February Is Motivation Month

What even IS motivation and how can you help your teen find some?!

I have already written quite a lot about motivation — you can have a squiz at all of my previous posts on motivation & organisation here.

But because soooooo many teens struggle with motivation, this month I want to give your teen the practical tools they need to find their study motivation, and hang on to it for dear life.

The good news is, motivation isn’t actually something you either have or don’t have. There are tools and habits your teen can use and develop that will help drive them towards the results they’re actually capable of getting.

To that end, in this post I’ll explain what kind of motivation your teen needs, and how you can help them find it.

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Your teen needs two types of driving motivational forces:

1. Short term drivers

2. Long term drivers

Short Term Drivers

There’s always going to be something else your teen would rather be doing than study. That’s just a fact. It’s something we can all relate to, right?

So in order to overcome the desire to do something else, your teen needs to start developing the habit of re-framing how they feel about studying.

For instance… I don’t feel like studying right now, needs to become…

If I study for an hour now then I can do [whatever else] without the burden of knowing I need to do some study.

If I get through my study timetable for the week then I’ll get to go out with my friends this weekend.

If I smash out this hour of homework then I can do [whatever else] afterwards.

If I get through this homework now then I won’t have to do it later.

If I finish this essay now then I won’t be stressed later.

You get the idea.

I am a big fan of using this little short-term motivational driver all the time, and I used to use it when I was studying.

It’s a really easy way of flipping any negative feelings your teen has about studying into a positive.

Long Term Drivers

The other side of study motivation, is to have at least one long term driver pushing your teen along.

Your teen will find it a LOT easier to find motivation and hang on to it, if they have a why motivator in the background.

I do a good dive into this in my post The Two Biggest Reasons Why Teens Fail At High School.

So the questions I want you and your teen to ponder this month are:

• Why do they want to do well at school?

• What do they want to do when they leave school?

• Even if they don’t want to go to uni, how will getting decent results help them? (i.e. they will still benefit from good results in a job or trade)

This exercise will help put the importance of school into perspective.

It can be hard for teens to see the benefit of knowing what ‘x’ equals in Maths when they’re sitting in class, so it’s important to zoom out and help your teen think about the big picture. And more specifically, their big picture.

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This is not to say that your teen will leap off the couch with new found enthusiasm for thinking about their future — I get it — easier said than done in a lot of cases.

But that doesn’t mean there is no point in trying to have these conversations. You never know what little seed might be planted.

How are your teen’s motivational levels? Is it something they’re struggling with at the moment? Have you found anything that helps? Let’s talk it out in the comments.

Thanks so much for reading,

Clare x