Motivate yourself with visions, goals and willpower | Hugo Kehr | TEDxTUM

Why do we sometimes have a hard time reaching our goals? What to do when we're about to give in to temptation? How can we achieve what we set out to do without feeling like we have to convince ourselves to get to work? The key is motivation: with his straightforward 3-component model, Hugo Kehr teaches us how to check what drives us to pursue a particular goal, and how to find appropriate support to reach it while feeling happy.

Hugo Kehr is the acting chair holder of the Chair of Psychology at the Technical University of Munich. His current research, focuses on what motivates us as humans, and why we sometimes struggle with conflicting drives and a lack of willpower. Hugo Kehr received the prestigious Heisenberg Fellowship, and he is a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation. Since 2008, he has been organizer of the Munich Symposium of Motivation, a biannual international scholarly conference.

[jordyvandeven]

I get my motivation by imagining myself being 70 years old. Regretting all the things you’ve done in your life and regretting your laziness is the scariest thing in the world to me. So make sure when you are 70 years old and look back on your life, that you can be happy with your choices, and that you know you always did everything you could to make your life better.

[patriciolozano]

I am doing ted-talks summaries, I will upload them in the comment section as a means of sharing it so that maybe one of you will find it useful. It is a personal summary and this is how I wanted to summarize it for myself, so feedback is welcomed, but I won´t be correcting the summary or any such matter. I hope this is useful to someone, and I apologize if the vocabulary, syntaxis or grammar is off, English is not my native tongue.








At the core of everything we do, we always involve three components of ourselves: Head, Heart, and Hand.


Head is the importance or rational thinking you associate with the task, to find if you have your head in a task you may ask questions such as: Is this important to me? What will I obtain? etc.


Heart is the emotions that come into play on a given task, it is associated with pleasure or fun, something you enjoy, to find if you have your heart in a task you mas ask questions such as: Do I enjoy this? Will I enjoy the end result much more than the pain? How does this make me feel? etc.


Hand is the abilities or skills you have that come into play on the given task, to find if you have hand you must analyze truthfully your performance and any other indicators.


To artificially induce either head or heart, you must use willpower, but this is a limited resource and an ineffective tool to have as your reliability on a task.

-To naturally induce heart, you may use techniques such as visualization, or adapting the task to something more enjoyable, etc.
-To naturally induce head, you may use techniques such as goal setting, asking meaningful questions, etc.
-To naturally induce hand, you must acquire the skills necessary for the task by learning, practicing, and any other educational tool, but inducing hand is in itself another task in which you will have to analyze once again if you have the head, heart, and hand to acquire the skill, aka the task.


The convergence of head, heart, and hand is called flow and it is a state in which you will exceed and in which many successful people live day to day in their most important tasks.

[antoinepaine]

This is one of the best I've ever seen! ✌️ no BS or arrogance just facts and goodness :)

[liesaciska]

As a musician I cannot not say this- what a beautiful voice!

[yumyum]

Totally got the wrong answer for 'what do you think when you hear "head" '

[andrefaaa]

Great talk! It made me realize that I have head and hand, but I'm lacking heart. It really explains why I've been procrastinating ... thanks Dr. Kehr!

[AzucenaPerez]

That voice, that hair, the outfit, and of course, the great talk! Thank you, Hugo Kehr!

[bernardt]

A good balance between the "Head & Heart" leads to a well balanced life guided by a strong Spiritual Belief System!

[kaoutarz]

His voice is sooo made for these talks ! I’m impressed

[cour]

Not only enlightening but contains very important clues (secrets) most need to make a breakthrough and progress. Awesome!

[aligillani]

His vice is both soothing and mysterious at the same time.

[nathanezra]

When he said in a nutshell... I thought kurzgesagt...cause his voice ya know

[kamalkumarmukiri]

This is the best speech ever I have seen. Need to listen this speech again and again. Even a single word should not be missed.

[nosxing]

A very well made presentation, structured and clear.
Really like it, wish there were a book about the author to learn more deeply his work.

[ayeishaj]

Thank God I watched this. I think I know what drives my motivation in life now. Great talk, loved that disclaimer part though :)

[WorklLife]

Helpful. Informative. Easy to understand. Please take notes or watch again because this is important.

[liambenoit]

Man i ain't gay but this man is sharp & fresh. I could learn a few things from him

[kyawsoethein]

This is so amazing. One of the greatest Ted talks I’ve watched. Thank you 💯

[lukasscholtmeijer]

Love the way this man talk's. He tells de truth. Too bad I could never meet up with him, I'd blow his mind.

[basemkhourma]

Thank you Dr. Hugo Kehr for this great talk about motivation