Are you aware of what exactly it is that motivates your actions? The words you choose to speak and the actions that you choose to perform should not be done solely for the approval and praise from other people; instead, you need to choose to perform in a specific manner that is self-satisfying. Feeling good about what you accomplished using the mindset that you have personally taken the time and effort to get to the end result you envisioned in gratifying. Additionally, take pride in how your actions affected the lives of other people; you set out to provide a positive influence in the world and were successful in doing so. Any impact, no matter how small, should leave yourself feeling excited and motivated to continue making changes. The point is, you cannot allow outside influences be the primary motivation as to how you decide to live your life.

You need to be accomplishing achievements for something more important than merely being recognized for doing so; that more important aspect is the feeling that you set a goal, met the goal, and went above and beyond typical protocol. While being recognized for something is encouraging, do not allow this meek action to control how you choose to behave. You will fall into a nasty cycle of yearning for attention from another person because of an action that you decided to carry out. And when that attention fails to be given, the recognition that you believed to be so important and obviously earned, and rightfully so, is missing.

It is difficult to remove yourself from the cycle of only operating to impress somebody and be compensated because when nothing results as you had expected, then you will be left feeling highly disappointed and wondering what it was that you did wrong. The only thing that you did do wrong was allow the opinions and perceptions of other people to have a strong power that manipulated your motivations in an unhealthy way. When you only do things because of the attention and praise you expect will be received from the other parties, then you forget why it is important for you to be performing this action in the first place. Losing sight of the original motive for beginning a certain process forces you to switch this situation from being positive to negative. As a result, you may experience feelings of doubt and a loss of motivation for future endeavors if you place such a high value on being rewarded by others when that reward never comes.

At the end of the day, it is imperative to remember to always strive to be the best you can be for the joy that the end result will bring to you, rather than for the few seconds of recognition that other people may or may not give to you. If we spent all of our time yearning for recognition and awards, then the world would be filled with broken expectations, intense let-down's, lack of motivation, and negative mindsets; all of these factors will then lead to poor self-image. It is nice to be acknowledged for certain actions, yet those acknowledgements should never validate why you are doing something. Therefore, it is important to perform well and do good in the world to certain extents of your choice because that is what you believe is necessary as your role of a responsible and respectful human being.