Why motivation may be not the answer: Motivation vs. Inspiration
'A workaholic' - say indifferent people who don't understand what are passion,
enthusiasm and feeling of personal ownership to the things you spend your life on.
Don't mind them or inspire them. In first case you will stay 'a workaholic',
but in the second one they'll start to call you 'a leader'. (с) me
I had this idea spinning in my mind for a long time, but specifically this autumn travels (EuroCo and regional support round in Baltic countries) gave me a chance to shape this idea into something explainable.
So, why motivation is not important?
What is motivation?
There are many definitions, most popular are: "the desire to do; interest or drive", "the reason one has for acting or behaving in a particular way", "the general desire or willingness of someone to do something". Interesting, if you ask group of AIESECers what does "motivation" mean, they will mention those and many other explanations, and some of them have nothing to do with motivation, they are related to completely different concept... but we will talk later about it.
In my understanding, the word itself gives us a full explanation: motivation comes from "motive", which in its essence means "the reason for doing something".
There is initial motive or reason, and there is a desired state:
And mythical "demotivation" comes in 2 different cases:
1 - When motive disappears.
In this case there is nothing to do with it, if you lost a reason of doing something, don't do it anymore. As simple as that.
2 - When desired state is forgotten or it became unclear, or you simply don't see it anymore because of too long way of achieving it...
In this case there is a need to remind the vision, the goal, that "desired state".
But the secret is that in most of the cases when AIESECers say "I need motivation" it's neither about the initial reason, nor about the desired state. It's mostly about another thing and they need another cure from this disease. People become tired, it's natural. People need energy, mental or physical, and here motivation becomes useless, because another term gives us a key to personal energy management: inspiration.
What is inspiration?
Again, there are different definitions, but we will take just the essence out of them: "the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative". What else should be more creative than life itself? Life is about creating yourself with every single moment, turning empty pages of time into your own story. But what’s with that ‘mental stimulation’ part?
Inspiration is about energy, and there are 2 simple things about it:
First, it's always needed, the same as a charger needed for your laptop. You can work on your own energy for a certain time period, but it's not forever. Even stars are fading, what to say about people then?
So before talking about "motivation", think of simple and regular ways of reminding a desired state and sources of energy. Usually people who say "I need motivation" don't need it, because nothing happened to their inner reasons of doing what they are doing, they just lack some mental energy to go on.
And if you’d ask all these "demotivated" AIESECers, what is the most usual and strong thing which brings their "motivation" up, many of them will say "conferences", which have nothing to do with motives but rather give a lot of energy and boost emotional connection with the vision, goals and people around you.
And the second thing is even simpler: besides the fact that inspiration is needed, it's needed regularly. From time to time.
How to find these sources of energy?
Answer couple of simple questions: what makes you feel alive? Inspired? Excited? Full of energy and desire to do something great? Make a list of 10 things which make you feel alive, happy, which you truly enjoy doing, and you will understand what brings energy in your life. Make sure these things are present in your everyday life on the way from initial reason to your desired state.
And then connect all these 3 parts together: a reason (motive), a desired state (vision/goal) and sources of regular energy charge:
To me, the people who have all these 3 things connected are the most inspiring people, because you can easily see how their motives, goals and everyday life are aligned, and they look, talk and behave with so high level of integrity that you can’t resist to admire them. And if they manage to share their inspiration with others, we call them "leaders".