Energy, unbidden, floods my mind and body with enthusiastic power.  I’m fully engaged.  Action flows freely, almost without effort.  In fact, it would be nearly impossible to hold it back.  I must act, like a wave that must run its course.  Unless it doesn’t.

I live in Florida where it rains every afternoon all summer long in a total downpour six months out of the year.  But, the other half of the year it is like the faucet was turned off in the heavens.  All my plants start to dry out.  I don’t know why I’m surprised by it, but I am.  I see the dying tomato and my one strawberry plant that I’ve barely kept alive struggling near the front porch and realize, I need to water.  My motivation is just like that faucet, on or off.

Do you know what moves you?

Motivation has been a total mystery to me.  Sometimes I am very focused, passionate and dedicated.  Other times I feel like I’m flailing around just trying to do what has to be done.  Everything is harder and takes longer than it should.   For the longest time I didn’t know what motivates me, and I had absolutely no clue about how to motivate others if they didn’t already care.

Get Motivated! a book by Tamara Lowe promises to help you “overcome any obstacle, achieve any goal, and accelerate your success with motivational dna.”  I loved this book because it really did help me analyze and recognize what lights my engine and powers me emotionally.  

As a child, I would organize my siblings while my mom was away.  We would plan a grand surprise for when Mom got home.  We would sometimes split into two teams to race as each group cleaned up half of the house.  I loved working to surprise my mom, and my siblings liked the fun game and imagining Mom pleased with us when she came home.  It wasn’t just doing a chore, it was a secret mission.  I knew this worked for me and them, but I didn’t know why.  

Learning what moves me helped me see how to harness my own power.  Energy sources that used to feel so mysterious and unpredictable are actually fairly consistent within myself.  And, knowing what ignites me has helped me learn how to turn it on!  

Do you know what shuts you down?

I love stimulation, novelty and variety.  Discovering that motivation suddenly explained other things as well. For example, no wonder my very least favorite chore is ironing.  It is slow (I think I’m especially slow–I’m sure my attitude doesn’t help) and not very surprising.  My energy tanks when I need to iron.  It was so bad that one of the first things I did when I had personal income was to hire that chore out!  It was worth teaching a class a month (something I loved) to skip the same length of time ironing.  Yuck!

I also have never liked keeping track of the budget records.  Keeping records feels painfully slow and like old news.  I have no energy for it.  (Planning, on the other hand, has always excited me.  New ideas, new frontiers, so many possibilities are glorious to imagine.)

I found it fascinating to learn that what motivates one person may actually de-motivate another!  For example, public recognition, the same thing that might cheer you and fuel more of the same, could cause someone else to never do that again just to avoid being singled out like that.  I prefer personal and private recognition. Every year the American Red Cross has a big dinner to thank and publicly recognize their volunteers.  I never went.  For me, having a Red Cross Instructor’s name tag with my name on it, spelled correctly, was the best recognition and trophy ever. Meeting people and helping them be prepared to help or possibly save another was its own reward.  A prize, for me, would just cheapen it.  

Stop expecting others to be like or understand you.

I laugh at myself when I realize how crazy it was to assume everyone would be rewarded by the same things as I am.  Some people don’t like hugs.  Some people question compliments and hate flattery (or assume it is flattery rather than genuine).  Some people want to be invisible rather than called out in front of others. It is equally insane to assume that others could know what I like or don’t like when I wasn’t even consciously aware of it myself.  It is just amazing how different and clueless we are.

This is why the golden rule doesn’t actually work all the time.  We could do just the action that makes us feel appreciated and valued, and it could make the other person feel devalued or de-motivated to ever do it again.  This can have catastrophic results in marriages and corporations.  We all want to encourage and reward the efforts and contributions of others, but clearly we don’t always know how. I took a marriage class at BYU that taught that in marriage and I will add, in helping to reward and motivate each other,

“Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.”  

Now I understand why.

Use what you know

After finding out what turned my energy on and off, I decided to give it a test.  I would see if I could find a way to enjoy keeping track of expenses and the budget.  Knowing that I love big, daring projects, love to surprise and please my husband, and also wanted to save money, I set up a plan that just might work for me.  

I decided to surprise my husband one year later, on his birthday, with a big savings account he knew nothing about.  I decided to look at expenses one week at a time because that is as far as I could possibly remember (monthly I would lose track of important details).  I would keep in my mind the maximum amount for weekly expenses and try to keep groceries to half of that.  I set up automatic transfers into a separate, secret savings account (I wasn’t robbing my husband, it was still our same joint account.) And it worked!  I was weekly creating a gift I knew my husband would love for his birthday.  It was so meaningful, it was no longer a dreaded chore!

I can’t set goals like other people I know.  I can’t decide to read fifteen minutes every day or slowly pace for days, weeks or years on end.  It is so de-motivating to me I want to cry.  I have no energy seeing my day all portioned out in tiny chunks of wearying predictability.  Every act becomes a horrible chore.  

But I can set up projects, missions, and secret gifts that send up volcanoes of warmth, energy and action inside myself.  I am moved by purposes that inspire me and draw my attention over and beyond all the challenges between me and the prize.  The meaning of the journey makes every step a privilege no matter how mundane or tedious.  

The act could be the very same.  But I have to know why I’m doing it and that why needs to be important to me.  I am internally motivated.

Speak to me

For the last two days I’ve had writer’s block.  I couldn’t get out a sentence.  I have learned and discovered many interesting things in the last several weeks.  Why could I not share any of it?  It was because I don’t know who would care.  Who is my audience?  What do they need?  You see, I am motivated to help you.  I love to solve problems or help give others ideas of what they could try that might work.  But right now, I don’t know what you need.  

Self Improvement- To read more of DarEll’s articles, click here.

My greatest reward is to know personally and privately, that something I did helped someone else–that it has a positive impact and made a difference.  You would greatly motivate me to keep writing if you could tell me what you struggle with, what your problems are, or how I can help.  Ask me a question.  I will share all I know on a subject just for you.  You are my motivation.

May you move

mountains

because

you want to.  

Namaste,

DarEll S. Hoskisson

([email protected])

Related posts:

Losing Myself Who Is The Winner? Getting Your Fitness Back On Track Stressed By ‘Yes’: How to make it work when you didn’t say ‘no.’