I for Inspiration
How can I motivate an unmotivated child? And inspire them?
This article is all about inspiration. I hope it inspires you. Because that’s what I aim to be – an inspiration. In a fun way. In a way that empowers you to be an inspiration to your child. Because parents come to me with a lot of questions. You want to motivate your child to do what it takes. To motivate your child to read. To motivate your child to study. To motivate your child to learn. To motivate your child to study harder. To motivate your child so ultimately they do well in school and in life.
So, we spend a lot of our time trying to get people to do stuff. Trying to motivate people, trying to motivate our kids. And motivation, in my work, isn't the most effective way, in my opinion, of trying to get somebody to do something. Motivation is like, outside that person, is outside us. It's somebody trying to tell us to do something. So how do you feel when you get told to do something? Well, I've got a strong dislike about being told what to do. And I would far rather be encouraged to see my own way. But it's tricky sometimes.
We just want to know what to do. Just tell me what to do. And so I had a business coach, a great lady called Haley back in 2008. And she never actually told me what to do. She asked me questions and I got to my own conclusions because I was inspired to do things. The idea came from within me to do it.
So clearly this is for the bigger things in life. If your child or you are about to get run over by a car that they haven't seen, you need to act quickly and keep them safe. There are times to ask them questions and there are times to tell them to do things. But maybe we can tell people a little bit less and maybe we can ask them a little bit more.
Now, I'm not a parenting coach. So I get uncomfortable telling parents what to do, it’s your child but I think this works for everybody. Some people say well, I made him think it was his idea to do it and so he did it. That’s inspiration and there's a sight tone of, yes, manipulation in the way I said that.
But getting somebody, drawing somebody's own ideas out of them, drawing their own solutions out of them rather than trying to force solutions and force answers into their heads I think is something that works whether you're dealing with a child or whether you're dealing with, you know, somebody that works with you.
We all want to be more inspired and empowered. We want to be more inspired and we want to be more empowered. But we live in a world at the moment where the politicians are being very vague here in the UK and we're all saying, ‘Tell us what to do. Tell us what to do. Tell us what to do. Tell us what to say.’ But the ironic thing is, if they tell us what to do, we don't do it. We don't do it 100% like, you know, nobody obeys every traffic speed limit. We don't. So, this idea is a bit philosophical this morning, A to Z of happiness, inspiration.
How could you inspire your child today? What new task? What new thing would they like to do? That you could help them achieve? How could you inspire your child today? That creative spark, you know, that creative spark, maybe writing, maybe doing a video and maybe doing a video maybe writing a story, maybe drawing and drawing a picture of a landscape. What could work? What could you inspire your child on to do today?
And how could you bring out that creative spark? How could you inspire yourself today? What is it that you've been putting off doing? Because you're not quite sure how to do it? What if we just started? What if we just took life like a blank piece of paper and just started? You know, we're all so concerned about failure that sometimes we never get started. So inspiration, yeah, that power’s from within? Not without not. Yeah, inspiring them. The funny thing is, you know, it's the speed thing, isn't it? It's the speed who's got time for inspiration now they'll just tell me what to do and I'll do it. I had a member of staff, a lovely lady, fantastic, absolute superstar. And I was talking to her, I was trying to paint a picture of what we're trying to do and she just said, ‘Look, Simon, I don't have time to think. Just tell me what to do.’ And how disempowering is that? See tomorrow. Be the opposite of what most people are doing.
And we don’t.
We need to be an inspiration for our children. To do the things we want them to do. To inspire them to follow their dreams. To bounce back from the set backs on the way. To take the learnings. To use their inspiration to keep them going and ignore those who say they can’t make their dreams come true.