What’s Stopping You?

On Tuesday we kicked off our 2012 campaigns with an executive meeting to further define what success for the Leadership Board would be (more on that later), and one of the driving themes of this meeting is “what drives or keeps you going when the problem is so big?”

Everyone had an unique answer that was personal so I shall not reveal them here, but the themes of the responses were consistent.

• We are all busy with work, school, family, friends, and even personal endeavors.
• It’s easy to quit trying. “Someone else will do it.”
• All of our reasons why we were there were personal motivators.

What is a motivator? It doesn’t have to be a person or tangible object that pushes you forward. It can be fear, hope, heartache, or anything really. The key is your motivator must be stronger than the many external forces that all tell you that “you can’t” donate time, effort, or money. Your motivator has to be so strong that you believe in it whole heartedly and almost feel guilty if you don’t feed that motivation in some way.

This is the wrong question to be asking yourself.

I have all the reason in the world to not be involved with the Leadership Board. I work a full-time job. I write for multiple websites and blogs. I have a family with two very young kids. I’m not even in my 30′s, and my career is still very young. I have very limited time to build and grow our initiatives with the Leadership Board.

Yet, I still find time. I still make an effort. What drives me? I won’t share others, but I’ll share mine. It’s my two children. I want to be their mentor. I want other children to have a mentor. The male mentor numbers in our community, locally and nationally, are low in comparison. It is my motivation to sync as many young men and women as I can with successful mentors to prepare and guide them through the challenges ahead. I focus on that reason.

So the question shouldn’t be “What’s stopping you?”

The question you need to ask is, “What’s not stopping you?”

Photo credit to Jessica.Tam