The word "motivation" comes from the root word "motive" which means that which inwardly moves a person to behave a certain way (Source: Online Etymology Dictionary).
Once in a while I get asked, to give motivation to people, like it’s a candy that I can just give out to people. But motivation is, by definition, an internal force that moves a person to do something. So really, in technical terms, I can’t motivate people. I honestly don’t know how.
I don’t have the ability to internally move people. I can externally move you, but that wouldn’t be motivation because it doesn’t originate from the inside.
So I can’t motivate people. In fact, I’m not even trying to motivate people. What I am trying to do is I want to help people motivate themselves. I want to help them help themselves. I offer people encouraging words for them to use to motivate themselves, if they want to.
If they don’t want to, then there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t force you to want something. Even if there is a world renown speaker in front of you, giving you his best words of encouragement but you don’t care for it, then that speech won’t do you any good.
That speech will not move you because you don’t give it permission to move you. So the power is in your hands. You have the power to motivate yourself. The power that I have as the speaker is to find the best way to deliver the message.
Whether or not you internalize that message into a motivation, that’s totally up to you.
We can’t outsource motivation to other people, thinking that they can just give motivation to us. We have to stop thinking that we are powerless and that we are in constant need of other people to move us.
If we keep thinking this way, then we will be in a constant reliance for other people to motivate us. But other people can’t be with us 24/7 to do that job for us. The only person who will be with us all the time is ourselves.
Motivation is not something that people can give to you. Motivation is something that you yourself have to generate inside. Other people can only encourage and support you, but they can’t move you. You have to move yourself.
So it has to start with you.
We have more power than we think we do. We have the power to motivate ourselves, and we might not even know it. We have to be our best motivators, so that whether we are alone or with other people, we can always find the driving force to move forward because that force is inside of us.
That’s my goal. My goal is to help people realize that they have this power for self-motivation. Of course, they can ask for help and support when they need to. But they should not fully rely on other people for motivation when they themselves are motivational enough.
You are motivational enough, if only you knew.
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