How does one move a sluggish individual? How does one motivate someone who does not appear to want to be motivated? The usual way would be to figuratively ‘light a fire’ under the person’s bum and hope like hell it gets him into a frenzy of activity which last long after the fire is gone!
JS did that recently to a single mother’s kid who for the last 10 months has been refusing to find a job, preferring instead to play computer games for hours on end. With sufficient food in the kitchen and a roof over his head, there was no incentive for him to find employment, why should he?
Like an addict, be it with drugs, alcohol or gambling, the best way to get around this addiction is to remove the temptation totally so that the process of withdrawal is implemented and a cure is achieved.
Since the CPU was the cause of the addiction, the best solution was to remove it and this was promptly done but boy, that sparked off a furious reaction with threats and curses raining down like cats and dogs. The fracas was finally settled by the adroit inclusion of a business mentor who was fired up enough to give him a piece of his mind while tearing at his excuses to justify his inaction.
For our part, JS too needed to get out of its inertia, its languorous state of complacency so we went off to attend a free talk on Grooming Social Entrepreneurs organized by the Ashoka Foundation under the auspices of the Malaysian Association of Creativity and Innovation (Macri) and supported jointly by the American Embassy and the Global Entrepreneur Week. Ashoka is the leading organization for the social entrepreneurs on a global scale.
Some 30 plus people were there and the speaker Alexis Ditkowsky had everyone keenly follow her every word since she was sharing some of the creative and innovative ways to raise funds without just adopting the traditional palms up approach.
She outlined all the new media channels where others have gone before and a few where none had gone before. There were the online retail outlet Elevyn for instance that specializes in selling crafts and works of charitable organizations while others offered buying opportunities and online competitions to entice more NGOs into applying for grants which were there for the taking. Clean Tech for instance is organizing a contest for the greenest idea in the area of Green Technology while Creativity in Innovation is much sought after by Tomel.
Beyond the talk, it was the networking opportunity that was relished the most because now, there were more new faces going places and it is always very useful to re-connect or establish connections with the people in the same charitable field or those with a keen interest to assist or volunteer their services.
The end result with regard to the lighting of the fire and the exposition of new ideas is the same – rejuvenation coupled with a deep desire to fly higher or to reach for the next level of achievement. Either way, it’s good, far better than maintaining the poor status quo right?
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