The root of the word motivation is motive. Motive comes from the Greek or Latin words mob and mot which means “to move.” Motivation is about being moved. The first, most obvious way we are moved is emotionally, but little changes if we do not actually move into action!

Those who turn that emotion into action see the results they desire. Those that don’t take action seldom see the results they desire. Failing to meet desire with action is like revving the engine of a car hoping it will move but never taking the car out of park.

We wanted to do something different here and we are going to use an excerpt we found from an author named Craig B Larson. He wrote a quick summation story that we feel illustrates a great point:

“Bringing a giraffe into the world is a tall order. A baby giraffe falls 10 feet from its mother’s womb and usually lands on its back. Within seconds it rolls over and tucks its legs under its body. From this position it considers the world for the first time and shakes off the last vestiges of the birthing fluid from its eyes and ears. Then the mother giraffe rudely introduces its offspring to the reality of life.

Then the mother giraffe does the most remarkable thing. She kicks it off its feet again. Why? She wants it to remember how it got up. In the wild, baby giraffes must be able to get up as quickly as possible to stay with the herd, where there is safety. Lions, hyenas, leopards, and wild hunting dogs all enjoy young giraffes, and they’d get it too, if the mother didn’t teach her calf to get up quickly and get with it.”

Craig has illustrated a great feat that happens every day, all day, across the world to billions of people. We get knocked down. This happens to absolutely every being on the planet. What’s more, it doesn’t just happen once but it happens repeatedly. It is not the “knocking down” that defines us but “what we do after we are knocked down” that defines us. Getting up means we are NOT failures. We may have failed but we are not failures. We may be down but we remain down for little time.

Motivation is a lot like a baby giraffe. Alright, most of us are not getting physically kicked by someone but we certainly feel emotional “kick downs.” The giraffe may have felt pain but there was a sense of urgency, a sense of need, a sense of life running through its veins. And just like that baby giraffe, if we do nothing with that motivation we perish. We may not physically perish but a part of us lies dormant near death if we do nothing with our motivation.

There is little to be said about the person who keeps their motivation to themselves and never sends it out to the world through action. All of us have stories we could share about life knocking us down. You have two choices to make about these events. You can share them as the victim of a “knockdown”… this is often referred to as complaining or commiserating. The other option is you can share these circumstances as they turn to triumphs. To do this, you must take action upon them… this results in you empowering others.

Some people opt just to share the knockdowns. We challenge you to choose to become the person who shares triumphs after each knockdown. Don’t breathe a word about your loss or challenge until you have moved beyond it. Then share them both as an empowering story of the “knock down” and the “get back up!”
Don’t just be motivated, be MOVING!

Michael Bloxton

President & CEO

oneMYnd, LLC

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