Motivation, Change and Response to Adversity - Essay Example

Motivation, change and response to adversity Motivation, change and response to adversity seem to be three common practices of individuals. Any event or accident in the lives of individuals either motivates or lead them to show their response to the situation. Motivation is the element individuals need most in their lives for the sake of initiating or continuing work or leaving a habit, etc. For instance, a student gets flunked in his examination, and it lessens his or her interest in the studies. He or she needs motivation to continue the studies and the parent of the student motivates the student to continue his or her study or to take interest in the studies by saying that he or she is not only the one who has failed, but there are many others as well who get failed. Similarly, if a person gets accident by driving a car, he or she will show his or her response to the accident. He or she will concentrate more on driving and will drive the car slowly. The person’s concentrating on driving or slow drive will be the response to the adversity that has happened to him or her. In my school educational career I also “wanted to be an average student” like the character Kin Harvey in the essay named “I Just Wanna Be Average” by Mike Rose (Rose 3). Why I wanted to be an average student was the thought that to be an average student involves less hard working in the studies and be an excellent student involves much hard working in the studies. Besides this thought, the thought that human intelligence to learn different things including the lessons of the courses is natural and a person will not secure good grades or will not be an excellent student no matter how much he or she works hard. It often thought hinder in my way of studies, preventing me to work hard to secure good grades. In other words, it was in my mind that to be an average student or to be an excellent student is natural but this thought slowly diminishes when one of the teachers talked in the class about the capacity of human mind to learn and developed. The teacher told that the students who secured good marks or who are thought to be excellent students were those who work hard and do not forget to follow their regular homework. The teacher’s lecture was a motivational factor for me because it changes the thought that human’s mind to memorize or to understand different things is natural and the thought that a person understands what he or she wants to understand by hardworking and doing given homework regularly (Dweck 27). This thought put me on a direction towards “mastery” in different courses because I started concentrating on my course work and read the course books regularly. Mastery, as written in the book Drive, is one of the fundamental elements of motivation because it gives a person a sense of command, authority ad belonging. It was true in my case when I started reading the course books with due concentration, it develops an interest in reading books. As a result, it not only caused to develop my interest in reading but also made me enlisted into one of the best students when the result of the examination announced. It reveals that human beings do not have a fixed mind, but human mind has the capacity grow with respect to its proper usage. Also, the teachers lecture was a motivation that motivated me to work for securing good grades and I doing hard work as the result of the teacher is my response to the teacher’s lecture. The response was positive and, therefore, the result also came positive by securing good grades. Furthermore, it was also the lecture that in a way was on the fix mindset and growth mindset. The teachers lecture was helpful in changing my fix mindset and made it a growth mindset. The fixed mindset students believe that intelligence is natural and fix but the growth mindset people believed that the intelligence is highly related to how a person works hard. In other words, the people with a growth mindset believe in the growth of the mind. The teacher taught the students how the brain functions. In addition to above, in the book Drive the author writes that besides the biological drive there is another one that is reward and punishment and the later drive is a drive of motivation that motivates people to do something. The biological drive is given the name of “Motivation 1.0” and the reward and punishment are given the name of “Motivation 2.0” (Pink 36). Why the people will motivate to work something or motivate not to do follow any person by the motivation 2.0 is that people are “robotic wealth-maximizers” (Pink 25). It is not sure whether the human being is “robotic wealth-maximizers” or not but in the modern era parents often talks about or refers to material benefits and privileges to motivate their parents either to learning education or working in a position. Once I read an article about the growing tendency of modern people in learning education for the sake of earning material benefits and the article had discussed the vanishing moral values because of the increasing importance of material privileges. The modern people giving more importance to the material benefits suggests that human beings are “ wealth maximizer” and the modern people giving more value to the substantial benefits seems to be their response to the parents’ motivational words. If the parents did not have talked about material benefits to motivate their children to work or study, the children would not have been focusing only accumulating money. Besides, the suggestion of the author that “salary, contract payment and some benefits” categorized in the book Drive as “baseline reward” are basic motivational factor in an organization seem to be true (Pink 56) . Why I am saying that these baseline reward as the fundamental motivational drive that when I started working as a salesman in a shop, it was a very exhaustive job and always used to curse the job in the first month. I stop cursing the job and concentrate more on selling the products when I received the first salary. The thought of quitting the job is no more in any corner the mind. It was the salary that motivated to continue the job of a salesman. It would not be wrong if it one states that the baseline rewards are the basic motivational factors in an organization that motivate persons to focus on their work. Also, one of my colleagues at work was not concentrating on his duties in office timing was punished by the company by deducting money from his salary. The deduction of the money from his salary made the colleague very much annoyed, but he concentrated on his duties. The punishment in the form of a deduction from the salary was a motivational factor for the colleague, leading him to concentrate on his responsibilities during the office timing. Therefore, it may be concluded that motivation, response to adversity and change seem to be three common practices of individuals in their daily lives. These three practices are adopted by different people in different situations such as teachers and parents practice motivation to motivate the students to focus on their studies. Teacher may use brainology to motivate the students to tell about how a human mind functions and students would give either positive or negative response to the teacher’s motivational words that would become the factor to change the students’ lives.   Works Cited Dweck, Carol. S. "Mind-Sets and Equitable Education." 1 January 2010. Web. 11 May 2015 . Pink, Daniel. H. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. New York: Penguin Publishing Group, 2011. Print. Rose, Mike. "I Just Wanna Be Average." 2008. Web. 12 May 2015 . Read More