In this podcast, Dr. Jordan shares a collection of inspiring stories from girls who express why they love the activities they are passionate about. Through these real-life examples, he explores the importance of cultivating intrinsic motivation, showing how it empowers kids to fully immerse themselves in their interests and excel in their chosen pursuits. By fostering this self-driven motivation, children can build the foundation to master their craft and find lasting fulfillment in what they do.
For more resources and insights from Dr. Jordan, visit https://drtimjordan.com.
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How Kids Find Their Intrinsic, Lifelong Motivation
Introduction: Intrinsic Motivation For Kids
Welcome back. Dr. Tim Jordan here. It’s a brand-new episode of Raising Daughters. I’m excited about my topic. As you know, or maybe you don’t know if you’re new to this show, and if you are new to this show, welcome. I’m what they call a developmental and behavioral pediatrician, which means that I’m an MD pediatrician, but I did a two-year fellowship in something called Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. I practiced medicine for 2 or 3 years, and I switched over to doing my subspecialty. It’s probably been 30 or 35 years ago.
What I do is counsel girls in an office practice a few days a week, mostly girls in middle school and high school, but also some in grade school, college, and some in their 20s. I also have run weekend retreats for girls for 34 years. We finished our 33rd summer camp for girls. As I’ve told you many times before, I get a chance to sit and listen mostly in circles with girls of grade school, middle school, and high school ages. I listen to their stories about what they’re experiencing in their lives and what they’re going through, helping them make better sense of it, normalizing things, and giving them a safe space to know that they’re not the only ones going through things.
I talk about a lot when we travel and give talks to parents and parent groups, I’ve been giving talks since 1985 all over the place. I’ve been to most states in this country. I’ve been to seventeen countries, talking to groups of parents, professionals, and sometimes kids, running retreats like father-daughter and mother-daughter retreats. One of the things that I and my wife get to talk about with parents is motivation. What I want to talk about is self-motivation, intrinsic motivation, and internal motivation because I have found so many examples in this world where kids are so externally directed or so externally focused if you will. It’s to their detriment.
We’re creating some problems within our kids now and in the future because they have not learned to be intrinsically motivated. We’ve been doing too much for them. We’ve helped or conditioned them to believe that they need pats on the back. They need us to be there all the time, telling them how great they are. They get so focused on winning, being the best, and getting a college scholarship that I think we distract them from what’s important, which is their intrinsic internal motivation.
You’ve heard me over some of these past episodes. This is episode number 294, and you’ve heard me talk about internal motivation. You’ve heard me tell stories about some eminent famous kinds of people. In this episode, I’m going to focus on everyday girls who I’ve met in my counseling practice, on retreats, and at summer camps. I’ll give you some stories about what girls feel when they talk about their intrinsic motivation to give you some motivation and inspiration to make sure that you are parenting your kids so they develop what these girls are going to talk about in their stories through me if you will.
Kyle Snyder’s Secret To Success
I read a story a while back about a more eminent person. His name is Kyle Snyder. He’s an Olympic wrestler. He won the gold medal in the summer 2016 Olympics at 97 kg. He was the youngest Olympic wrestling champion in US history. This twenty-year-old said this nice quote, “If anything, my secret is that instead of thinking about winning and thinking about gold medals and stuff like that, I try to value my effort. I value my improvement. I value the love that I have for my sport.” I want every kid in this world to have that intrinsic motivation.
They’re not hearing that as much as they’re hearing about championships, being the best, being on the best club team, winning, all that kind of stuff, being famous, and having more likes, so much external direction that kids have today. I also heard a story a while back about a Zen master. He had students he was teaching. A student asked his Zen master one day, “How long it would take for him to reach enlightenment.” The master said, “It’ll take about ten years.”
Zen Master’s Lesson On Patience
The student said, “Really? Ten years? What if I study hard?” The master said, “If you study hard, it’ll take you twenty years.” Surprised, the student said, “I don’t understand. How long would it take if I worked hard? If I became the most dedicated student you’ve ever had, then how long would it take?” The master said, “In that case, it’ll take you 30 years. If you have one eye on how close you are to achieving your goal, that leaves only one eye for your task.”
Everyday Examples Of Intrinsic Motivation
That’s the problem with all the external motivation. It distracts kids from their intrinsic motivation, which is not healthy or not sustaining. It’ll last when someone is there saying, “Great job. You’re so great. You won a championship,” but then that wears off. The longer time goes by, the quicker it goes away and wears off. The more it takes to bring back that feeling of, “I’m okay.” Let me tell you some stories about some real-life kids who I’ve met over the past 20 or 30 or so years in different places, and what intrinsic motivation sounds like through their words and lives.
This one girl, her name was Audrey, was nine years of age. She had been on regular old dance lessons, and then she applied for, auditioned for, and got on this competitive dance team. She started getting stressed out. She was worried she was going to make a mistake. She was worried the girls would get madder. She was worried she might get kicked off the squad.
I asked her, “Why are you doing this? Why do you love dance?” I remember her pausing for a moment. She stopped and she thought. She said, “I think it’s because I love the costumes. I love being on stage because there’s so much room for me to dance. On that stage, I feel free.” That’s a nine-year-old who said that. That’s internal motivation, that feeling of freedom.
Another girl who was ten years of age around the same time that I had met Audrey, also was stressed out about her dance competition. I said, “Why do you love dance?” She said, “I love how graceful it is, how calm I feel when I do it. I especially like ballet. The music and the dancing calm me down.” Great. That’s a great reason to love your dance.
I saw a girl in high school, seventeen years old, a couple of years ago. She was into theater. It had taken her a while to find her thing. She wasn’t very athletic, and she struggled with making friends. She was an artistic kid, but then she found theater, and she found her tribe. I said, “Why do you love theater?” She said, “Actually, what I love is musical theater.” I said, “Why do you love musical theater?” She said, “I love to sing, I love to dance, and I love to tell stories.” She said, “I love to take the audience on a journey. I also love the close relationships I have with everybody on the crew. It feels like a family to me.” Those are healthy reasons for someone to do something. You like the family atmosphere, you like being part of a community, and you love taking an audience on a journey. Isn’t that beautiful? That’s a seventeen-year-old girl.
Another girl, sixteen years old, her name was Hannah. She said, “I love dance and theater because I love communicating with the audience and telling a story.” That’s cool. Isn’t that awesome? Another girl, fourteen years of age, said she was a pre-professional tap dancer. She did tap in all different kinds of ways. I said, “Why do you like tap so much? What’s in it for you?”
She said, “I love dance because it’s fun, and I love the workout and the creativity. After a while, you can do whatever you want when you’re out there with your feet. I feel so free when I’m doing that.” For the rest of her life, she didn’t have that sense of freedom, but she did when she was dancing. In those moments, she felt the most herself and the most free. Great reason to do something. You can sense the fulfillment in her voice when she says that.
Another girl, who is an actor in theater, one of the theater kids, a ten-year-old girl. She said, “I love acting because I love to get into the character’s shoes and empathize with her. It’s fun to be another person for a while and be in their story instead of being caught up in all the drama in my sixth-grade class.” Awesome. Very mature kid with a very good connection to her intrinsic motivation.
Another sixteen-year-old girl. She was a synchronized skater and had been on this team for a while. She loved it. It was a big part of her life. She practiced five times a week, and she did tournaments and everything. I said, “That’s a lot of time away. It’s a lot of energy and all that. Why do you love it so much? Why do you do it?” She said, “I love the feeling of competing. I feel so alive. It feels like I’m flying out there, and I get this huge adrenaline rush.”
She said, “I love how the team feels like one community, one family. I don’t like the coaches that much because they don’t give us much positive feedback. Every time a coach speaks a little bit to me in that critical way, I die a little bit on the inside, but I keep doing it because I love my team. I love being part of that community.” That’s not a kid you have to make go to practice or do things because she’s doing it for her reasons. She’s intrinsically motivated, which is awesome.
One last story before I give you a couple of stories of more eminent people. One other girl, this is a girl who was about nine or maybe ten years of age. My wife and I were visiting her family, and we were having dinner with them. When we sat down for dinner, she wasn’t there because she was at gymnastics practice. She came in maybe halfway through the meal and sat down. We asked her about her gymnastics, and she was practicing six days a week after school. This is what gymnasts do a lot.
After school, she would go to the gym at about 3:30 and wasn’t done until 6:30 or 7:00. That was Monday through Friday. Saturday, she practiced for 4 or 5 hours, and that did not include the tournaments, the meets, and all those kinds of things. We said, “That’s a lot of time away. Why do you do it? Why are you willing to invest so much time and energy?” This is a ten-year-old girl. She said, “I like it. The reason I think I do it is because” and her dad interrupted her.
He said, “Honey, show them your medals. Show them your hardware.” She looked at her dad like, “Dad.” He said, “No, go ahead. Show them your hardware..” She said, “Fine.” She said, “Follow me.” She got up from the table, and my wife and I followed her. She walked down the hallway to her bedroom, and she said, “This is my hardware.” Her hardware was all of her ribbons and her trophies. She had all the walls lined with shelves that had trophies and blue ribbons. That was her hardware. She was like, “This is my hardware,” with no joy and no fulfillment. It’s like, “Whatever.”
We stopped and said, “Obviously, this is not what turns you on. This is not what fulfills you about all this. Why do you like gymnastics?” I’ll never forget. She got that look on her face, which she had started to get at the dinner table until her dad interrupted her. She said, “I love it because my favorite thing is the floor exercise. I’m out there at the corner of the mat. I’m the only one out there, and all eyes in the place are on me. I get this feeling, I get this pounding in my heart. I feel like I’m right there on the mat. I’m so excited.”
The Story Of A Young Gymnast’s Passion
She said, “I’m doing that routine. I love entertaining people. I love getting people happy. I love bringing people joy. That’s why I love gymnastics.” That is beautiful. She’s doing it because she loves to serve people. She loves the feeling of being out there, entertaining, competing, and all of that. That’s so beautiful.
How External Validation Harms Motivation
When we start focusing on things like hardware, i.e., trophies and medals, being the best, and national championships, and we start talking about college scholarships and all those sorts of things, those are adult things. That’s not a kid’s intrinsic internal motivation. Every time we start talking about bribing kids for good behavior, every time we start bribing kids and giving kids rewards for things they could or should be doing for doing it, we are interfering with and distracting them from tuning into, “Why am I doing this? What’s the feeling I get from it?” That feeling of joy and that feeling of fulfillment if you will, that’s what we need to help our kids tune into. “How’s it feel for you when you’re doing that thing?”
The most fulfilling passions come from within, not from trophies or accolades. Share on XI read a story about Bette Davis, a famous actress. I think she’s passed away. She was an actress a long time ago, probably in the ‘50s or ‘60s. She remembered when she was seven years old at school, and she was playing Santa Claus in a school play. She said, “I bumped into some candles on the tree. Back in her day, they had real live candles, not light ones. They had candles on the tree. My outfit caught on fire. I started screaming in terror.
She said, “Someone dragged me under the stage and an adult wrapped me in a blanket or something or a rug. When the rug was taken off, I decided to keep my eyes closed for a moment. For some reason, I make believe that I was blind. People were crying, ‘Oh my God, her eyes. She’s blind.’ I remember a shudder of delight went through me because I was in complete command of that moment.” Isn’t that amazing? A seven-year-old girl had that insight. That was her fire for acting. She loved that feeling of being in command of the moment, and that sustained her through a long career in acting.
There’s another girl. Her name was Olga. I’ll tell you about what she does nowadays in a moment. She was a little girl who grew up with a mom who had been diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder. Her dad had told her that she needed to take care of her mom whenever he left the house to go to work and things.
Her mom had always wanted to be an artist. She grew up in Puerto Rico where in her family, the women stayed home and the husband worked. She had put aside her passion. One day, this little girl, when she was five, remembered her mom was doodling on a grocery list. She drew a picture of Mickey Mouse. This little girl was shocked at how good it was.
She said, “I thought my mom was like a god. I told her, ‘You’ve got to teach me how to do that.’” From that day forward, she was always drawing. She would get in trouble at school because of her low focus, except during art. This girl remembered at a parent-teacher conference. Her mom said that the teacher said to her, “Olga is not doing her lessons. She’s not focused in class. She’s always drawing.” Her mom’s answer was, “I need to buy Olga more paper at home for her art.” Her mom continued to support her and inspire her in her work. Olga became a worldwide famous sculptor.
It’s nice to have people behind you who understand your passion, even if it’s different from the family. There’s an old expression that says, “The nail that stands up gets hammered down.” Some kids lose their passion because it’s not appreciated either at home, at school, by the culture, or by their peers. Luckily, Olga got that validation from a mom who said, “It’s okay for you to love your art. I will support your love of art.”
There’s a woman whose name is Sudha Chandran. She was a classical Indian dancer. She was cut off in the prime of her career when she got in a car accident and had her right leg amputated. She was fitted with an artificial leg. She returned to dancing and made it back to the stage. She made it back to the top of her profession. When someone asked her, an interviewer one time said, “How did you manage to do that?” She said, “It’s simple. You don’t need feet to dance. You don’t need feet to dance. What you need is a love for what you’re doing. What you need is a sense of fulfillment in what you’re doing. What you need is to have the autonomy to choose what you do.”
Intrinsic motivation sustains a lifetime of happiness and fulfillment—teach your kids to find it within themselves. Share on XThat’s what each and every one of your children needs. If you want them to become good at what they do, and you want them to be happy and fulfilled as adults, they’ve got to find their thing. They’ve got to find their calling. They have to find their passion. They do it by sampling, by trying things until they find the thing that gives them that feeling that all these people talked about, all these girls, that same feeling. That’s what I want your kids to learn to tune into. They may not find their thing when they’re 8, or 10, or 15, or 18. It may be a little bit down the road.
It’s okay. As long as you’re giving them the opportunity to sample, try things out, and always ask how they feel about what they’re doing. If you see them smiling when they finish their gymnastics, drawing, or whatever they’re doing, I’d always ask, “You look like you’re so happy. What’s going on? How does that make you feel when you do that? What do you love about gymnastics? What do you love about dancing? What do you love about theater? What do you love about whatever it is that you’re into?”
Let kids sample and find their thing. When they smile doing it, that’s when you know they’ve found their passion. Share on XListen to what they say. All those girls gave me those great answers. You need to mirror that back and say, “It sounds like what you like is you love taking people on a journey. You love telling stories. You love making people happy. You love being in the moment. You love being in charge of the moment.” You mirror back their joy, their passion, their intrinsic motivation, and then they internalize it. It’s always there for them to draw from. That’s why that kind of motivation lasts forever. It’s not short-term when someone is there patting them on the back and telling them how great they are. It’s always there because it’s theirs. Our job is to get out of the way of it. Don’t distract them from it. Mirror it back so they learn over time about why they love what they do.
Help your kids discover their passion by reflecting their joy back to them. It’s their motivation to own. Share on XFinal Thoughts: Nurturing Kids’ Passions
I hope this helps. Listen to your daughter’s stories. Maybe if you hear a story or read a story in the newspaper, or you hear something on the news, or you read something in a book about these kinds of stories, copy them and let your daughter read them. It might be a video. Find other places where they can see people talking about their passions and what they love doing. It helps them to also learn how to tune into their own if you will.
Go to my website at www.DrTimJordan.com to look for more information about all the things that my wife and I offer to girls. Also, if you have a question, some feedback, or an idea for a future episode, email my wife at anne@drtimjordan.com. I love getting ideas about what things people are interested in. I don’t want to just keep saying things that maybe nobody has an interest in. Let me know what you want. Let me know what would be interesting to you.
Let kids explore, try new things, and discover their passion. It's not about winning—it's about the joy of doing. Share on XThank you so much for stopping by here. Listen to this one with your daughter. I bet she would like these stories. Maybe that would open up a conversation about why she loves what she’s into these days in her life. Remember autonomy. Let them choose what they do. Let them sample things. Let them experience things. Don’t distract them with all the externals, and then hear back what they say when you ask them, “What do you love so much about what you’re doing?” I’ll be motivated to be back here in a week with a brand-new episode. Thanks so much for stopping by. I’ll see you then.