The Positive Act Of Motivating Others
I remember when I was passing through a certain phase of life which could have easily made anyone to quit or to lose direction, but I had some people to constantly motivate me and I reassured myself that I will come out victorious, which I later did. It was at this point that I realized the power of motivation; which can come in form of action or words. Motivating other people is a very potent tool to facilitate and inspire success, and much more than that, it also creates a positive environment. You will agree with me that productivity thrives where motivation is present.
It does not matter where you find yourself and the status you occupy; in school, home, work place, etc, you can motivate others and it will go a long way to trigger the positivity and possibility mindset in them. As a parent for example, the behaviour, performance, success, and impact of your kids can be greatly influenced by your motivation towards them. I read an autobiography about one of the world's most decorated and celebrated Pediatric Neurosurgeon; Dr Ben Carson. While he was growing up, he had challenges with his studies and his performance was nothing to be proud of.
This happened for a while until his mother rose up to the occasion and started to motivate him. She made him to understand that he can achieve greatness if only he could take the responsibility to study his books. She went further to help him draft a study routine that guided him to study and she would reward him for any book he read and completed. This made him to keep putting in work and actions to bring out the best in him. One very amazing thing happened. The teacher asked a question in the class and no other person knew it; including the one everyone looked at as the most brilliant.
However, some days before the class, Ben had already come across the same question that the teacher asked, so it was only him that knew the answer in the entire class. He rose up to attempt the question and as expected, everyone laughed at him because they did not expect anything from him. But when he finished answering it, it wowed everyone including the teacher. This gave him the motivation to keep reading more. By the end of the session, he went from the back of the class to the forefront. This was because the mother never gave up motivating him and she set a precedence for him to achieve greatness.
In life, the kind words and kind actions you give to someone can go a very long way to influence them and even inspire them to achieve greatness. There is a force that normally accompanies motivational words. Now one may ask what are the potent ways to motivate others?
The first one is by the words of your mouth. The truth is that you can either motivate someone or demoralize them simply by your words. If someone is passing through hard times, the words you speak to them can restore their hopes. This is the reason when doctors are treating a patient, they will be reassuring them that they will get better. This is to position them psychologically to their advantage. Your words of motivation (like "you can make it," "you got this" and so on) can mean a lot to someone and can make them to go beyond their limits. You may not have something to give to someone but you have your words to make impact in their lives.
The next way to motivate someone is by leading by example. I remember when I was doing my internship, there was a particular task that we were asked to undertake but it was so difficult, at least for our level at that time. We tried all we knew at that moment but we were miles away from getting the task done. At a point, we became almost discouraged with proceeding with the task until our supervising officer came in. He took the lead in the task and we could see that it was actually doable. Our motivation was restored and we followed his lead. In less than an hour, the same task that we were almost giving up on was fully completed because we got motivated by our supervising officer.
Another way to motivate others is by providing rewards and incentives. This can work very well in the place of work or from a leader to a follower and in other works of life too. You will agree with me that when a reward or incentive is added to a task, you will be motivated to undertake the task. For example, when there is an extra allowance for working overtime or going for weekend duty, you will be motivated to do it over and again. This goes to show how rewards can be a very powerful motivating factor.
Thanks for reading
