There are a variety of causes of low motivation. It may be that a person has a secret unacknowledged belief that he or she will never succeed, and thus there is no point in trying. Or a person may believe that he/she does not deserve to succeed. Such beliefs may have been acquired many years before, often in childhood. See Low Self-Confidence.

In other cases, the problem is one which behavioural psychologists call learned helplessness. The individual has experienced repeated failure, and now feels there is little point in trying. Of course, simply knowing that such a belief is illogical does not help. Such beliefs can be held at far deeper levels of the mind, and can seem impossible to change, particularly as high stress levels usually complicate matters by the time a person decides to seek help from a therapist. Happily this is not necessarily true, and appropriate therapy usually enables the sufferer to gain a new confidence in his/her ability to achieve, and new skills to ensure that the belief is well founded.

Another problem can be simple overwork. A person may have been working harder and harder, staying later and later at the office and achieving less and less, feeling increasingly fraught and stressed by their inability to keep going efficiently. Quality of work suffers, and the person may be increasingly subject to minor illnesses, which may or may not result in absences from work. This is a state called burnout, and is often accompanied by, or the result of, high levels of stress at work. Despite the name of the problem, it is often eminently responsive to treatment, and a person can often return to effective functioning at work within a short time. 

Often, the problem is that a client may never have acquired effective self-motivation strategies, and these are usually quickly learned with appropriate help from a skilled therapist, and problems which may have been perceived as overwhelming, immovable obstacles can almost seem to physically shrink, as a person's ability grows.

What is hypnosis? - for further information, please click here

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