Filed under: Indigenous wisdom, NLP, coaching, communication, self-help | Tags: Add new tag
Staying Motivated After a Great Workshop
My first sailing into the ocean of blog is inspired by WowEnergy’s post on this subject. Moments after a great workshop you feel motivated to take on the world.
You’re thinking big, walking tall and beaming light from your heart and soul. You’re connected with all of your relations and living your values to the fullest. We want to hold onto this feeling.
However, even with the best of seminars, your goals that you’ve set on that powerful day will probably fade as the days turn into weeks. Unless we have a strong set of reminders, that vivid and aromatic worldview goes back to your default setting, whatever that is.
The key to maintaining focus on your goals is to “make them visible”, writes WowEnergy. I like this idea of writing or drawing them out and placing them where they’ll be seen on a daily basis. However, this only works for people who are strongly visual.
We have to remember that we access information, memory and motivation through (at least) five senses-using our hands, eyes, ears, mouth and nose. While it’s true that the male-dominant Western European culture is largely visual, this does not fully account for what motivates the hundreds of other cultures into action.
For instance, some Indigenous cultures often remarked on how impoverished the colonizer’s sense of smell was. For these Indigenous people, the olfactory (smell) was and still is important in motivating a person into action. This is good to know if you’re working with Native people.
For most athletes and dancers, they are dominated by the kinesthetic- or in other words, live in their body. One clue of this lies in where an athlete’s eyes go during an after-game interview. If a person looks down a lot when asked to describe a moment of action, that’s a likely sign the person is replaying what that moment felt like.
Making Sense of the Five Senses
For starters, find out what motivates you. It’s usually not just one thing, but a chain of things getting fired off in rapid succession. Seeing an NLP Practitioner is a good place to start.
Until you do, don’t limit yourself to making your goals visible.
To access the auditory, you should be able to hear your goals repeated, perhaps on your way to work.
To access your sense of touch, carry around a talisman. If your goal is greater luxury, carrying around a small piece of silk or expensive leather might spur you on to greater focus.
For smell, burning incense or smudging with sacred medicines will help you keep focus if your goals are spiritual.
And to use tastebuds, remembering the food or beverage, if it was special, that you ate at the life-changing workshop could aid you in your feelings of taking on the world.
Whatever you do, be creative. During your next seminar, be aware of your body’s reactions during intense moments. Afterwards, don’t forget to keep a journal to remind yourself of everything that happened on that day.
For myself, I am still finding out what exactly motivates me (my wife would love to know).
Rich
