Learning Strengths and Increasing Motivation

Motivation is a slippery customer. Sometimes you have it in abundance & other times, it sneaks off & goes missing in action. Now is a good time to give yourself a tune up & rev up & focus on achieving the outcomes you want. The most important thing to know is that not feeling motivated hasn’t really got much to do with motivation. It has more to do with feeling anxious and worried. In fact this is the formula:

Fear + Worry = Loss of Motivation

Motivation has more to do with overcoming your fears than anything else. Fears loom larger if we try to avoid them.

Let’s discuss the most powerful motivation techniques.

Build on your learning strengths & forget about your weaknesses.

Success in life is about doing more of what you are good at & less of the things you are not good at. Serena Williams is not well known because she can do Mathematics, Einstein wasn’t well known because he played soccer. When you focus on the things you find more enjoyable and interesting at school, even the things you find harder become easier.

Assess your learning strengths at www.mylearningstrengths.com and develop your starting point from your top learning strength. Building from a learning strength area you already feel confident in will help you to overcome your worries or fears. Starting with what is easiest builds momentum and motivation.

If your top learning strength is:

Spatial Reasoning – start with by drawing & linking main ideas
Perceptual – Motor Skills – start with by linking your learning with physical movements
Concentration and memory – convert your learning into a memory game
Planning and sequencing – make a detailed plan for your learning & put the tasks to be completed into order
Thinking and logic – evaluate the pros & cons of learning
People smarts -think about people who will be impressed if you succeed. Think about the lives of people you admire.
Language and word smarts – create a story about the key pieces of information you need to learn
Number smarts – find ways to integrate thinking in numbers with the information you are learning about.

Use the full personalised learning success plan from the website to help you to do this.

Set small goals and one large one. For each subject that you do at school set a small goal each week. For example a goal might read & understand one chapter. Write the goal down somewhere. When you have achieved that goal give it a tick.

Decide to make your favourite subject at school the one that you will “go for broke in”. In this subject your aim is to top the class. This is the subject that you will use to judge yourself by.

Get organised. If you are in the senior years of school disable your social media pages until after the exams. Get yourself up to date. If you have fallen behind in any subject, have a working bee to catch up. Ask others to help you. Ask teachers to help you by saying something like I lost motivation for a while in this subject but now I’d really like to catch up. If you have not been in the practice of making notes, start. If you have become embarrassed about asking questions in class, set a goal of asking one question per class. If that is too embarrassing, ask the teacher after class. If you’ve missed notes, ask for copies of them. Write a revision summary for the subject to date, topic by topic.

If your study area has become a mess, clean it up. Use post-it notes to organise the steps towards a successful outcome. On the first post-it note write the successful outcome you have in mind
for that subject. Write the step before that and the step before that. Then write the first step you could take.

You wouldn’t enter a marathon without doing a series of shorter training runs first and the same thing applies to doing well at school. Regaining your motivation is a step by step process. Give up believing that you know how smart you are. Most people who feel unmotivated think everyone else knows more, is more talented, is smarter and has a lot more brains than they do.

My research shows that most students have absolutely no idea how well they are going to do at school.

It is highly likely that you are more intelligent than you realise. You certainly have learning strengths you are yet to discover. It is also highly likely that most of the people around you in class are not quite as capable as they appear to be.

Use your time in school well.
Many students muck around in school & then wonder why they have to do so much work outside of school. Consider sitting towards the front in class. If you can focus & listen well while at school you can save yourself endless hours. This is valuable time saved that you can use for hanging out with friends and having fun.

Be honest with yourself.
If you have felt unmotivated you may have done anything to avoid doing the study time. The world is full of excuses that you can make: “The dog needs a walk”, “I have to finish this game and then I’ll study”, “I’ll have a nap and study when I wake up”. You have to be tough enough on yourself to do the work BEFORE you do the video games/ TV watching/chat room messaging etc.

Also be honest enough to admit to yourself that lying in bed, with the computer on, listening to music, with YouTube in the background and messenger open to chat with friends, is not and will never be, studying. Have some study time sitting up at a desk or table with NO electronic distractions on.

Change your routine
If you’ve been finding it difficult to get yourself motivated, change your set pattern. For example, study in a local library rather than at home or change the room you will study in. Just as you learn to surf best by surfing, you learn to succeed in exams and essays by giving your undivided attention to your study. Practice in the same conditions you intend to perform in. There won’t be electronics and music in the exam room.

Why should you care?
You might be able to dismiss all of the above points by saying ‘I can’t do it’ or ‘I can’t be bothered’ or ‘This sucks.’ That is just the part of you that is scared that is talking you out of it. The scared part thinks that if you try and fail, it will be much worse than never having tried in the first place.

Think about what would happen if you applied this type of thinking to the whole of your life. You wouldn’t learn music and start a band because U2, Pink & Beyoncé have already done it. You wouldn’t talk to someone you like because they would reject you. You wouldn’t go to a place you would really like, because it would probably disappoint you. You wouldn’t live the life you could live because you would lack the daring and courage.

Give up fear and gain motivation.

You know the No.1 fear of all time?

Death? No.

Speaking in public? No.

The number one fear that people have is that other people will think badly of them. And you know what the biggest and saddest joke about that fear is? Most people don’t think about you at all. Most people are so busy or so focused on themselves that haven’t got the interest or the energy to judge whether you are good at something or not. So, there is a chance that you could throw away a really successful, enjoyable life by worrying about something that doesn’t even exist. So as Yoda in Star Wars said there is only do or not do. It is up to you. But don’t make what other people might think of you if you stuff up, a reason for giving up on yourself.

So why listen to me?
I spend a lot of my time talking to adults who gave up on themselves at school and spend their lives doing boring jobs that don’t pay very well.

I also spend even more of my time talking to students who have done really well in school after not being thought of as clever, or talented, or gifted or smart in any way. These students have taught me the ingredients of success. Now you have them too. What you do with them is up to you. Good luck.