From motivation to inspiration

How you motivate someone depends on the someone. If the person is in desperation either financially, emotionally or in their relationship, the idea of motivating them with anything but rules, regulations and laws is foolhardy. You are far wiser to acknowledge where a person is at in their life before you consider how to motivate them.

Generically, you motivate people by giving them the impression that something good will happen if they do what you ask. Of course, a person in desperation might not even believe that so, you motivate them by saying some- thing bad won’t happen if they do what you ask. This is a very primal level of motivation.

More sophisticated levels of motivation can be achieved if the individuals in question believe they have some choice. In other words they are not working out of fear or desperation. These more conscious people would react badly to the lower levels of motivation and are more likely to be “turned on” by values. That means they would become highly invested in what- ever they were doing as long as they thought their values were being met. Like goodness to humanity, kindness to children, ethical prod- ucts, environmental legitimacy.

This is still fairly primal, and requires signifi- cant structure in a company. The individuals in this circumstance would be motivated by values.

In all this we acknowledge that we must avoid demotivating people. That means we need to satisfy their basic needs, expectations. Fair pay, equal opportunity, good company culture and more. That is the baseline for motivation, not to demotivate.

But motivation is too primal for the 21st century. It is far wiser to consider inspiration. In comparison, a desperate person has got to go to work, a values based person should go to work, but an inspired individual wants, loves to go to work.

It is not possible to inspire people. They can only inspire themselves, Inspiration is when the inner voice speaks louder than the outer voices. So, to get that inner voice working an individual can’t be desperate, or motivated by values. This person, an inspired person must be motivated by a dream.

A dream or vision is something that an indi- vidual wants, (long term or short term) and
if they believe that what they are doing will get that dream to come true, they are inspired by it. This is often why people vacillate in their energies around things, sometimes they believe that their dreams will come true and sometimes not.

To help a person be inspired help them know their dreams, help them see how this job with help them get their dreams fulfilled, and remind them often about this equation.