Nurturing self-motivation during the hardest time

I regret I could not have renewed my blog article for several months. Although I have been extremely busy for consultation, I am very healthy.

In Japan, people still suffer from COVID-19 everyday. Economy in Japan is staggering. Even big corporations are in red. Average salary is gradually lower and lower every year. Job prospects are unfavorable. In the field of education, school and college have to depend on distance education. Some children and students are losing their motivation to study because they are not familiar with new learning style.

Although life in Japan is not optimistic at all, I'm always very glad to help my students and clients who are interested in our education services. My duties is to inspire the students and clients to learn more as well as provide them with professional knowledge and skills.

We are now living in the information technology era. We can gain almost all knowledge we usually learn at school and university through the Internet. Now, we may need to reconsider why and what we expect face-to-face learning in the classroom. One of my answers is that we can expect the learner can increase self-motivation to learn. Of course, there are some teachers and instructors who decrease (rather, hurt) the learner's motivation....

Psychologically speaking, there are several factors that increase your motivation --money, fame, social status, prize, grade, competitive or collaborative atmosphere, purpose, core value, human relationship, familial background, etc. In my personal point of view, our motivation is much influenced by external factors rather than internal ones. For instance, money would be the best example of external motivator. People usually work for making money though they may say, 'I want to contribute to society', 'I want to help other people', etc.

Social atmosphere is also a strong influencer that affect our self-motivation. Due to COVID-19, we have restrictions on interpersonal contact and traveling. Besides shrinking economy, many people feel fear for infection. As a result, we tend to lose our self-motivation to study and work. As a matter of fact, some students and working adults are losing their self-motivation. This is the worst scenario. They cannot expect progress anymore.

After all, people must nurture their self-motivation on their own because people have different core value and life philosophy. My advice is reflecting on yourself and finding out your own motivators in life. While depending on external motivators would still be necessary, let's try to look for your internal motivators --core value and life philosophy. You ask philosophical questions to yourself repeatedly: 'What is the most valuable thing in my life?' 'What is happiness?' 'Can money save all problems in my life?'...etc. You may find our your internal motivators in mind.