My advice is simple. Decorate your office. It can be a door, a cubicle wall, a bulletin board. Any of these will boost your motivation. Here’s why:
It started by taping it to my office door to help others
In a pivotal client meeting, a graphic that I had created, helped them navigate an issue and make a strong decision. (Yay!)
The next day I picked up my copy of the graphic, and I hesitated to recycle it or file it. That seemed like hiding it or decommissioning it.
It occurred to me instead, to hang it up. I thought others could potential benefit from the graphic, and displaying it could help spread the word that it existed.
So I taped it to my office door.
Gradually I added a few more things. I seemed to be developing a kind of notice board for template upgrades and new visuals.
One day, I went to hang up my latest ‘cool tool’, but there wasn’t enough space. To choose what to remove, I stepped back to take in the whole door, and that’s when I truly saw what I’d really been doing!
I was honouring what I was most proud of – and displaying it to myself. Here were visual cues of my genuinely motivated self.
But it was actually helping me
Rarely did anyone pointedly ask me about anything on the door. Sometimes I could draw attention to something posted there, as an inspiration or a teaching example.
But I finally caught on to its real benefit – helping me become more attuned to what sparks pride in me. Bonus benefit was that I became better at noticing and nurturing those sparks in others.
I developed our team meetings to be a space where anyone could share something they were proud of. We celebrated each other for a wide range of things:
- creating something
- improving something
- impacting something
- realizing something
They’d get support and high fives, but also the reinforcement of having recognized a sense of pride and motivation in themselves.
Exercise for your motivation muscle
- Every day this week, write down something that you are proud of yourself for.
- It could be for getting through something as much as for accomplishing something;
- And it could be about how someone else reacted as much as how you reacted
- At the end of the week,
- notice how you feel reviewing the full list
- and consider sharing it with someone else.
