What Is Motivation?
Motivation is the process that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-oriented behaviors. It is what helps you lose extra weight, for instance, or pushes you to get that promotion at work. In short, motivation causes you to act in a way that gets you closer to your goals.


In everyday usage, the term "motivation" is frequently used to describe why a person does something. It is the driving force behind human actions. Motivation includes the biological, emotional, social, and cognitive forces that activate human behavior.

Motivation also involves factors that direct and maintain goal-directed actions. Although, such motives are rarely directly observable. As a result, we must often infer the reasons why people do the things that they do based on observable behaviors.1

Learn the types of motivation that exist and how we use them in our everyday lives. And if it feels like you've lost your motivation, do not worry.