Creating Hunger to Motivate

In order to successfully motivate someone—or, to get her/him to internalize the motivation—you have to create a deep hunger or thirst. It has been said that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. That’s true, but let it be known that you can give that horse salt, thereby creating such a thirst that the horse must have water. As a master motivator, you are giving salt to your prospects. That is, you are striving to create such a thirst in your prospects that they can’t wait to act.

On your persuasive journey, you will find that people tend to get motivated for the short term, that they lose steam and that they then fall back into the rut they were trying to pull themselves out of in the first place. As a persuader and motivator, you have to understand what pulls people away from action into inaction. What causes them to lose excitement, vision and energy? When you notice that your prospects are losing their motivation, these are the common reasons why they are doing so:

• They have not yet found their passion. – They are going through life using desperation as a motivator, or they haven’t yet found anything that really inspires them.

• They have a poor attitude. – They are run down with a negative attitude. Their expectations and beliefs are not congruent with their goals.

• Their intent is diminishing. – They have previously been on the right track but they’ve now lost their drive. They have forgotten the real reasons why they were motivated in the first place.

• They are indifferent. – They just don’t care anymore. They have lost the ability to express concern or to make a difference in their own life or in the lives of others.

• They have become creatures of habit. – They have not replaced their previous bad habits and have fallen back into old ones.

• They lack persistence. – They have given up too easily and have gotten stalled at the first obstacle.

• They have no sense of urgency. – They have set no timeframe for achievement. The pain of not changing doesn’t hurt badly enough that they’ve got to act now.

• They have succumbed to peer pressure. – The people around them are more motivating than you are. They have not found the support they need to resist against the peers whose esteem they value.

• They lack vision. – They have sacrificed long-term success for short-term pleasure.

• They lack knowledge. – They don’t know how to make the necessary changes in their lives or they are not doing so correctly.

• They lack confidence. – Confidence comes only after action, knowledge and success have been achieved.

• They have no game plan. – They are overwhelmed or waiting for everything to fall into order. They have no action plan.

• They simply don’t want to do it. – They don’t want to pay the price. Their goal is only a dream and nothing more. They are using external desperation as their motivator, or they are living their lives the way others want them to.