A good friend of mine asked me yesterday what the difference between positivity and motivation is. I had to think carefully about this but I have come up with an explanation. I am writing this from my point of view so any comments or discussions are welcome.
Motivation to me is an emotion. Motivation is the driving force which helps us to achieve goals. It helps stimulate desire and energy, to keep us going and gives us that inner strength and persistence to move forward. Motivation keeps us energised and focussed on the task at hand.
Positivity on the other hand is to an extent an emotion but to me is more psychological, as it can be affected by the environment around you. It can quite easily turn to negativity.
With both positive and negative you can still be motivated but for different reasons.
When you are positive you want to do more of the task, learn more, get more, discover more, and appreciate more. It simply depends on what the reward or punishment may be. This in turn determines how well we do the task.
So in closing, as an emotion, motivation drives us to complete the task but the final results depend on whether we were threatened to complete our job or if it was a pleasure and enjoyable time working on it. Hence positivity