I am not a psychologist, so this post may not be 100% accurate, but obviously many of you are interested in it as my post about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs has been Success Circuit’s most visited post since I wrote it! As you know I started Success Circuit with the ambition of inspiring and motivating you. But I soon realised that there are many meanings of both words. So today I would like to jump head first into a Psychologist’s brain and explain what learned motives mean, there are many types of motives as you can see from Maslow’s Hierarchy but there are too many to be explained in one post. If you would like me to make a series from this then let me know.

One of the many meanings, and the one that we will be using today, of the word motive is “Specific need, desire, or want, such as hunger, thirst, or achievement, that energizes and directs goal-oriented behaviour”.

We are not born with all of our motives intact, even motives such as hunger and thirst are partly learned. Throughout our childhood, and even into adulthood, it is possible to learn new motives.I shall not go in to much detail about all of the motives as only a few relate to what we teach at Success Circuit.

Aggression

Our first motive is Aggression, behaviour that is intended to harm others. It is not aggression if you harm somebody accidently. When babies are born they are not aggressive so they must learn it from somewhere. I have seen people blame many different things so here is a list to show them.

• Parents
• Visitors
• Media
• Music
• School

I do not believe that any one factor is the reason, it is a collaboration of them all. The aggression is developed as we grow, for example, through sports such as Rugby and Boxing.

Achievement

This is a very important motive. If you are a regular reader of Success Circuit then chances are you have a desire to excel. Some people try to excel in everything they do, some just try to do their best at one activity or task.

It is unknown where this motive is first learned because everybody is affected by it is different ways. I believe it is this motive that defines the word Entrepreneur. Achievement is closely linked to work orientation (the desire to work well), mastery and competitiveness (comparing one’s skills to another’s). Here are another couple of motives that are useful to know.

Power motive – The need to be influential and recognised.

Affiliation motive – The need to be socially involved with people.

As you have probably noticed, this is not my strong point. But it is one I, and many of the readers here, am interested in. So if you know more about it than I do please email me at and either let me know how I am improve this post or perhaps even write a guest post!

I hope this has got you thinking about how it is useful to know about motives. Please comment with your thoughts,

Shane