Saturday, October 26, 2013

Thought For the Day - Can We Motivate Anyone Really?

I always find this topic rather interesting. In fact many say that motivating sessions are demotivating really because they somehow tend to make you feel smaller. That danger always exists if one cannot connect all the pieces well and bring the story together.

Beyond motivation
How to sustain it?
But to come back to the original question - can we motivate anyone really? I mean once the session is over, the enthusiasm fades off and people go back to their old habits and lives. As long as we talk and share stuff of the highly energetic, everyone loves being part of it. But after that, reality sinks in. Motivation is hard by ourselves. Even the motivators know that - they need motivation themselves many times.

Motivation - Opening New Avenues By Showing How and Why
Personally I feel that the idea of motivation is misunderstood. People seem to think that motivators come with a wonder drug and inject the audience with the same for a full, instant and final changeover. How can a single session change a person who has firm beliefs and habits built over decades? Not possible really. It may work if motivation is constant perhaps, but as a one off, it might not.

What I think motivation is really about is this. Motivation is all about expansion right? If I can show you one process of expanding your thought, or an idea that could expand your mind, the mind awakens. Where the mind can go, action is sure to follow. If the idea sticks and if one is convinced that it's a process worth committing to, action may begin. That will start the process of expansion.

I feel that this method of trying to deal with the 'how' of thinking and provoking the action has a greater connect simply because it is something that comes out of personal experience, out of fear and doubt and hope and desire, out of failures and successes. The field is smaller, more immediate and thereby relatable. Showing the success of someone else (the superheroes) will work but only to some extent, because one really does not know what went on in that person's mind or life. In fact  think it makes the disconnect bigger. So snazzy audio visuals have limited effect in the longer term.

So making a connect at the audience level, understanding their fears and doubts, addressing ways of going forward despite the fears and doubts, and certainly sharing the benefits of expanding one's spheres should open up new vistas in their minds. To know why one should aim to be better and how, could certainly help motivate the individual better in the longer run. If one gets a 10% improvement, its a huge ask and a job well done.

Motivation then is to bring in individual thought, to go beyond known limits by themselves. If the gust of wind catches them, they rise and fly into the skies.

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