What Is Motivation?

What is a motivation letter?
A motivation letter is a personal document detailing your professional skills and reasons for applying for a course of study, a scholarship or a volunteer job. This letter accompanies your application and supporting documents, such as a transcript of your grades or a resume. A motivation letter is sometimes called a "statement of purpose" or a "motivational letter."

Motivation letters are not commonly used for paid job applications, which are typically accompanied by cover letters. A cover letter is an introduction to your resume and gives examples of how your job experience matches the opening you're applying for, while a motivation letter focuses more on your personal story and details your interests, personality and motives for applying for a program.

There are many different uses for motivation. It serves as a guiding force for all human behavior, but understanding how it works and the factors that may impact it can be important in a number of ways.

Understanding motivation can:

Help improve the efficiency of people as they work toward goals
Help people take action
Encourage people to engage in health-oriented behaviors
Help people avoid unhealthy or maladaptive behaviors such as risk-taking and addiction
Help people feel more in control of their lives
Improve overall well-being and happiness

Motivation involves the biological, emotional, social, and cognitive forces that activate behavior. 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 doesn't just refer to the factors that activate behaviors; it also involves the factors that direct and maintain these goal-directed actions (though such motives are rarely directly observable). As a result, we often have to infer the reasons why people do the things that they do based on observable behaviors.1

Motivation is the process that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-oriented behaviors. It is what causes you to act, whether it is getting a glass of water to reduce thirst or reading a book to gain knowledge.