Reviewed by Sara Taylor
If you’ve been following us for a little bit now you will know that we are all for continuing education. For us it is extremely important to be at the forefront of industry education and knowledge.
After listening to Jeff Haden speak about motivation this week I find that I have reconsidered the way in which I am exploring what drives motivation, why people can be less or more motivated than others and how to jump start my motivation to finish off that book I have started writing!
Motivation can be a bit like work life balance. It’s fluid, flexible and can change and mold itself to various life stages or even various time of the day. But we know that motivation can be illusive at times. It can bring us down when we compare ourselves to who we perceive as “more motivated” people. We can even think we have low motivation or are just not a motivated kind of person! However Jeff Haden challenges these common motivational myths turning how most people view motivation upside down. He urges us to perceive motivation not as an internal fixed state but as a feeling or state that occurs once you begin an action. Breaking that down into a real-life example we could look at running a marathon. If you have only ever run 3kms at your school cross country running 42kms can seem quite overwhelming and hence a motivated state hard to achieve. But what if you started training, putting one foot in front of another and then your motivation, your mojo arrives! Mr Haden encourages people to simply start, the optimum time being when you’re thinking about starting, just do it. Once you’ve begun you will start to see results (7-10 days is the optimal time to achieve results’) and then the motivation to continue and work towards your goal will transpire. Personally, I can think of many examples that this is the case for me. Maybe you’re starting to get your house ready for sale, maybe you need to clean out your wardrobe, maybe the kids don’t want to go to the beach but when you get there or get started it ends up being fine, even fun and you might have that sense of achievement – boom – there it is Motivation !!!
If you’re stuck and thinking about something and waiting for that motivation to arrive. Stop waiting and simply start doing. Try it, I think Paul Haden might just be onto something!
