HelpKidsChange Post

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How to Devise Effective MotivAider Messages

It's the message you assign to the MotivAider's vibration that transforms a device that counts and shakes into a powerful tool for changing habits.

The purpose of a MotivAider message is to get a child ready, willing and able to take a desired action. A message can be a word, a phrase, a brief sentence or even an image that the child can easily remember. Messages are personal and private. A message needn't make sense at all to anyone but the child who receives it. In fact, a message may get a boost in effectiveness if the child experiences it as a secret that's shared by the child and teacher or other helper.

The best way to devise an effective MotivAider message is to begin by asking yourself these questions:

1. What would have to pop into the child's mind (what would she have to think, remember, or focus her attention on) to cause her to actually take the action?
2. Will being merely reminded of what action to take be enough to get her to take it, or will she need to be reminded of why it would be worthwhile for her to take the action?

If it's enough to simply be reminded of the desired action, devising a message can be pretty straightforward. Nevertheless, you may get even better results by exercising some creativity.

For example, Molly, a peanut-butter loving third grader whose rate of speech approached the speed of light, needed to slow down. The message "Slow down" worked OK, but the secret message Molly and her speech therapist jokingly concocted, "Imagine you're eating peanut butter!", worked even better.

Whenever a child is even somewhat reluctant to take a desired action when reminded, the MotivAider message has a much bigger job to do. It needs to call the child's attention to a powerful personal reason for her to overcome the reluctance. The message, in other words, needs to remind her—in a way that she can really feel—why it's worth the trouble to take the action.

To illustrate, the MotivAider was used to help Amanda, a shy and extremely soft-spoken girl, to speak up. Although Amanda was eager to please, her teacher believed that the MotivAider had to do more than just remind Amanda to speak up. It had to remind her of an inspiring reason to muster up the courage to actually go ahead and do it. The motivating message, "Mrs. Smith will be proud of me," worked like a charm.

Some of the most effective messages are based on metaphors. A metaphor can be used to build a bridge that allows certain skills and/or positive feelings a child has in one area to cross over to another area where those skills and/or positive feelings are initially lacking.

For example, Jarred, an avid hockey player whose attention wandered in school, was reminded to "Tend the net" in class. Jackie, a sixth-grader who wants to be a commercial pilot when she grows up, used the message, "Full throttle," to work on overcoming her reluctance to invest herself fully in her work.

By the way, devising effective messages is just as important when adults use the MotivAider as it when children use it.

One of my favorite MotivAider messages was used by a woman who had discovered that slowing her rate of eating was the key to controlling her weight. She experienced great success with the clever motivating message, "Haste makes waist!" (Waist is not misspelled!)

Finally, as evidence that the right motivating message can be extremely powerful, I offer this very personal testimonial: Soon after I invented the MotivAider, I realized that I would have to invest tons of time, energy and money to have even a sliver of a sliver of a chance of turning my idea into a real product that could actually benefit lots of people.

As I was fretting about how I could possibly get myself to do all the difficult things I would need to do knowing full well that the probability of success was extremely low, I came across a magazine article that mentioned cheetahs.

Cheetahs, according to the article, on average catch only 1 out of 10 gazelles they chase. But the very reason they catch any gazelles at all is that they ignore the odds against them! In other words, they always run as if they're going to catch dinner.

Although I was hardly cheetah-like by nature, the story really clicked for me. So I went ahead and assigned the message "Cheetah" to my first homemade MotivAider. Every time the MotivAider vibrated, it reminded me that I had to put everything I've got into this project—no hesitating, no second-guessing, always full speed ahead. Soon, instead of wasting my time, for example, thinking about whether it would be worthwhile to call so-and-so to see if he could do such-and-such, I just called. And I kept on calling.

Before long, with "Cheetah" going through my mind all the time, I became a lean mean success machine! By literally making a habit of ignoring the odds against me, I tilted the odds decidedly in my favor.

—Steve Levinson, Ph.D., Inventor of the MotivAider