MotivAider User 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 simple electronic device that counts and shakes into a powerful tool for changing behavior and habits. So learning about how to devise more effective messages will help you get better results.

Here's how the message and the MotivAider work together: The purpose of a MotivAider message is to urge you to take a desired action. The purpose of the MotivAider device is to see to it that you get that message often enough to turn taking that action into a goal-achieving habit.

A MotivAider message can be a word, a catchy phrase, a short sentence, or even an image. Puns, sayings, and jingles make good messages. And because MotivAider messages are personal and private, they needn't make any sense to anyone but you.

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

1. What would have to pop into my mind (what would I have to think, remember, or focus my attention on) to cause me to actually take the action I've decided I should take?
2. Will being reminded of what action to take be enough to get me to take it, or will I need to be reminded of why I should take the action?

If it's enough to simply be reminded of the action you intend to take, devising a message is pretty straightforward. If you intend to relax your jaw, for example, your message could simply be "Relax my Jaw."

However, whenever you feel any resistance to taking the action you've decided you should take, the message has a much bigger job to do. It needs to call your attention to a powerful personal reason for you to overcome the resistance. The message, in other words, needs to remind you—in a way that you can really feel it—why it's worth the trouble to take the action.

One of my favorite MotivAider messages was used by a woman who realized that slowing her rate of eating was the key to controlling her weight. Her message was "Haste makes waist!"(No, "waist" is not mispelled.)

The right motivating message can be extremely powerful. Here's a personal example.

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 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, 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. I went ahead and assigned the message "Cheetah" to my first homemade MotivAider. Every time the MotivAider vibrated, it reminded me—it made me feel—that I had to put my all into this project. Soon, instead of wasting my time, for example, thinking about whether it might be worthwhile to call so-and-so to see if he could possibly do such-and-such, I just called. And I kept on calling. And before long, with Cheetah going through my mind all the time, I became a lean mean success machine! I made a habit of ignoring the odds against me, and in doing so, I tilted the odds decidedly in my favor.

Of course, if you ever need help devising a MotivAider message, please don't hesitate to contact us. We'd be happy to help.

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