March 26

“Every accomplishment begins with the decision to try.” -John F. Kennedy

I always want to accomplish great things, but sometimes having the motivation to begin is sometimes hard.  I been thinking about motivation lately.  What makes some people more motivated than others?  Why am I sometimes so motivated and other times not?

Motivation is what helps us accomplish easy and hard tasks.

My younger daughter has  a terribly messy room.  I have tackled it a few times in the last few years, but it always seems to get messy again.  For the past few weekends I have mentioned to her that she should work on her room, but things have come up, we’ve been busy doing other fun things, or she has just decided to pretend I haven’t mentioned it.  Today, I decided to motivate her.  I mentioned her room, and said,”Why don’t you just start small and tackle the top of your dresser today?” Her eyes got really big and she stated,”Have you seen that thing?  What am I going to do with all of that stuff?” I explained, “Well, you could take everything off of it and then put it in piles… trash, stuff I don’t want, but maybe others will, things I want but need to organize.” She huffed, and tried to wine her way out of it, but I stood strong and declared, “Well, it needs to get done today.  It has been a few weeks since I first asked, and it’s not going to clean itself.  If it doesn’t get done today, then your chores for the week will double.”

She found some other things to do in the morning, but towards the afternoon I reminded her and she set off to tackle the mess.  She stayed in there for about 1 hour.  She would walk out of her room with her small trash can full, and ask, “what should I do with this?” a few times.  She then declared that she had cleaned everything off, but didn’t know what to do with everything she wanted.

I walked in her room and was really impressed that she had narrowed down the stuff!  I gave a few pointers about how she might organize things, and then she was on her way.

At bedtime this evening, she said,”Thanks for helping me get started on that mess.  I think I’ll be able to keep it clean better now since I did all of the work cleaning it up.  I really like that there isn’t so much stuff.  Next weekend, I’m going to do the same to my bookshelf, then the next week maybe my lego shelf.  Maybe my whole room will be nice and clean in a month or so.”

Hmmm…  Sounds like she is motivated to try and accomplish a big chore!  And she plans to get there in small steps.  I think I’ve learned a thing or two about motivation today!