Understanding What Motivates You

What is that you want more of?

What motivates you? What inspires you?

What drives us to do the things that we do?

What inspires people to be creative?

Why do you do the things that you do?

What impacts your decision-making most often?

As you can see, understanding what motivates you begins with asking a lot of questions.

The main inspiration and motivation behind my life is my family. My purpose in life is creating a safe space for my children to always come back to. While this may seem obvious, it impacts more of one’s life than you might think, including changing jobs and leaving a 20-year career to be closer to home.

Now, I invite you to explore your emotions.

What are the emotions that you want to experience more of in life? What moments brought that emotion out of you?

Are there any common themes in the varied moments that brought you the emotion you want to experience more in life?

For me, the emotions I seek are joy and peace. These emotions show themselves in moments where my children laugh or share a witty remark. When I see signs of accomplishments in each member has a individual, that is the result, in part, of being uplifting by another member of the household.

It’s our family being united with a common goal: from cheering my youngest on at a basketball or hockey game to playing a board game and my oldest child’s confidence gently surprising me. It’s the fact that my parents rearrange their schedules to also support my children in their activities or how all of us make it a priority to exchange messages every day.

Or, our family simply sitting around the campfire.

My motivation is immersed in family and how we experience in the presents of each other’s company, without distractions.

So, what?

To have more time with family and to experience my desired emotions through this anchoring motivation, I need to work hard to afford a lifestyle that allows for these experiences. And, I need to balance that work ethic while remaining present to not lose out on my children’s formative years.

This reality is the beauty in taking a moment to reflect and give pause to understand what motivates us in our daily life with a lone of sight on what we really, truly want out of life.

We only have one life to live.

Some say understanding what motivates you is the key to success.

Understanding what motivates you gives you a sense of direction and purpose in life; it also helps you work towards your goals and — achieve them.

Motivation is the driving force that makes us go beyond our comfort zones, do things that we never thought possible and achieve things that seemed impossible to us.

For me, if begins by asking questions — a lot of them. And, never stopping.

Understanding what motivates you is about seizing the opportunity to continually learn as a mechanism to get the most out of life.

What is that you want more of? Now, go get it.

Nancy Blackman shares a heartfelt story on choosing love. Her piece speaks to me as she and her husband had a difficult journey, and I can relate all too well. While the moments I share in this piece may sound idealistic (now), it took reflection and effort to yield such a strong intergenerational family unit. Love is a verb; it’s a choice; it’s an action.

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