You’ve likely heard it said that if you want to achieve a goal, find a mentor who’s already achieved that goal and follow their advice. Is this a good motivation technique?
It turns out that research has found the exact opposite to be true. In fact, giving advice actually motivates people more than receiving it.
This could provide a helpful new technique for boosting your own motivation.
Giving Is Better Than Receiving, According to Science
Researchers at MIT Sloan Management Review carried out a series of experiments on participants struggling with lack of self-control and poor motivation. Their motivation challenges were leading to a variety of issues in their lives, such as money, health, and academic problems.
In their first test, researchers asked unemployed individuals to give job search advice to their peers. Then all the participants read a selection of job search tips and reported how they felt afterwards.
Everyone had been able to give and receive advice, and 68% of the participants reported that giving advice made them feel more motivated to search for jobs than receiving it.
Similar tests in different areas of life also had inspiring results. About 72% of people struggling to save money were more motivated by giving advice than receiving tips from financial experts.
In addition, 77% of participants who were dealing with anger management issues found giving advice to others more motivating than receiving advice from psychologists. And 72% of adults trying to lose weight were more motivated when they gave weight loss advice than when they received counselling from professional nutritionists.
In a final experiment, 318 middle school students were randomly assigned to be advice givers or receivers for a three-week period. In the month following the experiment, advice givers spent 38% more time on their homework than the advice receivers.
The researchers suggested that giving advice may naturally boost your confidence, which in turn gives you more motivation. You can easily feel deflated when you haven’t been able to achieve a goal. But giving advice may help turn those feelings around by prompting you to look back on your life and see times when you were succeeding.
It may also give you a different perspective to help see new solutions that you hadn’t thought of before. And that different point of view can be transformational for achieving your own goals.
How Can You Use This Motivation Technique?
Try the following steps to start harnessing this powerful motivation technique.
1. Find an Accountability Buddy
Having an accountability buddy has been shown to be one of the most effective ways to achieve your goals.
A Dominican University of California study compared people who simply wrote down their goals to those who wrote down their goals, shared them with a friend, and then sent each other weekly progress reports.
Writing down goals was beneficial, and helped 43% of people accomplish their goals. But the group who was accountable to each other accomplished 76% of their stated goals, a 33% improvement over simply writing them down.
An accountability buddy helps keep both of you on track as you support and motivate each other to work through your individual goals together.
2. Help Others When Asked
No one likes being told what to do. Keep in mind that giving advice is beneficial for you, but not necessarily for the person receiving it. So please make sure you have another person’s consent before giving any advice.
Although, if someone asks you for help, do your best to support them. Offer your best advice and help work through their issue together to find solutions. This also may trigger some ideas for your own life.
And if you see a family member, friend, or coworker struggling with a problem, find an appropriate time to politely ask if they would like any help or advice. If their answer is “no”, consider that the end of the conversation. But they probably know they need a hand, and a polite offer of assistance may be just what they need to get out of a rut.
3. Be an Inspiration to Others
You don’t always have to give advice directly. Living your own best life can communicate a great deal to others without using words.
Is your life everything you want it to be? Are there some areas you need to work on, or issues to resolve? Consider taking some steps towards manifesting some of your own dreams. A good place to start might be with the Kaizen process.
As you make positive changes in your own life, those around you will notice. Finding your own motivation can inspire others to do the same – which can help everyone get on track to achieving their highest goals.
