,” reveals what parents and teachers can learn from some of the most powerful motivators in our children’s world: advertisers.
With empathy and understanding, backed by decades of experience in the classroom, Rick Lavoie gives parents and teachers the key to unlock any child’s enthusiasm and responsiveness. The Motivation Breakthrough will revolutionize the way parents, teachers, and professionals reach out to and motivate all children.
Hierarchy of Needs: A Theory of Human Motivation
When Abraham H. Maslow introduced the world to Humanistic Theory, a ‘third force’ in psychology was born (Behaviorism & Psychoanalytical theory being the first and second). As the name suggests, humanistic theory concerns itself with characteristics which are distinctly human.
Arguably the best known example of such a characteristic is Self-Actualization, an innate motivating force unique to the human species. It was in this landmark publication that Maslow provided the first published representation of Self-Actualization at the pinnicle of a hierarchy of human needs. According to Maslow Self-Actualization refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, in essence to become everything that one is capable of becoming.
This classic publication is essential reading for psychology students, educators and professionals.
Hierarchy of Needs: A Theory of Human Motivation (Kindle Edition) forms part of an initiative to make important, insightful and engaging psychology publications widely available.