Find Your Purpose

"People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.
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Andrew Carnegie

This Carnegie guy knew what he was talking about because he has many buildings and institutes named after him.  Everyone knows that in order to have a building named after yourself you need to be either important, a President or dead.  Some people are all three. The “trifecta” of getting a building named after you. (I know that I am at least going to meet one of those criteria someday) If you want to excel in life, self motivation is essential but if you also knew that there was a potential to have a building named after yourself, you would be able to keep your spirit high no matter how discouraging a situation is because you would be like I want that building with my name on the side.  But you can’t promise a student that they will name a building after them if they do well in  class.  So the question is: What drives your students to remain engaged in a self-directed activity? The answer is for them to find their purpose.  In the movie “The Jerk” Steve Martin’s character Navin R. Johnson was motivated to find his purpose. Remember when he got is name in the phone book he stated, “Page 73 - Johnson, Navin R.! I'm somebody now! Millions of people look at this book everyday! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity - your name in print - that makes people. I'm in print! Things are going to start happening to me now.” That last part of his statement is what our students need to understand. Our students need to find their purpose and things will start to happen for them. I can’t think of a more powerful source of motivation than a purpose you care about. A purpose can inspire you to give your best even in the face of difficulties. It can make you do the seemingly impossible things. Like juggle cats. Or survive middle school.
While other motivations could inspire you temporarily, a purpose is something that matters to you and can inspire you indefinitely. It’s a spring of motivation that will never dry.   Whenever you think that you run out of motivation, you can always come to your purpose to get a fresh dose of motivation.