What Motivates Us To Behave a Certain Way?

Have you ever thought about motivation?  What motivates you to behave in a certain way?  What's the motivation for bad behaviour?  It is important to understand behaviours from the level of motivation.

Some questions to ask yourself about problem behaviour:

For Example: If your partner or child lied to you.

The behaviour problem is the lie, but what is the REAL problem?

• What has happened in the relationship that makes it difficult for someone to tell the truth?

• Did the other person think you would not understand?

• Has the other person been punished, criticised, ignored, or shamed by telling the truth in the past?

• Would the other person felt valued, important, and worthy of love by telling the truth?

These are the types of questions you need to ask to find out what lead to the problem behaviour.  If you really want to solve the problem, you have to deal with it at the level of motivation.

This is an opportunity to explore a deeper problem in the relationship.  It usually has something to do with being punished in the past for telling the truth.

With children, you should not punish them for telling the truth about something, but a sanction is appropriate.  You have to give a reward for telling the truth; otherwise you are training your children to lie.  If someone is going to be punished for telling the truth, who is going to do that?

So the real problem is not in telling the lie, but in the failure of emotional connection.

The solution is to understand the motivation of the problem behaviour, which usually has something to do with feelings of hurt.  So how can you and the other person address the problem of hurts and how can we both feel empowered so that no one feels the need to lie to each other?

Counseling can help many people to resolve issues that develop in relationships.  The sooner these issues are addressed, the more easily the problem is resolved.