Realistically speaking, there should not be anyone that motivates a person more than the person themselves. Because I believe the value of motivation originates from one’s ability to accurately identify his or her own self-worth and ultimate life goals. In my case, as a person approaching my early 30s, the biggest goal for me, quite frankly, at this stage is to establish a secure and stable source of income to be able to provide for my future family. However, this level of consciousness did not just pop up overnight. One of the reasons why I established this goal in the first place was my traumatic life experiences as a child. Because of my experience, I wanted to provide an environment that I did not have in my childhood: the ability to help them make friends. This is one of the best ways to prevent kids from suffering peer bullying in school. That is by helping our own kids to establish a close circle of friends so that these kids will stand up for our kids when issues arise. But before I can make that happen, I have to ensure that I can adequately feed my family; this is why I dived into the workforce right after high school. Unfortunately, throughout that process, my mom was also diagnosed with stage 2 cancer, and my dad was laid off due to a work-related chronic back condition. And hence, these difficulties that I have endured further shaped me to become a very mature person at a very young age. Even to this day, as I return to school to finish my academic degrees, I still constantly keep my life goals in check. In order to complete that goal, I found out that over the years, I must be able to acquire more career advancement opportunities; quite frankly, a high school diploma or a GED is simply not going to cut it. That is the primary driver that is pushing me back to school to complete my degrees because I know finding a better-paying job is contingent on completing my degrees. This, in turn, satisfies my original life goal of being able to provide for my future family. Ultimately, as an old saying goes, a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. This idiom signifies that in order to reach my next incremental milestones, I would have to step outside of my comfort zone and begin planning ahead for the stumbling blocks that are to come in life.

Responses to the professor or other students:

Response One:

I really wanted to commend you for your self-motivational spirit. I totally agree that self-motivation is super important, not just academically, but also in workplace situations. There are times in my past work functions that I feel mentally exhausted, especially when projects are hanging on a thread not because you’re falling behind, the feeling of hopelessness of potentially being unable to satisfy or complete something in a timely manner can, at times, completely cripple people’s motivations. Sometimes, I just say to myself, you just gotta step it up, complete those stuff, and forget about the rest. Although, this mentality did sometimes brings me more work just because of the self-interested characteristics of human nature.

Response One:

Your mom must be a very strong and talented lady. I am confident that you will one day become as strong as her. It just strikes me how powerful parental examples are. I also find it interesting to see that you mentioned no one else really motivates you. Although you didn’t specifically mention self-motivation, I really do see that trait inside of you. You should definitely harness the power of self-motivation. Just as Duc said in his discussion forum response, people can’t always be with you when you needed them, it is ideal to have some self-motivation so that way we are able to push forward until we find someone that enhances that inner motivational spirit.