A Scientific Approach to Motivation

I’m not a scientist or psychologist. I probably couldn’t even play one on TV. But I’m amazed at how our unconscious minds impact our decisions and behavior. Often when our motivation feels inaccessible or out of reach, there’s something neurological happening under the surface.

The good news is that knowing what’s taking place is the first step to unlocking your motivation and unleashing its true power and potential. Understanding the science behind motivation can help us develop effective strategies to enhance our motivation levels and achieve our goals. In this article, I’ll dig into a few fundamental principles regarding our brains' role in our overall sense of motivation.

Principle One: Motivation and Dopamine

Main Idea: Dopamine is the pleasure chemical in your brain and a significant factor that contributes to building habits

To fully unleash the power of motivation, you must understand dopamine's effect on your brain. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a critical role in how you feel. Some scientists even call it the brain's "pleasure chemical." Dopamine impacts the tasks you choose to perform and the topics you find interesting.

Your brain releases dopamine when it is expecting a reward. Go back and read that sentence one more time. You experience a dopamine release not when the reward is received but when your brain anticipates that a reward is coming. Dopamine reinforces a habit and increases the likelihood that you will repeat the action in the future. 

Your brain also adjusts the amount of dopamine it releases over time when associated with a specific activity. Imagine that you eat an Oreo for the first time. The sweetness of the cookie and the cream (along with the contrasting textures) produce a neurological response that triggers a dopamine release in your brain.

Because you enjoyed the experience, you begin to eat Oreos more often. It won’t take long before one Oreo doesn’t produce the same dopamine release as before, so you increase your Oreo intake and hope the experience matches the same intensity level as before. Before you know it, you’re eating five or six Oreos every day - especially if you discovered how perfectly Oreos pair with milk.

As you may already know, this is how addictions form. Certain drugs contribute to a dopamine release that is more powerful and instantaneous than what Oreos offer. Your brain becomes hooked on the impact of high dopamine levels and quickly craves more. It doesn’t take long before the desire for dopamine begins to feel like a need you must constantly satisfy.

Since dopamine is our brains' most critical reward pathway, it plays a crucial role in motivation. Our brains prioritize definite outcomes over anything that appears uncertain. When dopamine is involved, this prioritization increases exponentially. 

While the presence of dopamine is easy to identify, the source of dopamine isn’t always as obvious. One of my favorite foods is queso, and as a fellow coach pointed out to me once, most people associate queso with chips although there are plenty of additional options for eating queso. You can use a tortilla, a spoon, or even your finger (please don’t do this if you’re ever sharing queso with me). The chip is only helpful because it allows you to get queso, but many people associate their goals and motivation with the chip. In other words, the chip is only a means to an end (which is the queso). 

Knowing how dopamine impacts you will help you make informed decisions about what activities you choose to pursue. Are you prioritizing an action because you want a quick dopamine hit, or are you pursuing an outcome with greater value? Don’t just think about what you are doing - think about why you are doing it.

Principle Two: Purpose and Your Prefrontal Cortex

Main Idea: Developing a strong sense of your purpose will strengthen your prefrontal cortex and motivate you to pursue actions with a more valuable long-term benefit.

Recently I started a podcast entitled “Motivation for Regular People.” My goal for the show is to help people realize they already have all the motivation they need, but they must figure out how to access and use it. I speak with a different guest each week about their story and how motivation affects their work and life.

The show is still new, but one of the main themes that’s emerged in multiple episodes is the power of purpose when identifying and applying motivation. Without a clear sense of your goals and values, your motivation becomes less responsive and more reactive. When you become aware of what’s most important to you, your motivation becomes more tangible, and you have an easier time choosing how to spend your time and what activities to pursue.

This awareness also helps when it comes time to set goals. The prefrontal cortex is essential for goal-directed behavior: The prefrontal cortex is responsible for executive functions such as planning, decision-making, and working memory. It also plays a crucial role in goal-directed behavior. When we set goals or pursue long-term rewards, the prefrontal cortex helps us to prioritize and plan our actions to achieve those goals.

Understanding this helped me identify why I often feel motivational tension. When I first started studying motivation, I recognized that I often felt tension because I felt competing sources of motivation. For example, my alarm would go off in the morning, and I would feel motivated to get up and start my day, but I would also feel motivated to turn it off and go back to sleep. I don’t imagine anyone else can relate to this feeling, right?

So what’s happening? My prefrontal cortex and my brain’s desire for dopamine are butting heads. My prefrontal cortex has my long-term interests in mind, but unless I do what feels good at the moment, I won’t get an immediate dopamine hit.

Like many lessons you’ll learn in this article, awareness is a great first step. Once you know you have competing motivations in play, you can make informed decisions about what actions you’ll pursue. You can also tip the scales so your preferred action is slightly more attractive than whatever choice offers the most dopamine. You don’t have to motivate yourself 100% to do the harder action - you just have to give yourself a little push to ensure you do what you really want to do.

Here’s a real example from my own life. I used to sleep with my phone by my bed, but now I don’t. I plug it in before I go to bed and let it charge in another room. If I want to check my phone when I wake up, I have to physically get up to get it. This adds an extra degree of motivation to get out of bed when I would rather check my phone, roll over, and go back to sleep if that option was available to me.

This is just one of many possible applications. I know someone who loves listening to audiobooks, but won’t let himself listen to a book unless he goes for a run. I have a friend who rewards himself with 30 minutes of video games every time he completes a task on his to-do list. How can you tip the scale in your favor to boost your motivation and accomplish more of your goals?

Principle Three: Neuroplasticity Defeats Negativity

Main Idea: You can change your mind (scientifically speaking) to enhance your self-esteem and better pursue your goals.

For a long time, scientists believed that our brains couldn’t change once we reached adulthood. This is no longer the case. The study of neuroplasticity reveals that our brains continue changing and evolving throughout adulthood.

To put it simply, neuroplasticity dictates that you have the power to change your brain. You have the capacity to overcome negative self-talk, limiting beliefs, and the voice inside your head that says you don’t have what it takes to reach your goals.

I like the way Michael Hyatt explains it in his book “Your Best Year Ever.” Hyatt writes that many of us suffer from limiting beliefs, or false narratives that hinder our progress. The best way to overcome these limiting beliefs and shift our perspective is to replace them with “liberating truths.”

This concept played a critical role in my own story. If you’ve read my book, “Seven Steps to Dominate Your Day and Crush Your Goals,” you know that for many years I believed that I didn’t have control over my circumstances. I thought anyone who was in better shape than me had more favorable genetics, and anyone who made better grades than me was blessed with more natural intelligence.

Thankfully, I realized over time that this was not true. By making small life changes, I started to recognize that I had more control over my situation than I thought previously. My life transformed in more ways than one, and I had a newfound sense of agency and power. In other words, my mind changed.

I believe my experience is possible for anyone, but what makes this difficult is we often aren’t aware of our limiting beliefs. They are so ingrained in our minds that we don’t even recognize that they exist.

This is where working with a coach can be quite helpful. A trained coach will help you gain awareness around your values and goals while drawing out limiting beliefs and false narratives so that you can reframe them based on the truth.

If you would like to learn more about coaching, schedule a free 30-minute coaching session with me. I’d love to help you examine any limiting beliefs you’re hanging onto and discuss how you can unlock your full potential by reframing your thoughts.

PS: For more on the concept of neuroplasticity and the power of positive thinking, check out “Soundtracks” by Jon Acuff and “Winning the War in Your Mind” by Craig Groeschel. Both books are well worth your time.

Conclusion

Motivation is a complex process, but understanding the science behind it can help us develop effective strategies to tap into our existing motivation and use it to our advantage. This isn’t an exhaustive list by any means, but hopefully you’re walking away with a deeper understanding of your brain and something that you can take and put into action immediately.