In my most recent blog posting I gave four strategies to help a parent motivate a child. Motivating a child can be difficult work for a parent.

One problem with motivating your child is you need to be constantly on the job. So wouldn’t it be great if your child could motivate himself? Well, there’s no reason why a child should not motivate himself. How? The same way an adult does – by learning the skill of motivating himself.

Motivating yourself is a skill that anyone can learn, even a child. Even better, it is something you can learn with your child, and though it may involve more work in the short haul, in the long run, having a child who can motivate himself is more than worth the time. Especially when you add in that you will learn how to motivate yourself.

The first step in learning how to motivate yourself is learning the model for self motivation. Here’s the model:

MOTIVATION = ƒ (VISION, SUCCESSABILITY, ENVIRONMENT).

The model tells us that your motivation is directly impacted by your vision (some special change you want to make in your life), your successability (your confidence in your competence, that is, your ability to make the change) and your environment, both your physical environment (where you will do the work necessary to make the change) and your social environment (the people and organizations available to you).

The model for self motivation tells us that any positive steps your child takes to impact his vision, successability or environment will automatically positively impact his motivation.  Reading my other blog entries and reading my book when it become available in April will guide you through the process, but here is a summary.

Vision: If you read my earlier blog, you read that my Mom continually told me I wasn’t working up to my potential. But one of the reasons my mom never got me to work up to my potential was that I had no idea what my potential even looked like. I was never encouraged to dream. My parents never asked me what things I liked to do, or if there was something I might like to try. I don’t blame them; I’m sure they were never asked these questions by their parents either. But I asked them of my children, and you can ask them of yours. This is how a child positively impacts his vision, the first factor, by getting in touch with the things that are truly important to him.

Successability: The more confident a person is that they can make a dream come true, the more likely they are to pursue it, the more motivated they will be in their pursuit. One strategy to helping your child be more confident is to make training opportunities available to him. But let your child have input as to the training you make available for him. If he totally dreads receiving the training, it’s unlikely he will gain the skills he needs. If, on the other hand, he suggests some training or skill development he desires, he will have an investment in being correct and will work harder and longer.

Environment:  Give your child some degree of control over the place he does his work.  The degree will vary with each child, of course, dependent upon such things as the child’s age and maturity, and factors outside of the control of the child or the parent, but the important thing is that the child feels he has some say, some autonomy, in the decisions that are being made.

Control is a prerequisite to being motivated. Giving control over to our children is something most parents struggle with. But a motivated child is one that will grow into a responsible adult, who knows what is right, and pursues it. He becomes a child any parent would be proud of.

As I shared in my last blog, when I was a child my mom was continually frustrated that I wasn’t working up to my potential. She let me know it, but complaining about something is a bit different than motivating someone to change.

So if you would rather be effective, instead of just annoying your child, here are four strategies you can use.

Strategy 1.  Make sure your child understands why doing the activity is important to him. Motivating another requires thinking about their needs and wants, not just yours. Take the time to try to see the issue from your child’s perspective. Know your child well enough so that the reason is important to the child. What motivates us may not be what motivates our children.

Strategy 2.  Child empowerment – this one is particularly difficult for many parents as they feel, often times correctly, that they know best what is good for the child. Let your child get to know him or herself. Give the child the opportunity to try out different things. But also give them to responsibility to stop doing it after a reasonable amount of time passes if they find they don’t like doing it. And try not tell them, “I told you so,” or call them a quitter.  My daughter wanted to try a dance class. After a couple of classes, she knew she didn’t like it, so we let her quit. Art, on the other hand, was something she found she loved, and continues doing it even now, late into her twenties.

Strategy 3. Make sure they have skin in the game. If a child wants to try something new, let them spend part of their allowance toward the cost of it, or have them do an extra chore. This way the thing the child is trying becomes more meaningful and the child will be more likely to give it a fair chance.

Strategy 4.  Let the child fail. This is how a person learns to handle frustration, and to build their tolerance for not getting immediate satisfaction. You don’t want your child to bail as soon as they hit a bump in the road, or when the inherent motivation of something new wanes.

Careful use of these strategies will make you a much more effective motivator. They are harder to implement than nagging, but they will work so much better.

In my next blog, something even better than motivating your child, teaching your child how to motivate herself.

Sometimes the biggest struggle we have with motivating someone else is when we motivate our children, trying to get them to do things we know are good for them, but which they just aren’t inclined to do.

When I think about this, I always think of my mom. My mom’s favorite words to me, at least the words I complain about more than any others, were, “Bob, you aren’t working up to your potential.”  I would not argue that she was wrong, especially since I also heard it from teachers, but telling someone this, without giving them the means to improve or fix the problem, is simply nagging.  Not only is it annoying to the child, but it’s equally annoying to the parent, for it never seems to improve the situation.

When I talk about motivating a child, I’m not just talking about getting a child to clean his room or do his chores without being asked, the things you want done. I am also talking about the more important things, things that result in well rounded children, children who have a sense of their own power,  children who know what is good for them and how to go after those things. I’m talking about raising a child who feels good about himself. You don’t need to worry about peer pressure with a child like this.

I know my mom loved me and wanted me to work up to my potential for my benefit, not hers. The problem was, though she had some vague idea of what I was supposed to be doing, she was unable to motivate me to do it. She simply didn’t know how to motivate me to work up to my potential.  So it’s to Moms like her, and to their long suffering unmotivated children that I dedicate these this and the next two blog posting.

In my next blog I will give you strategies to help you motivate your child.  In the blog after that one I will present an even better idea, something even better than motivating your child.

After a recent blog posting about motivating other people, a reader asked the best way to motivate employees. While writing my new book, iMotivateMe: Take Control of Your Motivation to Reach Your Goals and Achieve Your Dreams, motivation in the workplace was one of the issues I researched extensively. Motivation in the work place is extremely important for managers and business owners; consequently, much research has been done.

Here are seven tips to make sure the people you manage are motivated:

1. Empower your workers. Though you will probably need to maintain control of the results of the work, see if there isn’t room for you to give to your workers some control over the means of getting those results.  Though you will always have some workers who require more oversight than most, avoid unnecessary micromanaging.

Empowering workers also means making sure each worker understands why his particular job is important.

2. Take time to know your worker. Knowing your workers will allow you to match your leadership style to the specific workers and the jobs they are doing.

3. Make sure your workers are confident that they can perform the necessary tasks. Do what you can to give each worker an expectation of success, and help the workers succeed by supplying them with the tools, training, and skills they need to do their jobs well.

4. Make sure the system works. Examine the system in which your workers perform. Make  sure the system supports the workers and doesn’t work against them. Don’t expect your workers to perform well in a dysfunctional system. (See the writings of W. Edwards Deming for more on how dysfunctional systems can hobble the performance of workers.)

5. Make sure each worker understands exactly what is required of him. This includes setting goals for each worker.

6. Give recognition and praise for jobs well done. 

7. Foster a sense of community. Employees who feel like they are part of an enterprise will be more motivated to make that enterprise succeed.

Motivated employees don’t just happen. It takes a manager who is aware, aware of who his employees are, and aware of what is going on in the work place.

While it may be true that someone else may be able to motivate you, why would you allow it?  More often than not, that other person would be more interested in motivating you to do something they want, not what you want.

But even assuming there were someone totally interested in you improving your life, with no corresponding benefit to their own, why would you give your power to some other person? You need to ask yourself this question because motivation coming from someone else is simply not as effective as motivation coming from yourself.

There are two problems with getting your motivation from someone else. The first is the 24/7 problem; the second is the uniqueness problem.

The 24/7 problem refers to the fact that no one is with you 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You never know when you will hit a bump on your path, or when you will be distracted by something new and exciting. You need to be ready to take the steps to get back on track.

The uniqueness problem refers to the reality that each one of us is different. We each have our unique style, the things we like, the things we don’t like, the things that motivate us and the things that rob us of our motivation.

No one, but you, knows you as well as you do. And no one is going to spend the time to get to know the unique you. So it’s up to you to understand yourself and to find those things that motivate you and the things that rob you of your motivation.

This does not mean you shouldn’t get a coach or a peer partner to help you stay on track. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t seek out people who have the skills you need to make your dream come true. Other people can be very helpful to you.

But what it does mean is ultimately you need to rely on the person who is with you 24/7 and who knows you the best.

That person is you.

I was reading a blog posting earlier this week at lifehacker.com, entitled, “How to Limit Visits to Time-Wasting Web Sites and Give Your Willpower a Break.” Here’s the URL: http://lifehacker.com/5780575/limit-visits-to-time+wasting-web-sites-and-give-your-willpower-a-break The blog is about a software program, StayFocusd Chrome, that stops you from surfing certain sites. You pre-program it for the sites that you waste time on and it limits the time you are allowed to spend at those sites. What it does is help you avoid distractions in your environment. The way it does that is by leveraging your motivation.What I mean by leveraging your motivation is finding some simple way to exercise control, which simple way results in a greater control over yourself. In other words you have enough motivation to input the distracting sites into StayFocusd Chrome, activity which doesn’t require a lot of motivation. That action however has great dividends, as it allows (forces) you to avoid wasting time at those sites. You might not have enough motivation to avoid those sites, were you able to access them. It works just like a lever, a tool that enables you to exercise power you do not naturally have.

In case I haven’t explained it very well, I will share how I first became aware that you can leverage motivation. It’s the story of the brownie and the mayonnaise.  When the person who told the story rides on an airplane (back when they fed you) he would be served a sandwich and for dessert a brownie.  What he wanted to stay motivated about was watching his diet, which meant not eating the brownie.  He knew that he could resist the brownie, at first, especially while he still had the sandwich to eat.  But he knew, once he finished the sandwich, the temptation of the brownie would be too strong and he would succumb.  His motivation to stay on his diet would not be strong enough to resist the brownie once he had finished the sandwich.  So as soon as he got his lunch, the first thing he did was open up the brownie.  Then he would open up the little package of mayonnaise that came with the sandwich, and spread the mayo all over the brownie.  Once he had done that, the brownie no longer tempted him, not all covered with mayo. He leveraged his motivation, which was strong enough to keep him from eating the brownie while he still had a sandwich to eat, so that he was able to resist the temptation even after the sandwich was gone, when the temptation was so much greater, and his motivation would not be otherwise adequate.

That person didn’t call it leveraging motivation, that’s my phrase, but this was the first time I became conscious of the concept.

I love finding examples of motivational leveraging. They are the strategies of smart and aware people. There is real power in knowing your weaknesses.

Being deeply in debt, especially for an extended period of time, is a tough existence. You dread the end of the month when the credit cards are due because you know it will be a struggle to even cover the minimum. But since you’ve been using the card or more likely cards, charging more than the minimum, the amount owed continues to grow. The dunning phone calls haven’t yet gotten out of hand, but you know it’s just around the corner.

There doesn’t seem to be a way out. You’ve made a budget, and actually followed it for a while, but it didn’t last long. You put the cards away, promised yourself that you wouldn’t use them, unless there was an emergency, but you didn’t stick with that promise either.

There is a way out. You have the power to take charge, but it’s going to require a skill you have never learned. That skill is motivating yourself. Motivating yourself, and keeping yourself motivated, is a skill that you can learn.

Anyone can become motivated to do something new. New things carry with them their own motivation. That’s why it’s so easy to start new projects, to make new promises. But when the going gets tough, the motivation is gone. Hit a bump in the road and the motivation is gone.

So here are eight tips to increase your motivation to get out of debt.

Tip One. Create a written plan. The remaining seven tips will help you create a plan. Make sure you write it down.

Tip Two. Write down all the horrible things that are resulting, and will result in the future, if you fail to take control of your finances and get out of debt.

Tip Three.  Write down all the wonderful things that will result when you get out of debt. Day dream some really great things.

Tip Four. Carry these two lists with you, all the time. Whenever you are tempted to go off your plan, take them out and review them.

Tip Five.  Be the Boss. Suze Orman says in The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom, “True financial freedom is not only having money, but having power over that money as well.” Control is motivating. The more confidence you have in your abilities, the more motivated you will be. Pump yourself up! Crack the whip!

And how do you increase your confidence? By Tip Six.

Tip Six. Enlist assistance in making your plan, and in implementing it. There’s no reason to be embarrassed in asking for help. No one is an expert in everything, so seek out a trained professional. There is free credit counseling available at most credit unions and some banks.  Check out the Federal Trade Commission’s website for what you need to know before you retain a credit counseling company: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre13.shtm

If you are facing foreclosure, contact your state’s bar association for the names of volunteer attorneys who can assist you.

Tip Seven. Based upon the assistance you have received, write down in detail the steps you are going to take to get rid of your debt.

Tip Eight. Review your written plan every day. You need to keep it in your consciousness.

Getting out of debt will be a struggle, as will adopting new habits to replace the old ones that no longer work. But, by applying these eight tips it’s a struggle you can win.