Purpose: Support people in understanding conflicting motivations and goals.
Explanation: It is common to associate one motivation with one goal for simplicity when explaining these concepts. However, in reality, things are not always so straightforward. We may experience conflicts of emotions that impact our motivations or lead us to act in unexpected ways. As humans, we are multifaceted and complex, and even our conscious motivations can be conflicting, let alone our unconscious ones. It is important to remember that acting authentically and being true to ourselves does not mean acting in a linear or consistent way.
Purpose: Support people to understand conflicting motivations and goals.
Explanation: For simplicity, when explaining motivations and goals, we often map one motivation to one goal. However, in reality, things do not correlate so perfectly. We may experience conflicts of emotions that affect our motivations or cause us to act in unexpected ways. As human beings, we are multifaceted and complex (even our conscious motivations can be conflicting, let alone our unconscious ones). Acting authentically and being ourselves should not be confused with acting in a linear or consistent way.
Acceptance of Conflict and Conflicting Goals:
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Reviewing internal conflicts:
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Recognition: Firstly, we must recognize where the conflict exists. This can be between motivations, goals, or motivations and goals. We must spend time recognizing the nature of the conflict to effectively solve it.
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Prioritization: After recognition, we must review the prioritization process and identify what we felt was most important at the time of acting, and what was the reasoning behind prioritizing the chosen motivation and goal.
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Consequences: As part of the review, think about the consequences of the actions taken. Were they as bad as initially expected? What were the consequences for yourself and your significant others (immediate and in the future)?
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Decision: Finally, we can review the decision we made after understanding the prioritization process.
Conclusions:
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If we are happy with the decision, we have gained greater insight into our processing and can resume our lives being more self-aware and empowered.
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If we are unhappy with our decision, we should identify the part of the process we are unhappy with and alter it:
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If we are unhappy with the final action, in the future we can try to remove ourselves from the situation or circumstances we faced.
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If we are unhappy with our prioritization process, we need to reassess our motivations and reflect on what we think our motivations are vs. what our motivations are in reality.