LATE BLOOMERS, TALK IT UP…

In the last article I discussed how a motivator can help you keep on track to finish tasks. Your motivator is a significant part of your life. He will assist you to your tasks completion and help you in your journey to a more mature character. However, and this may be hard to believe, but there is the possibility that your motivator will have a life outside of helping you. He may not be able to be there exactly when you need him to help you past the wall. He may even go on vacation for a week or two at a time and leave you stranded. Well, if there is no one around to hold you accountable or help you through the wall then that must simply mean you postpone the rest of your task, right? No way! That is a trap that looks as tempting as a glass of milk after a chocolate bar. Fear not, my fellow LBer. There are other ways of finding motivation and getting past the wall.

WARNING: very basic social skills coming up next.
I find that if I am interested in whatever task I am trying to accomplish, I will talk about it quite a lot. Sometimes others are interested, too. Sometimes they are not. If the person I am talking to is not interested, I stop talking about it and move on to something else. (end very basic social skills) However, if I find that the person I am talking to is actually interested in my task, two things tend to happen. First, I get a little more excited about it. Let’s face it. Knowing someone else is interested in your interests makes the interest even more interesting. (didja follow that?) And second, the conversations may lead to thoughts and insights that I may not have had regarding my task. And again, that makes it more interesting. Motivation increases as interest increases. There is no way it can not.

This next point is kind of a side issue, but it seems to fit in here, so here is where I’ll put it. I grew up thinking that a conversation with someone was…well…a conversation with someone. And to be sure, sometimes that is all it is. But I have observed something different in motivated people and their conversations. They have lots of conversations with people and listen for, and actually remember, key phrases that will help them with their task later. This was a new way of looking at how to converse. This way of conversing means that a great deal of attention must be paid to whatever is being said. I know people who seemed to have mastered this. (FYI: people love to talk to people who actually listen to them for content and not just because of friendship or because it would be rude not to listen. That is one of the necessary social skills upon which the Late Bloomer needs to improve. (I alluded to this in the article posted on 7/20/05.)

Your motivator may not always be available when you need him, but at least motivation can come from other sources. Find someone else who thinks it’s interesting and share one another’s thoughts and insights. Are you having trouble staying motivated? Talk it up.