I believe that women* and mothers have an incredible strength and wisdom that is unlike any other category of being.

What characterizes the uniqueness of women and mothers is a necessary, almost forced cultivation of strength and mercy by consistently enduring the seemingly unbearable in performing necessary and vital care work- sleepless nights, loud crying that you aren’t allowed to escape, chapped nipples and constantly being touched. Motherhood begins with labor, which is literally unbearable. We no longer bear the child inside us, and that transformation, that crossing over to bring new life (or a new vision, intention or art) into the world is inherent to us as women, whether we’ve become biological mothers or not. I mean that women are molded from the clay of transformation. We are transformation. That is the power that we bring.

Transformation and creativity are two sisters that dwell in each of us. They are inseparable. For this reason, I believe all women and feminine* identified people are inherently creative (capable of creation) and inherently changemakers (transformational). I see an incredible value in women’s creativity and I fear it’s often being wasted in our culture by the gendered obligations of care work. For centuries it has been women’s province to do the lion’s share of care for people, home and all manner of administration without expectation of pay, simply because our pronoun is “she/her.”

Perhaps a part of you knows that you bear potential that is being unfulfilled.

This might feel like a knock, knock, knocking in the forcefield of your daily life, or it may show up as irritability, apathy, or exhaustion. It is so essential to guard your creativity and transformational nature because it is this very strength and mercy that is so sorely lacking in leadership in our world right now. We need your feminine strength, your voice, your heart. Now more than ever.

You probably carry a very large mental and emotional load.

Being in relationships and overseeing domestic life involves constant project management and planning from children’s activities to preparing meals, anticipating everyone’s daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal and long-term emotional and physical needs, cleaning, organizing, finances, and probably also working a job.

So I wanna ask you. Why do you do this? Why do you carry a very large mental and emotional load with planning activities, preparing meals and anticipating everyone’s needs?

The first time somebody asked me this, I felt indignant and my response was, “Well, because it’s absolutely necessary.” My response was, “No one else is going to do it.”

Boom.

But upon further reflection, I realized the deeper truth is that it brings a sense of meaning and satisfaction that doesn't compare to anything else that I do.

I simply love nurturing life.

If your response is similar to mine then I don’t need to teach you what intrinsic motivation is, you simply need to have it named; that feeling of doing something just because you love it and it brings you a sense of joy is intrinsic motivation. So, I want to say here that I’m not really saying anything that you don’t already know. I’m simply sharing with you a process to make what is invisible, apparent.

The real reason most of us accomplish anything is personal, psychological, emotional and spiritual transformation. Transformation is the life blood that flows through the feminine heart. It’s actually really simple on the surface but underneath it’s pure magic. Intrinsic motivation is the desire to do well simply because it feels good to do well; not because there is a competition or a reward, but just because of the sense of meaning that one gets from doing something in a way that’s worth having pride in.

Extrinsic motivation is motivation to do an activity to earn a reward or avoid punishment. When our families are relying on us to create the incentives, keep track of progress and issue rewards, we are carrying a BIG mental and emotional responsibility at the cost of having uninterrupted time to tap into our own creative source.

How might your life be different if you had long stretches of uninterrupted time to dream, make art, garden, write, lay in the sun?

Who in your family is benefiting from you extrinsically motivating and managing them? At what cost to you?

Intrinsic Motivation is something that you already have, I'm sure. But guiding your kids and others who depend on you to be intrinsically motivated is another story entirely. Understanding how to foster intrinsic motivation in your children and anyone you care for is key to your own creative liberation. So, let’s break down how to begin implementing the strategies in your daily life so that you can have more of your daily life back!

There are a million things rewarding our brains with quick dopamine hits, especially digital entertainment, social media and consumerism. This actually can cause us to become addicted to immediate gratification and cause us to become depressed when there isn’t a constant supply of fresh and immediate dopamine. Therefore longer term rewards become less motivating. Neural pathways are like muscles- they get stronger with use. When we provide lots of opportunities to engage in projects with longer term outcomes, we build the neural pathways for intrinsic motivation.

The opposite is also true. When our children and those we care for are mostly engaged in activities that give quick dopamine hits, intrinsic motivation is diminished. Consider for example, that if you are the one always making a list or giving instructions, the loved one performing the tasks is only engaging in thought that involves a single step: hear the instruction, do the thing. This means they are also only benefiting from minimal activation of the reward centers of the brain. When a person observes the environment, notices what needs attention, conceives of a strategy to achieve the desired outcome and implements a multi-part strategy, the reward centers of the brain light up every step of the way leading to a sense of great accomplishment. The sense of great accomplishment and the good feelings that go with it are precursors to intrinsic motivation.

Fostering intrinsic motivation in your children and anyone you care for will free you from over-functioning by relieving some of the mental and emotional burden you carry simply because “no one else is going to do it.”

There are three parts to fostering intrinsic motivation:

Create and celebrate small successes
Teach the value of things that take a long time to do/make/accomplish
Notice what is working

Create and celebrate small successes

Foster the awareness of doing well just because it feels good to do well, not because there is a competition or a reward. Success begets success, so first we want to get familiar with feeling the good feelings associated with a small success and then repeat, repeat, repeat. The small success is what bigger successes will be built on.

Teach the value of things that take a long time to do/make/accomplish

Use every opportunity to discuss the steps that go into the things you and your loved ones accomplish. For instance, when your child writes a final paper for school, they’ve likely studied many chapters on writing strategy as well as studied the subject for the paper. Another example is growing a garden. In order to enjoy home grown food at your supper table, it takes steps that span over many months as well as daily tending and care of plants at multiple stages of growth.

Notice what is working

This is the part where you reinforce the new skill. Erin Clabough, PhD* calls this “scaffolding”. By frequently taking note and verbalizing the good feeling you and your children are experiencing from doing simple tasks like laundry and dishes, you are mylenating the neural pathways that associate care work with positive feelings.

Utilizing a pacing and leading model gives a 3 part structure to the strategy:

Model (with a story)
Ask
Guide

Model

Intrinsic motivation is all about developing an association between responsibility and feeling good instead of responsibility and feeling heavy or overburdened. We need to facilitate the association in order to foster intrinsic motivation.

Think of one thing you are intrinsically motivated to do and tell the story. Do this just randomly like when you are driving in the car or having a snack together or on a walk. It can be 3 different stories or the same one told 3 times. Kids love to laugh at their parents for telling the same story and it really works for them to remember it!

Ask

Ask your kids if there is something they do regularly that they feel really good about doing. It might be something like holding the door open for people entering school, or noticing when someone is sitting alone at lunch and inviting them to sit together. It could be something really small, like rinsing their toothpaste from the sink when they are done brushing their teeth. You might find out that your kids do things that you haven't even noticed.

After you've asked them the question, remember their answer and show them that you heard them by retelling what you heard. You can recount it again with them, or maybe you will share with a friend on the phone when they are in ear shot, or tell your co-parent over dinner about the thing your child does that they feel really good about. Any way that you do it will reinforce the neural pathway that associates doing good and feeling good and that will foster intrinsic motivation.

Guide

Build on their strengths and guide them to transfer the skill to another area of their life. You’ll do this by issuing a challenge. The challenge is to encourage each family member to do one random act of kindness in the next 24 hours.

I would suggest issuing the challenge in the morning over breakfast, or in the car on the way to school. Then follow up in the evening by celebrating the accomplishment. A simple dinner conversation about the random acts will do just fine. Maybe you want to serve a special dessert to celebrate the good feelings you are generating as a family that fosters intrinsic motivation. Have fun with it!

Now you have three strategies to begin to instill intrinsic motivation. List the ways you can reinforce all three strategies to mylenate the neural pathway associating doing good and feeling good.

The next step is going to be to transfer the existing strength to areas where the strength hasn’t been developed yet.

In this article Creativity Agency Potency I tell the story of how I personally transferred the skills I gained naturally from gardening to doing relief work after hurricane katrina.

I hope that you will give these strategies a try. I am passionate about helping you to feel empowered and liberated to claim your creative strength and share it with the world.

While these strategies are a great start, I believe that each of us is embedded in an eco-system of relationships, belief systems, an economic system, and culture that has a strong influence on us. Intrinsic Motivation is best fostered as a long term strategy where one lesson builds on another over time and the ecological and cultural factors are carefully considered. The longer term strategy is facilitated and supported in my Family Crest Program.

*A note about the gendered language: I don’t believe in gender essentialism. I believe that gender is a social construct that has been used by structures and authorities such as the capitalist system and religion to sort people into categories for dividing and exploiting (mostly domestic and reproductive) labor. When I say women, I’m referring to any person who identifies as a woman. When I say feminine, I’m referring to the archetypal feminine, which I believe anyone can choose to embody elements of or not.