Satisfaction & Motivation have often been tied within the realms of psychology as one of the perennial tight ropes walk of life. To put it plainly, if you have too little satisfaction then you tend to do to much to overcome the lack of satisfaction, this is usually when people around you advise you to turn to ideas such as gratitude, Gratitude has become a kind of modern day elixir to happiness and satisfaction which is really terrific, but you can always overdo anything in life and wear thin the impact and results. This is where I come to the other side of the double edged sword, which is too much satisfaction. When you get to the place of over satisfaction you become complacent to your changing circumstances. For obvious reasons, Complacency is not advisable for the health of your mind, body and soul.
Now why do I talk about moderation as something unsaid before, what unique value that I offer, you ask? Well moderation in satisfaction is not really moderation, this is something much more than one might realise. My recent thoughts have taken me to an interesting analogy of relating the psychology of satisfaction levels with relation to working a simple battery.
When you use your mobile phones every day, the mobile phone battery discharges and then at night you charge the same device up to full. Over the recent years in the smartphone decade of we all have noticed how our smartphone over their product life cycle, whether an iPhone or Android, would always emerge with a shorter battery life leading to their old age. But has anyone wondered what’s the actual reason behind this apparent aging of the cell phone battery?
Well let’s get just a little technical. As it turns out that the way a battery functions using chemical energy stored within its confines which is then transformed during the discharge process. During the battery charging process, the chemicals are restored, using the electricity provided, to their original state of acquiring the necessary chemical energy. This process happens daily as we use our smartphones.
Now that we understand these basics, we can address the question of battery aging. As you charge beyond 80% or if you discharge below 20%, you are unknowingly taking the battery to its physical limits, these physical limits are where the battery undergoes physical ware & tear, and that leads to long term degradation of battery life & aging.
These mechanics of battery life are quite interestingly analogous to our internal psychological battery of satisfaction levels. If our satisfaction level is discharged below 20% to under satisfaction or if our
satisfaction is charged beyond 80% to complacency, we psychologically face ware and tear in our motivation levels. Hence as stated earlier, moderation is the key to motivation.
