Seeking Motivation in Others

Motivation.

To motivate - to give incentive to; to stimulate toward action.

What motivates you?

I have been working with a young man who has had some significant life changes. Those life changes have left him feeling down, less connected and lacking motivation. We have met with his team a number of times and the team continues to present great ideas about events or opportunities in his community that he seems interested in and willing to attend; when the time comes to attend, he just doesn't go or he cancels plans with other people to go.

At our last meeting something hit me smack dab in the face. He has been asked many many times about attending a relationship group in another town. The group facilitator continues to encourage him to attend and he talks about not really liking the group much. During our last meeting the group facilitator once again asked if he would like to attend the next session. His response was "Sure, it's in another town, that means a road trip".

One of the significant life changes he has experienced is losing the independence of having a car and driving himself wherever he wants to go. He used to take random road trips with friends and when he talks about past or future road trips with music blasting be beams with joy. Financially he was having trouble making ends meet and keeping his car and insurance and decided he would have to forfeit that for a while. Among all of his life changes, I think this was a huge piece for him.

Next step; how can we be more creative about transportation to and from events that he enjoys without depending on staffing. He doesn't care if he is the driver or not, he just wants to be in a car with music blasted to get where he is going. Clearly this motivates him as he is willing to attend events that he doesn't really like just to have the chance to go somewhere in the car. Knowing that he has to walk places doesn't motivate him to go, if he knew he had a ride he would go anywhere and even get out of bed early to do it.

To explore this we can look at his current relationships; those people that he has connections with who enjoy the same things as he does and are willing to drive him. We can look at and plan for him to get back into a car of his own. We can use a learning log to learn more about what is important to him and other things that might help motivate him. We can use an approach called Presence to Contribution to help him to move from simply being present at events to contributing fully, building relationships and other motivators to help him feel better about being out and contributing.

I am also working with a young lady who is struggling with motivation. She commits to meetings, activities, community events, daily routines with full intention of following through. When the time comes to follow through, she cancels 95% of the time. I haven't worked with her long enough to understand her motivators. So it's time to explore. I need to think more about what I know is important to her, how to support her on her terms. Off the top of my head I think that her life is just so chaotic right now; she has so many services plus regular daily life to attend to that she just can't keep up. Maybe she just doesn't know where to start so she doesn't get started at all. Some people thrive on chaos and need to have lots going on, some just shut down when there is too much happening and they have difficulty processing where to start. (I know very well, I experience the latter of the two).

In her situation her case manager would suggest that I give up trying to work with her but I think a better approach is to introduce some person centred approaches to her service team via her case manager to see if we can learn together and work together to motivate and help her be a participant in her own life again.

Motivation. What gets us going? When we see something that we want or are passionate about within our day we are willing to participate in our own day. We all need it, we all have it. Some don't even notice they are using it, some have to really struggle daily to find it. It comes in many forms, material, emotional, spiritual etc. Without it we don't function and we are not participants of our own lives. To me this is unacceptable. We only get one life, we have to live it not just exist in it. Its often difficult to do more than exist. Lucky for me, my job is to help people find their motivators and help them to find a meaningful life. Its a challenge very much worth facing.