Motivation Exercise: My Heroes

Purpose

Research shows that people with specific and defined goals are more likely to succeed in life than those without. One of the great ways to find these goals is to get inspired by your favourite heroes and personalities in history. This exercise systematically helps delegates to formulate their goals using this approach.

This exercise has several parts though you don’t have to go through all of them. Pick and choose based on your objective, your time and your delegates.

Objective

Identify your favourite heroes and personalities, identify their reason behind their success and use this to set goals for yourself.

What You Need

• A stack of blank cards (3” by 5”).

Setup

• Place the cards where everyone can access as many as they want.

PART 1:

• Ask each delegate to choose a hero or a character in history that they admire most.
• Ask them to write the name of this person on a single card.
• Ask each delegate to write the critical attributes of that personality that made the person successful and famous on another card.
• On a third card, ask delegates to write the actions they should take to follow suite and become as powerful and famous as their hero.
• Encourage a discussion on what delegates experience and how comfortable they feel with their results.

PART 2:

• Now that the cards are produced, ask delegates to put all their cards with their heroes names on them at the centre of a table.
• Ask delegates to pick a hero card at random which is not the hero they identified in PART 1.
• Now identify the strong qualities and attributes of this hero and write them on a new card.
• Write what actions you will take to become like this hero on yet another card.

PART 3:

• Ask delegates to find each other’s heroes and pair up.
• Ask them to compare the qualities they identified for these heroes.
• They should discuss any differences and identify actions that would get them to become as respected as these heroes.
• Follow with a discussion.

Timing

Explaining the Exercise: 2 minutes

Activity: 5 min for each part = 15 minutes

Group Feedback: 5 minutes

Discussion

What did you learn from this exercise? How comfortable are you now with your goals? Was there a pattern of behaviour between what everyone identified as attributes of important historic figures? Did others identify qualities of your hero that you did not think of before? What can you do to become like your heroes? Can there patterns of actions, such as positive thinking, help you to become like your heroes?

What three actions would you choose to implement as soon as possible based on this exercise?

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