X-Rubicon - Profile, History, Experience - Dr. Marco Behrmann

MIND | SET | GO

MIND | SET | GO

from will to action

 

Cross the Rubicon - From Call to Action

How do ideas come to action? What happens in your mind between your first thought and its implementation? Why does it need willpower for motivation? Why do some people never exceed lip-service? Do you know sentences like "I would like to want to, I just do not really dare yet?" In order to really come to action, a sequence of 5 steps in your mind is inevitable. Some of it can happen unconsciously, but with some good reasoning and good control you can influence your decisiveness tremendously:

  1. Pondering: Create the idea - What could I do in this situation? Which options do I have?
  2. Deciding: commit to your intent and will ("click") - What am I ready to invest energy into? What, how much do I want to do?
  3. Planning: Create focus on steps - How does that work what I want? What are the individual steps?
  4. Acting: Implement with willpower - What's the next step? How do I keep going?
  5. Evaluating: Celebrate consequences - What is the benefit? What is new? What did I achieve?

In each of the five steps our brain creates a result expectation. If the expected result is lower than the effort or our perceived pain, we are often less motivated for the next step. Hence, motivation comes from oneself. The decision is the critical step. So, in the future, if you are not sure how to decide or what risk an action would bring: Considering potential consequences will not hurt. Actually, this is what you do before you literally cross the Rubicon - just as Caesar in 49 BC, when he camped there while pondering the consequences of crossing the river. And he finally crossed it. Creating own consciousness and converting it consciously into action.

The 5 steps above are based on Heinz Heckhausen's expectation model, which is also referred to as the rubicon model of motivation. Other theories like the theory of the planned behavior by Icek Ajzen include additional expectations as the expectation of competence, control, or perceived norms.

Reading recommendation on that theme:
Bak, P. M. (2019) Learning, Motivation, and Emotion. Berlin: Springer, (German).
Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 50, 179–211.

 

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