what is motivation and how do we get it?

Motivation is not a new concept - it has been around for years and is firmly ensconsed in literature surrounding many fields.There are lots of new fads around motivation, motivational speakers and motivational coaches. For these to be successful though, we need to be able to 'teach' motivation, not just talk about it. It's essential that we understand what motivation is, what it is not and what causes it to be present and not present. It is a surprisingly complex concept that effects every single thing we do in life and the effect the environment has on us, both inside us and outside of us, in our thoughts and in the things we do and don't do.

Behaviour Analysts are experts in the field of motivation and here at NETwork Interventions, we pride ourselves in our ability to teach it to children and adults. More importantly, we pride ourselves in our ability to teach you why you or your child is not motivated for a particular thing, activity or area and then fill the gap and teach that motivation. I am not saying that we should teach boys motivated by ballet to be motivated by rugby, or that we should teach people naturally motivated by one on one relationships to be gregarious social butterflies. Not at all - God has given us all different giftings in different arears.

When a lack of motivation for a certain area, such as social interaction or to speak, is caused by a lack of a skill (what we would call a skill deficit) that is when we can do something about it. There are two sides to this, and I am not going to debate the pros and cons to both. One side accept their child, spouse or self as having the skill deficit and lack of motivation and embrace that world of lack of social interaction of language, for example. The other observe the skill deficit, teach the skill and then the motivation to be all that they can be.

I am in the latter camp. If Annie, my little girl, does not have the motivation to interact at a party (like today), I look at why she does not have that motivation. If it is a skill deficit, which in this case it was because she did not know what to do, I give her the skill (I prompted her to sign 'help' to a little girl and the little girl helped her to dance to the music) and then see if her motivation for that activity increases. Well after Annie could sign help and get the instruction on what to do, she danced to the whole activity and smiled and showed many signs of motivation. If Ludo, my husband, has no motivation to complete his essays then I look at why those essays aren't getting done. Is he missing skills? In Ludo's recent case, he did not have the skills to tackle completion of the task - he did not know how to do a proper bibliography and reference as he has never been to college. So he looked to get taught these skills, attended a class, and is now completing his essays at a much faster pace. I assumed that when the essays weren't getting done he was being 'lazy' and 'couldn't be bothered'. Then I looked further. Oh how bad I felt!

When i procastinate on a task, or when I am not motivated to do something then it is often due to a lack of a skill-set. When I acquire that skill-set, my motivation soars. Of course I am never going to be a champion rower, nor am I never going to be a mathematician. But with the skills in maths, I am motivated to complete my accounts. Without those skills, I will procastinate and not be motivated.

How many people look at our children and think they are lazy? How often does society look at the adult who stays isolated and collects things and label them 'odd' and socially ignorant/lazy/insert untruth here......?

I spoke with two parents this week of children who were not motivated socially. Both mums phoned me to have a chat to see if I could help their child become more motivated to have friends and sustain friendships. Firstly we needed to look at whether or not their child was naturally motivated by their own company and small group company, or if motivation hadn't developed or had died due to missing skills. We asked a few questions, such as:

- 'do you have to draw information out of your child?'
- 'does your child label things in his or her environment spontaneously to you?'
- 'does you child ask for information, such as when, why, how, where, what?'
- 'does your child ask for attention, such as look at me, listen to me, look at that, listen to that, wow it's a .....?'
-'is your child able to answer questions about what he/she does, did and is going to do?'

It the answer was no to any of the above questions, there is a definite skill deficit and we need to learn some skills. Your child can be 4 or 44, but can still acquire these new skills and then become motivated.

The reality is, if we start with motivation in an area but we don't have the tools in our skill-set to access reinforcement (good stuff) in that area, the motivation will die and the behaviours we were engaging in to be motivated and to get stuff done will die. That can be anything from language to social interaction to administrative tasks, through to a business project.

If there are skill deficits, let's teach those missing skills and allow motivation to naturally flourish. If motivation is not present where it is supposed to be present, the likelihood is that we will engage in some very inappropriate behaviours over the course of time ranging from apathy and/or depression through to frustration and/or rage. Let's equip our individuals with the skills they need to be motivated and to thrive.

Equipped individuals = equipped parents = equipped families = equipped communities = equipped world. Let's start with the individual.

Motivating the ONE will motivate the whole, and nobody is beyond motivating.