Motivating the Motivators

Not so long ago, Michael was at a meeting when one of his fellow meeting goers asked how things were going with the [ROAMcare] website. “How do you find something to write about every week, week after week?” he questioned. “The blog posts are easy,” Michael responded. “It’s all those motivation memes that are more likely to keep me up at night thinking. Fortunately, I have the motivation of a librarian.”

And indeed, it is true that the blog posts are easy. There’s not a week that at least once during that week one of us says to the other, “now that would be something good for the blog.” It is not at all difficult to see how one of our own experiences, challenges, and successes might allow others in similar situations to gather some positivity and encouragement for themselves. But the Moments of Motivation…there are challenges to be met negotiating that landscape. We have published over 100 blog posts (in fact, this one is #111) hardly batting an eye. We’ve published a similar number of motivation memes and although at first, it was hard to imagine ourselves as motivators, we are finding them easier to generate. Sometimes surprisingly so.

Recently we noticed how much easier. Could it be that we are motivating ourselves?

Yes, we hear you saying, “Now wait a minute! Isn’t that the point?” And indeed it is, but then, we’re not professional motivators. We’re just a couple of people who want to share what we’ve seen and been through with others, doing what we can to infuse some enthusiasm into people’s lives. Glib motivational quotes don’t fall off out tongues like:

“This is a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before.” -Maya Angelou, or

“Love begins with listening.” -Fred Rogers, or

"The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.” -C. S. Lewis.

We’re just us (“Dare to start before all the boxes are checked.”). We’re don’t even belong in the same paragraph as these masters of motivation, yet we still keep tossing ideas back and forth, drawing pictures to go with our words, writing short descriptions to explain ourselves (“It doesn’t have to be the perfect plan to get started. Just good enough to feel right about it.”) then posting our Moments of Motivation to our social sites and website.

We figured that eventually things would stop happening to us or we would run out of ideas, or worst of all, we would run out of motivation. “Who is going to motivate the motivators?” We asked.

But the thought was fleeting and before we knew it, we were back on the phone, or online, or or a video call, brainstorming motivational moments. And we talked.

· What lifted our spirits this week?

· What good things happened and why if we know.

· What held us back from doing something?

Maybe it’s because we spend so much time saying aloud what we find motivating. Maybe it’s because we take each phrase and rephrase it 3, 4, 5, sometimes more than 5 times and hear it over and over. Maybe it’s because we spend so much time with each phrase. For whatever reason. Our own motivation has climbed since we started these motivating moments, like we’ve been motivating ourselves all along.

And it leads us to ask, maybe all motivation is self-motivation. Maybe you just need to tell yourself, “Get motivated and do it!” whatever your “it” happens to be, and then do. Maybe all we do, in our own non-professional motivator way, is remind you of that. Maybe we all have the motivation of a librarian.

“Wait. What? A librarian’s motivation? What’s that?” Michael’s friend asked him.

Michael smiled and answered, “I believe in my shelf!”