Tuesday 14 February 2012

How relative is motivation to generations?

It is quite motivating to be able to come back to Blogher every single day, read interesting blogs and post my own. Thank you NaBloPoMo! As a mom with her younger one at home, it gets me going. Writing becomes once again my main motivation. I truly missed that over the years, 'too busy' (if you know what I mean) to teach, and 'too busy' to look after my husband and my two lovely daughters.

Motivation and Generations. Now, as I was watching the 'Scent of a woman' this morning, I could not stop thinking about the difference of age of the two main characters and their motivation in life in that movie. Three intriguing questions came to mind: 1) can we, as adult, meaningfully describe our motivation to one another?; 2) can we truly understand another person's motivation?; and 3) is it possible to grasp the motivation of our loved ones?

I will open these questions for debate. What are your thoughts?

Until my next blog.

4 comments:

  1. I am not even sure if all of us can truly understand our own motivations, let alone those of those around us. Sometimes, we may think we are motivated by something or to do something, but if we are not truly putting our energy into it, perhaps we are not motivated by what we think we are motivated by. Reminds me of a line from The Princess Bride, "I do not think it means what you think it means."

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  2. To better understand our motivation, it may then be helpful to have a better understanding of what may influence our motivation. What do you think? Is it actually possible to do that? I have in mind the ties between our motivation and where we come from for example. I believe that the more self-aware we may be, the more chances we have to realize what our motivation is.

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  3. Self-awareness is key. As is the awareness of what is going on around us and how that is impacting what we do. For example, some days I waste a lot of time on WWF instead of doing apartment searches even though I absolutely hate the place I am in right now. Or I am not paying attention to how I am upset about something and that changes how I am treating people even though I really want to be nice to everyone.

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    1. There may be some days that we are more at task than others. However, we are not machines after all! We may be governed to complete tasks because driven by our motivation, but it is not always possible to escape from our hormonal changes nor our body's chemical imbalance for example. Some of us may be better than others to overcome such changes. Others may undergo some mood swings for instance. I wonder how it is that certain people handle these mood swings better than others and I cannot stop wondering why would it be so.

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