Mission and Vision
Motivationomics’ mission is to invigorate peoples’ innate capabilities by recognizing their personal strengths as motivators for success. Motivationomics’ vision is to be a support system that reinforces the development of school environments that energize peoples’ inner drive to succeed. This vision is achieved through research/evaluation, demonstration, technical assistance, and training or professional development.
The belief in putting people and their stories at the center guides our work. To achieve true partnership with communities, it is important to connect and engage with them where they live to really know what is really happening on the ground when interventions are developed and implemented.
Strategy
Motivationomics draws its strength from being person-centered and building from within peoples’ assets and life experiences. We work with schools to support and motivate students to invest in learning about themselves and discovering their personal strengths and cultural assets.
Core Principles
Motivationomics is strength-based and can be characterized by these four action-driven core principles:
Curiosity-for-action. Having an open mind to explore, experiment, and translate multiple perspectives while adapting to new, changing, and unexpected events means embracing our innate curiosity to succeed. When people are free to experiment, to test or try in order to fully capture the full meaning of life experiences, they are fully engaged or immersed in a human experience and solving problems creatively. Therefore, curiosity is a key ingredient in intrinsic motivation and, when put into practice, it nurtures active learning and spontaneous exploration.
Reflection-for-action. People who think and plan and are future-ready to take action with a purpose to improve their circumstances or create meaningful change, are engaging in reflection-for-action. This type of proactive and forward-thinking approach requires people to contemplate questions such as can I be successful at this? Do I really want to do this? Why am I doing this?
Four motivational dimensions help to guide this type of introspection inquiry and reach desired outcomes: Importance (“It is important to me to succeed as a result of my hard work”); Autonomy or Agency (“It is important to me to feel in control of my choices, decisions, and actions”); Utility Value (“It is important to me to be driven to work hard in order to achieve in whatever I do”); and Identity (“It is important to me to see myself as an asset to others”).
Imagination-for-action. People who create a world that belongs to them (i.e., setting, plot, characters, conflict, beginning, and ending), and are free to explore countless possibilities in their pursuit of fulfillment, find joy in their authentic thinking. Daydreaming allows people to construct a world based on ideas and influences integrated through lived and life experiences. Through daydreaming, people tune out negativity and allow thoughts to flow freely, which fosters mental relaxation, and exploration. Other than relief from boredom, daydreaming expands peoples’ curiosity, creativity, and intrinsic thinking. Daydreaming can be an effective tool to help keep people attentive to their goals, such as imagining future success at accomplishing difficult or uninteresting tasks.
Narration-for-action. Storytelling can lead to learning that is motivated by curiosity. Interpreting internal thoughts or lived and life experiences through reflection, and communicating knowledge in ways that involve imagination or role-playing can bring abstract ideas to life. Stories provide a structure that aids the flow of communication. Stories create meaningful connections among people with similar experiences or interests. Storytelling inspires reciprocity, and helps create a sense of belonging and collective learning. Storytelling helps to shape peoples’ inner voice and creates a positive mindset that leads to being free from negative thoughts and feelings.