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How-to: Motivating Without Anger

Posted April 25, 2007, by peter

To motivate others to do something you want them to do, I find it helpful to better understand where they're coming from, and then fit my program into theirs. So then any failure to motivate them will be my own, and I rarely get mad at myself.

Ingredients:

  • The understanding that other people almost always have different motivations than you
  • A quieted mind to be able to better listen to the other person, observing him or her in a lovingly detached way, trying to discern his/her  motivations
  • Useful models of human motivation (e.g. Enneagram) to help with Step 1
  • A forgiving mindset (toward yourself and the person)

Steps:

  1. Try to understand the motivations of the person
  2. Tailor your desires for that person so that your desires are consistent with that person's motivations
  3. Take a deep breath when your efforts fail and go back to Step 1

This post is a reply to Question How to Creatively Motivate Without Anger?
Replies & Comments

Comments Post a comment
drLove (3 years ago)

The thing I really liked about this recipe is Step 1. It never occured to me to find out why someone wouldn't want to say, for example, brush her teeth when asked 6 times to do so. Next time, I will sit down with my daughter and ask her why she doesn't want to do this instead of becoming angry to motivate her to brush her teeth. Step 2 for me is a "people pleasing" tactic that I don't believe fosters happy relationships. However, it got me thinking. Compromise is where I want to head when someone isn't doing what I want them to do. For Step 3, deep breaths are good, and I am also going to keep in mind that the only person I have any control over is myself. I think that's why I get angry to motivate others at times. I want to control their thinking, and that is just not possible because the only person that can control my daughter's thinking is she herself.


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