Create your Own Motivational Poster
When push comes to shove, it's what we decide to do being motivated by discipline, heuristics, core values or even just a desire to build any of those three into our lives that helps us to become the people we want to be. And thank goodness we have a lifetime to work on to decide who we want to be when we grow up.
I’ve never been much of a fan of those inspirational posters you see sometimes in misguided corporate offices. You know what I’m talking about. Those posters that depict a lone scraggly pine tree clinging to a cliff face with its roots jabbed into the rock face with a caption “Hold on!” Don’t get me wrong: I can appreciate what they’re trying to accomplish. Beyond their purpose being in making money for photographer by listing images for sale on Adobe Stock, I trust that the creators of the posters really do hope they motivate some folks to greater hope or work ethic or insight.
The problem is though, they make it seem like all we need to do to arrive at whatever desired condition we wish we were in is to hear about the condition and then wish we were in that condition. As if wishing made it so. Of course there are so many more steps and so much more hard work we need to do to develop the conditions to truly arrive at any desired destination.
I think back on the early months after my initial brain injury. I was young and kids are very resilient. That is absolutely true. I can definitely attribute a lot of my success in recovering many of the abilities I had lost to those factors for sure. But I also think about the thousands of hours i spent in physical, occupational, and speech therapy. I think about the thousands of hours I spent doing exercises that slowly taught me again how to walk and how to verbally ask for help and how to adjust to throwing a baseball with my left hand instead of my right like I did before.
Another problem I have with posters like that lone pine tree one is that in the times we need the motivation the most, we generally are in the worst position mindset to be motivated by posters. WE all have those mornings where we debate whether or not it’s really worth get out of bed. There are times when it might even seem appealing to just loosen our grip on that cliffside we’re clinging to and give up.
So what does help in those situations if trite visuals on posters doesn’t do it for us? Obviously there isn’t a one size fits all solution, but here are a couple of things that have worked for me.
Finding out what really does motivate us. Sometimes we focus too much on what we think should motivate us rather than what actually does. Since usually it’s an internal personal battle, I’ve found it much more effective for myself to just hone in on true motivators. For me some of those include my desire to live up to the expectations of people I admire, the feeling I get when I’ve accomplished something, the desire to help people realize their potential, and showing up for the people I care about. Find your own and use that.
Focus on developing discipline not just accomplishing isolated goals. Any time we do what we say we will do on time at up to standard it strengthens our discipline muscles. I truly believe that discipline is a human super power. What other explanation could we have for doing good things even when we don’t feel like doing good things? If we were driven solely on a reward or punishment paradigm we would never run marathons or eat healthier or write books or plan exciting vacations. Ultimately, discipline helps us to see then end of a goal when it seems way too far away. And we can strengthen those discipline muscles every single day with practically every action we take. Did we wake up when we planned to? Did we run that errand? Did we take those five minutes for mindfulness exercises? Isn’t it exciting to think that we can start wherever we are and can see changes inside ourselves pretty quickly if we make it a matter of practice?
Set our heuristics and stay true to them. Heuristics are another one of those human super powers I think because once we have them set, our automated brain systems kick in, requiring less effort for us to get to desired ends. I guess in a way heuristics act as the mental side of discipline. Lets say we decide that we will not tolerate bullying in any form. That means that when we are in situations where we see bullying, we don’t even have to think or way pros and cons between actions. We step in to stop the bullying. That decision was already made for us. Isn’t that amazing?! What rules of thumb matter to you? Set them up so you don’t even have to think before acting the way you want to.
The last thing that has really motivated me is discovering my core values as a person. This one has taken a bit more work, but it’s always been one of the most impactful factors in my life. There are a lots of ways of determining what values really sing true to you, but for me, I started with thinking back on the most significant single experiences in my life. Simon Sinek calls them “High 5” or “Love 5” experiences. On a scale of -5 to +5 these are the lowest of the lows and the highest of the highs single moments in your life. And to draw the meaning out of the experiences, the more specific the better. For example, let’s say the day a child was born was the most significant experience of your life. That’s fine, but what moments of that experience were most impactful? Maybe the first time that infant slept in your arms or the first time you locked eyes with that new child. From there you draw out the feelings that were present during those experiences. Maybe if you think back, it was the overwhelming sense of responsibility you felt for that new baby that was most impactful. Then perhaps caring for loved ones is one of your most significant core values.
The beauty of identifying your core values is that they can help us make sense out why we feel the way we feel in certain circumstances. Empowerment is one of my core values. For me that means that I use my voice to give space for others. So if I’m in a work meeting and I start feeling uncomfortable with the way the discussion is going, more often than not, it’s because that empowerment core value has been violated. It’s still up to me to do something about it, but by identifying the root of the feeling, I can easily determine what I need to do to make my most authentic contribution.
When push comes to shove, its what we decide to do being motivated by discipline, heuristics, core values or even just a desire to build any of those three into our lives that help us to become the people we want to be. And thank goodness we have a lifetime to work on deciding who we want to be when we grow up.