The word “motivation” comes from a Latin word meaning, “to move.” The psychology of motivation is the study of what moves us and why. Do you ever wonder why some people achieve lofty goals? It’s because of their motivation, pure and simple. Motivation is a key factor in your students’ academic and personal success.
In this post, we will help you teach your students to inspire their motivation, set goals and increase their overall productivity. Here are our five tips to teach your students:
- Associate with positive, motivating people
- Communicate in a positive manner
- Use positive affirmations
- Understand what motivates you
- Set and achieve goals
Associate with positive, motivating people
The first step in teaching your students to be motivated is to have them take a look at other people, either at school, home or in the community, who appear to be positive, motivated people. Your students should observe them carefully. The effect that they will have on your students will be astonishing as they learn how these positive people motivate themselves. Ask your students to model their behavior. In a short time, your students will feel inspired and more confident.
Communicate in a positive manner
Communication skills are the key to understanding other people and also to understanding ourselves. A simple technique is to use positive communication to affect the motivational forces within. Teach your students to:
- Choose to smile.
- Use positive verbal statements.
- When asked to write something down, make it a positive statement rather than a negative statement.
By choosing to move to the positive side, you will provide not only motivation for yourself but also for people you interact with on a daily basis.
Use positive affirmations
Teach your students to use positive affirmations for motivation. Positive affirmations are statements such as, “I am a goal-oriented person,” “I am a goal-achiever” and “I am always eager to learn.” These types of statements will help your students move from the negative to the positive.
The format for affirmation statements involves four parts. Affirmation statements should be short, positive, simple and in the present tense. Use “I am” or “I will,” not “I think I am” or “I will try.”
Here are some examples of good positive affirmations: I…
- know what I want from life.
- put forth all my energy to achieve my goals.
- can achieve whatever I set my mind to.
Understand what motivates you
Theories of motivation can all be boiled down to two general motivators: The desire to obtain something or the fear of losing something. Everyone has these two motivators working deep down inside of them. These motivators cause people to act in certain ways to either obtain something or to avoid losing something. It is also important to keep in mind that what some individuals want to obtain, others may not want to obtain. As a result, it can be very confusing as to what motivates people. The bottom line for motivation is the reward. Some kind of reward is always behind an individual’s behavior. This reward can be either positive or negative.
Teach your students to understand what motivates them. Every person is different. Some people are motivated by money, while others are motivated by personal growth, gratitude or service to others. Ask your students to reflect on their greatest motivators.
Set and achieve goals
Research has shown that one of the best ways to create motivation is to learn how to set goals. These goals can be for specific levels of performance or achievement that an individual wants to strive to obtain. Help your students set goals and obtain them. We will look more at goal setting in our next post.
Thank you for tuning into our series on drive strength. If you want to learn more about developing or teaching soft skills, sign up for a free soft skills webinar here.