While in the process of finding what motivates you, it is easy to find and succumb to what deters you from succeeding. Which begs the question, how do you find your motivation, the encouragement, the catalyst to your success?

Unfortunately, it can only come from a trial and error process. Some may be lucky and find whatever it is that moves them to accomplishments. Others will not be so lucky and have to go through test after test to find their true motivation.

This begs yet another question: where do you start?

Knowing where to start is up to you; it differs from person to person, depending on your thoughts. You could start off by listing all the possible ways of motivating yourself. If you come up empty, Google it. There are a ton of websites out there dedicated to helping people become successful by becoming motivated.

There are two well-known ways that can motivate certain people.

The first is positive reinforcement. Some people work well knowing that people are behind them and support what they are doing. They find it reassuring to hear words of encouragement.

This method is learned at a young age. When you were a child, hearing your mom, dad, teacher or any other person you thought of with high regard, congratulate you with praise, your brain would use those words as a source of motivation to always do the right thing and continue to do whatever it is that got you that praise in the first place.

The second type of motivation is reverse psychology. Most of us are familiar with the word, but not the definition. It is defined as: “a method of getting another person to do what one wants by pretending not to want it or to want something else or something more.”

This, in simple terms, is when someone tells you that they don’t think you can do a task, or they don’t want you to do it, and that fuels your fire and your motivation, so you do it. Parents can sneakily use this to get their child to do chores and such without knowing it.

However, this method can be particularly dangerous when testing, because it is easy to have the opposite outcome of what you want. If you use reverse psychology on someone who does better with praise, they will give up on themselves and not do the task at all.

For example, if a parent tries to convince their child to do the dishes by saying “I don’t want you to do the dishes, you aren’t good at it anyways,” some kids will accept the challenge just to show you that they are good at it. However, some kids don’t respond well to this, and will just give up if they think their parents have given up on them.

Finding out what motivates you is tricky, but it is worth it in the end. You will be able to work harder and become more successful when you realize that the key to motivation is the key to success.