What Moves You?

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It’s hard to imagine how forbidding an outdoor pool looks on a December morning when it has been raining all night and the wind is whipping the water up and over the deck. Now, try to place yourself there in a slightly damp swim suit from your workout the night before – arms and legs bare, standing with your toes curled over the edge, staring down at the frigid 5 am water.

There was a time in my high school swimming career when I managed to fit in four hours of swimming, an hour of weights and running, six hours of school, and a lunch-hour lifeguarding job – in order to get everything done, I had to do things like swim at 5 am. My parents quipped that they had a part-part-time daughter. The fact that I regularly left the house at 4:30 am and returned past 9 pm meant I rarely ate dinner with my family, hardly slept, and considering that swimming was a year-round sport – I often got called motivated during the summer, fall, and spring – and just plain crazy during the winter.

Nonetheless, every December I would get the same question. I’d swim for hours before dawn and arrive at school a little tired, weathered, and damp. Snuggling deep into down jackets, my friends would joke that there must be gold at the bottom of the pool. At least, that’s what it would take to get them to even consider my morning routine. What is The Secret, then, they would ask. The Motivation – where does it come from?

For the longest time, I never really knew how to answer. I knew that my health, my school work, my job and my sport were important to me, and I also knew that I have always wanted to do everything that I needed to do, so I could be as good as I could be. But for some reason, that didn’t really sound like much of The Answer that people were so curious to hear.

Years later, I think I’ve finally got it. Last week, I had the opportunity to hear Richard Lavoie speak about motivation in respect to education. Surrounded by teachers, parents, and other intrigued professionals, I eagerly sat through his stories and presentation just waiting to hear The Answer. How do you motivate kids to do well in school? Bribe them? Reward them? Punish them? Praise them? Well, maybe. The sneaky thing is though, while it’s The Answer, it’s not necessarily Your Answer.

According to Richard Lavoie, each person has a motivational profile that is comprised of varying levels of importance of the following eight categories:

Status

Inquisitiveness

Affiliation

Power

Aggression

Autonomy

Power

Aggression

Achievement

Gregariousness

For better or for worse, individual profiles tend to be different and maybe it all it takes is a push from a private SAT tutor. In a classroom of 20 students, while one motivational technique (like the idea of “winning” a spelling bee) might work for one student, it’s quite likely that it has little convincing power on the rest of the group. While this might sound daunting to any teacher trying to manage and “move” an entire class, the great thing is that most people identify strongly with at least one of the eight categories above. This means that most students in a group will be encouraged to learn their spelling words – a technique that highlights one of eight motivators.

The tricky part, I think, comes in the identification of your own Answer. Looking back at my life in high school and my current situation as a professional adult, it has become clear to me that Autonomy is a hugely dominant on my list. Give me a project to do on my own? I’m thrilled. In high school, it was clear that I would do anything so long as it included me being independent. Clearly, the measure of Autonomy in my motivational profile can only truly be measured by its ability to get me into a bathing suit and into the 78 degree water at 5 am during a December storm.

While I apologize for not being able to reveal The Answer to universal motivation, the redeeming value is the reminder that we are all different. We may be one of a kind, but without someone curious enough to devise a way to travel in space, bold enough to become president, or social enough to create the NFL - life would be boring. After all, someone has to get into the pool at 5 am – and trust me – there isn’t always gold at the bottom.