What is self-activation? While not strictly a scientific term, self-activation refers to how you use your own willpower and experiences to drive you. Instead of using outside stimuli or rewards, you have to be what makes you get up in the morning, and you have to be what puts you to bed at night.
Self-activation is something that many small business owners need to use in order to make their life run smoothly. There is a lot that you need to get done during a day when you’re a small business owner, and it’s likely your own to-do list is as long as you are tall. Self-activation is something that you can use to help keep your life flowing smoothly through motivation and psychology.
Self-Activation In a Nutshell
Essentially, self-activation and motivation are synonymous – as long as the motivation you’re using is yourself. If you’re confused as to what exactly this means, think about the old concept of “the carrot and the stick.” You succeed, you get a reward. You don’t perform, you get a punishment. With self-activation, neither of these need to be present.
When you’re motivating yourself, you don’t need a threat in order to make you move forward. Motivating yourself, or self-activation, is all about saying that you want to do something and that you will do something based on your own drive and passion.
This also means you don’t necessarily need to be rewarded for your success. Sometimes pushing yourself to a reward as a motivational technique can be harmful, like in the instance of rewarding yourself with food. Training your mind and body to need a reward when you do something you’re supposed to can create bad habits that will one day need to be broken.
This is why self-activation is both a hard-to-use method of motivation and also one of the most successful ones. It can be hard to motivate yourself without an outside catalyst, but once you know how, you’ll always be able to motivate yourself no matter what the task or scenario.
Tips for Self-Activation
As a small business owner, you have to be on your toes a lot, and you also have a lot on your plate. Learning how to motivate yourself successfully can be the best way to take care of the things you need to every day, but you first must learn how to self-activate.
- First, start to eliminate your other methods of motivation slowly. You don’t want to completely cut off outside motivational methods in order to avoid killing your drive, but it’s also a good idea to wean yourself from rewards and consequences as a means of motivation. Start skipping the reward shopping trips and try to get your work done on time in order to avoid questioning emails.
- Commit to this exercise every day: when you wake up, mentally tell yourself what you’ll do that day and that you’ll get what you need to do done. Have conversations with yourself about the tasks at hand and how you can complete them.
- Think about the beneficial reasons for completing your tasks. Instead of thinking about the tangible rewards you’ll get, think about how completing tasks will make you a better leader, boss and person.
These are just three simple things to keep in mind to get you started. Self-activating, however, is something that will take time and effort to master. Get started today and begin your self-activation journey.
