How External Factors and Identity Shape Teen Motivation with Dr. Chris Hulleman

The teenage years are full of change. We’re asked to think more seriously about our futures, take on more responsibility, and define who we want to become. But somewhere in the middle of all that, motivation can start to feel unpredictable. You might feel incredibly driven toward one goal, and completely stuck in another area. Instead of assuming that inconsistency means something is wrong, I started wondering: Is fluctuating motivation actually a normal part of adolescent development? What’s happening beneath the surface when our drive shifts? To help us unpack these questions, I’m honored to welcome Dr. Chris Hulleman.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hey everyone, and welcome to Growing Forward, a podcast by Positive World, Positive People. As always, I am your host, Sadie Sunaborn Malachi, a 15-year-old girl from Southern California, and I'm so glad you've chosen chosen to spend part of your day here. The teenage years are full of change. We always ask to think more seriously about our futures, take on more responsibility, and define who we want to become. But somewhere in the middle of all that growth, motivation can start to feel unpredictable. You might feel incredibly driven towards one goal and completely stuck in another area of your life, not knowing how or what to do in those circumstances. Instead of assuming that inconsistency means something wrong, I started wondering: is fluctuating motivation actually a normal part of adolescent development? What's happening beneath the surface when our drive shifts? And how can teens better understand what fuels or drains their engagement? To help us unpack the science behind these questions, I'm honored to welcome Dr. Chris Huhlman, a professor of education at the University of Virginia, whose research explores how meaning, identity, and relevance shape student motivation. Dr. Huhlman, before we begin, thank you so much for being here today and welcome to Positive World Positive People.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Yeah, happy to be here. Super excited to chat with you and you ask great questions. So I'm looking forward to the conversation.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

Okay, so let's get started. What initially drew you to study motivation in adolescence? What made you interested in understanding why students engage or disengage from school and other activities?

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Yeah, that's a great question. I think there's two things. One, uh, I kind of won the parent lottery. Like I had really stable family situation. Both my parents actually have graduate degrees, and so education was super valued in my house. It wasn't it wasn't like, oh, you have to get certain grades. It was just school's important. What do you need to do well in school? So, first off, you don't get to choose your parents. And so I feel like I need to pay it forward or I want to pay it forward. Uh, the second is um before I got my graduate degree, I spent eight years doing all sorts of teaching, coaching, and mentoring jobs. And one, I was a I was a social worker uh for about a year, and I worked with 12 to 17 year old boys who had gotten in trouble with the legal system. Um uh could have been drugs, could have been uh violence, could have been theft, and um just really had the experience there of working with adolescents. And I thought, hey, I'm this young guy, I was 24, I'm gonna come in, I'm gonna help them, help them get their lives back on track and and move things along. And what I found was the system was stacked against these folks. You know, once you get into the criminal justice system, it's really hard to get out. And also the social supports and and um the family supports and the the neighborhoods where a lot of these students came from, not not all of them, but many of them were low resource communities, low resource families. And you just think about what can I do that replaces that? And it and it felt like I couldn't. And there's one one young man in particular, his name was Teddy. His name has been changed to protect his identity. And he was 17 when I got to know him. He only had six months until he turned 18. So it was a high stakes because he turns 18. All these charges against him become part of his adult record. For sure. So he needed to work with me, and and you know, I would write uh monthly reports to the judge. And if he had three or four good reports in a row, they would basically, you know, expunge his record, clean record, go be go be an adult. Um, and this guy was super talented, young African-American guy, very smart, very athletically talented, very socially emotionally skilled. Like he could interact with a two-year-old and a 92-year-old. He just was the challenge was he was failing school. Uh, he'd been kicked off most of the sports teams that he'd tried out for, and he never stayed in the same house more than like a week or two. He was always on the move and kind of not his fault. And one day, Teddy taught me stuff. He taught me uh that you know, you can shoot 30-foot jump shots. I played basketball and I thought, oh, that's too far away. And he could just stroke them really easy. And he worked with me. He he coached me. You know, you you learn things when you're least expecting them. And one day he just disappeared. I couldn't find him, went to where he was staying. You know, I knew his friends, I knew his coaches, I knew his teachers, um, I knew his grandmother. Uh, he just disappeared. And and that really had a big impact on me. I have no idea what what's ever happened to him, but I knew like from that point on, what I really wanted to do was help people get what they wanted out of life rather than just being stuck where they are. Um, and so I wanted to understand, I wanted to understand motivation, the science of it, so I could go go share it with other people.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Well, that's an incredible story. Just hearing about all of these different things that were going against Teddy and who he was, even though he had so many aspects of himself that were great. And he was eventually like he was this student and he was this athlete. But then the world was kind of put against him in this circumstance where what was he supposed to do? And unfortunately, now we don't know where he is, but that really showing that you continued on and just grew from there and grew your purpose from that story is so impactful to just show that these people were at like the rock bottom of their lives, but you wanted to make change. You wanted them to go into the future of their adulthood and have something, some purpose behind it all. And that's just one story of probably many of the kids that you worked with and the different adults that you've now transpired into your life. But I love that it just represents this kind of view that we can come from these places and maybe it seems like we're stuck in these moments. And there's so many different aspects of our lives that are just telling us no, we can't go somewhere. There, there's nothing left for us. However, your research is now showing that there is something. There is something that we can all shoot for through motivation. We can change our lives and we can approach it in a new light. And there's so many different aspects that can totally reroute what we define ourselves as. So I love that that's where it all began and that it really did begin with you just connecting with these adolescent members and just shows the perspective of, yeah, adolescents, we develop all of these traits here. So what can we do so that it can transpire through our whole lives? And with that, many teens feel like motivation is something you either have or don't. Maybe in Teddy's instance, he didn't feel like he had the motivation to be able to go and do great things in the world. So, from your scientific perspective, is motivation a motivation a personality trait or something more dynamic?

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Yeah, well, what if I said it's both? So uh there's certainly uh personality differences between us. I mean, you look at your friends, and and you can certainly see there's differences in what they prefer across situations, right? And there's definitely personality differences in how we show up, how motivated we are in general. And uh the research is super clear, Sadie. Motivation is dynamic, it's situational. And you might show up one day in a situation and be super motivated, and the next day you show up to you know a second period English class, and all of a sudden you're just like you're not having it, right? So there are dynamic features of individuals and what we bring and and how that interacts with what's in the situation that uh can uh conspire to undermine our motivation or to really fuel it and sustain it. So I think that's like a uh something for for any teenager who's struggling in any moment, knowing this is one moment in your life, and the rest of your life doesn't have to be like this. In fact, it probably won't. It might get better, it might get worse, but it's it's one moment. And there actually is a lot you can do to feed yourself forward and have more better moments than worse moments. And there are things that are out of our control that impact our motivation in a situation. You don't always get to choose who shows up in that situation with you, and that can have a big impact on our motivation, and that's real. So, yeah, it really is both. And I let me go back to this the person for a second. You can develop more stable characteristics about yourself that can help you, regardless of the situation, kind of get traction and and get energy and motivation across settings. That that is also true. It's not like you just show up every sp every space, it's a blank slate. You don't know if you're gonna be motivated or not. That's not true either. So it's it's both, and you can build kind of that motivation, those motivational resources you have and take those with you.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

Yeah, it really transpires from, like you said, both sides of these things where it does root from who we are, but it also comes from just day by day. I'm a humanities person inside and out. I go into an English class and a history class and I just flow. I'm in this state that I just want to go, go, go and learn all the information that I can. And then I go into the STEM classes and I'm a little bit more stuck. However, I last year I had this teacher and he showed me this new world of math. I had never understood math to the same extent I knew history or English. However, he gave me this new perspective. It was this new idea that math can be something that I can incorporate into my lives and I can enjoy doing it, which has now created a new perspective on the entire subject. And this year I'm actually taking honors math, which is something that I would never even consider doing. However, these external factors, for me in specific, my teacher, influenced me to change my motivational patterns in this light. So when we're talking about external factors in adolescence, are there bigger ones? Are there ones that aren't as substantial? Which factors in our lives contribute to our motivation more than just ourselves?

SPEAKER_00 9:53

Yeah, yeah. So let's let's just first right away say during adolescence, so much is changing about your body physically does have a huge impact on you mentally and emotionally. And and most teenagers probably know this, but just I want to validate that and we can come back to like some of those influences. But that like anything I'm gonna talk about in the situation needs to be sort of thought about with that in mind. Like there's lots changing as a teenager, and that can make you know moment-to-moment motivation challenging at times, right? So, having said that, you know, one of the cool things that's happening in adolescence is kind of our social awareness is really getting turned that that that um capacity is getting turned on or ramped up. For sure. And so you become, as you become an adolescent, become much more aware of other people's perceptions of you. Um, not that we're ignorant of it when we're kids, but you know, the developmental arc is pretty clear.

SPEAKER_02 10:53

It's just a different idea of everything that's around you and what's accurate in front of you.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Yeah. Often young kids, the world is what they how they think of it in their brain. And then as you get older, you start to realize, oh, she thinks differently than he, and he thinks differently than them. And and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, how are they thinking about me? And then that's the the brain starts to go over overload. Right now, in this moment in in time in our history with technology and social media, like I think there's an unfortunate like interaction with adolescents that, oh my gosh, social media and we can see all the perfect images of other people's lives. And so you're not only aware of like how other people are seeing you, but you're sort of really aware of these idealized images of what teenagers could or should look like. So those are all external factors that can you know increase and undermine motivation. Because you know, it can be great to have a model to like shoot for, right? Someone, you know, an athlete who's you know accomplishing things, working hard, someone who is really great at fashion or dance or whatever. On the other hand, most of what we see is unrealistic. I mean, are you posting the bad moments of your life?

SPEAKER_02 12:08

Exactly. Social media is this escape from pretty much reality for a lot of people, and they put the best moments that they want out there. So that's all adolescent members are seeing. We're not seeing any of those troublesome times. So what our perception of reality is has entirely shifted to just be the most idealistic moments of our lives.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Yeah, yeah. So I think that really drives this like, oh, what should I be doing myself? And what happens then is you can kind of lose sight of like being in charge of your identity development and really letting letting all these social factors drive it. And there's part of that socialization and those sort of things we learn, like how to treat each other and what's appropriate and not appropriate. We we learn about how other people support each other. We also learn about how other people tear each other down. Yeah. So learning from others is really important. And as we are navigating and developing our identities, we've got to remember to like check in and say, hey, what matters to me here? How does that match me and not let other people's interests define ours? Definitely. So I think that's really like one of the big things that happens in adolescence is this increasing awareness of the other and how other people live and what they think. And so incorporating that, like an overincorporation of that into our identity or our self-worth and how we think of ourselves. I think that's a huge factor. Another factor um is, and maybe we'll talk about this later, but there's this drive to become more autonomous. Like we are growing, we want to be adults.

SPEAKER_02 13:51

We want to be independent, especially like at this stage in time when we're getting access to so many more things. Like, for instance, getting our license. That's something that everybody wants to do, no matter the age, no matter where you are across the country. I feel like every single adolescent member really wants their license. It's kind of this moment in time where you get freedom or a sense of freedom in a new way that you've never had before. But in adolescent years, you hit so many moments where it's just like, I want to be independent. I'm gonna an adult and I have my own thoughts, but I'm not at the same time. And I live under a house with rules and all these things, and you're in this middle ground where you're just kind of in between. And I think that development of autonomy is really, really crucial.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Yeah. And it's like that appropriate development of autonomy, right? Because if all of a sudden you just take all the constraints away and you can do whatever you want, what we find at every stage of development is that actually can create a lot of anxiety and confusion too. Because, like, oh, where where should I be going? What should I be doing? And there's not often a lot of feedback there, or the feedback you get ends up being like, oh, go do whatever you want. And then all of a sudden you have all these huge legal or other consequences that come in because you end up stepping over the line. Absolutely. So both are like both aren't optimal. Like we need we need some constraints, and we need to, as you get older and you develop more knowledge and skills and all those things, they need to, those constraints need to kind of to peel away. So that's something that's bumping up for adolescents that causes a lot of frustration. It can cause what we call learned helplessness. Is this something you've ever heard of before?

SPEAKER_02 15:26

I don't think so.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Learned helplessness is the idea that like you try and try to do something, and and no matter what you do, nothing changes. So you just sort of like let go and be like, I'm helpless. I've learned that helpless is better because I'm not wasting my time and energy because it doesn't matter what I do. You know, no matter what I do, my dad's still gonna yell at me. It doesn't matter, you know, how well I clean my room, there's something that's always gonna be wrong. For example, hopefully the Hulliman children don't think that way. By the way, I do have five kids. The youngest is a sophomore in college. So a lot of recent experience with adolescents, and you should definitely fact check anything I say with any of them. Uh so yeah, I think the question, let me just we can finish on this and go to what's next. But yeah, the these sort of external factors around being aware of other people and how other people really impact us from our identity and our identity development and how much we're like keeping control of our identity development versus giving it up to other people. And then the second piece is this growing need for autonomy and then how that bumps up to what the world allows us to do. And every teenager's world is a little different, their parent situation is a little different, school situation, friend situation, but but that's bumping up against that. And in some cases, you may not have enough skills to deal with the autonomy you have, and other times you may have more skills than you're being given credit for.

SPEAKER_02 17:01

For sure. And it's finding this balance for every single adolescent member of all of these different factors, externally and internally. Like you said, you wanna go out and you wanna be independent, but at the same time, you're gonna need some guidance through it. You're gonna need a helping hand or somebody kind of behind you or on your shoulder in a sense, leading you through life. However, if we take a step too far or if we go back too much, then we get in this space of like what ifs and just things don't always add up. So finding this kind of equilibrium and trying to balance everything is really difficult in these moments for adolescents, but it is also so significant to making productive progress and through motivational factors. And we also mention this formation of identity and all of the influences that to go into who we are. So, how does identity formation influence motivation? If a teen doesn't yet see themselves as a math person or a future college student, how does that shape their engagement with what they're doing day to day?

SPEAKER_00 17:57

Yeah. So I feel like based on your story earlier, the question about seeing themselves as a math person, was that was that you before Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

Well, I did not consider myself a math person at all. And I all of a sudden I was kind of given this new perspective on math and shown that it can be a thing that I can do. Cause I was I was never told you can do math, even if you're struggling at it. I was kind of at this point, this kind of helplessness where I just kept struggling and struggling. And I was like, okay, I will never be a math person. I will never get it. I will never be like one of my friends who can just instantly see an equation and figure it out. That won't be me. However, I was given this person who told me that can be you. You just have to look at it in a different light or approach it in a different way because you are not the same as that person. And this was the first time that I was given that perspective of wait, I'm a different individual. I'm gonna figure it out in a totally different way. But that's okay. So that's kind of what I meant by that situation.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that that makes a lot of sense. Um, you know, I think if you know you mention identity, and and let me just like define what I mean when I say identity, um, it may be a little different than than what you know we non-psychologists mean, but we tend to mean the beliefs we have about ourselves and how we how we fit into the world around us. That's kind of our our self-concept of our sometimes called self-concept, self-worth. Um, different, you know, researchers might call it slightly different things, but that's the basic idea, right? And um, you know, identity we might think of it as like, oh, I'm a I'm a boy, or I'm a son, or I'm a father, or I'm a football player. But in reality, identities are like some mash of all that together at once, right? And the fancy psychological word for that is intersectionality. Is that a word you've ever heard of?

SPEAKER_02 19:49

I I yes, I have.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

Yeah. And so it's it's um it's important that we recognize that sometimes some parts of our identity are really salient in the moment. Like if you're at the dinner table with your family, it may be that uh daughter or sister is really salient for you. But when you're at school, that might be less salient part of your identity. It's still there, it just may be less salient in that environment. And so, um, you know, if I'm gonna if I was gonna say there's one factor that influences motivation more than anything else, it's the identity that's salient in the moment. Okay. So salient's like the identity that's most top of mind in that situation, right? So, because how we think about ourselves in that moment constrains our behavior. Like if you go to math class and you're like, oh, I'm not a math person, now are you gonna try a hard problem? Are you gonna volunteer to like write out the answer on the board? Are you gonna ask for help? Like all those things, maybe not, if that's the identity that's cued. But if you're someone comes up to you and is like, hey, Sadie, you know what? That homework you turned in last week, that was really great. I think you've got some really great ideas about math. I think you you've got some skill here. You're like, huh, okay. So maybe now what's primed for you is Sadie smart, Sadie good student identity, right? And now you might enter that math space. It might be fleeting, it might be temporary till you like all of a sudden you they're like, hey, uh, solve the quadratic, this this uh this word problem with the quadratic formula. Like, oh, what is the quadratic formula? I have no idea what it is. Um, but but in that moment, you've you've got some different um cognitive and emotional resources, some different motivational resources at your disposal. So um, you know, one thing just to to tell like anyone who's listening that the identity that's sailing in that moment is cued by situational factors, it's brought up by like the other people in the room. And if someone's like, Oh yeah, you're just if if a teacher has told you you're not a math person someday, one day, then Forever when you're in the classroom with that teacher, you may be like not a math person.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

And there are things you can do to try to like be aware of that and try to counteract that by bringing up other aspects of your identity and focusing on them. So I I think I'm answering a question. I feel like I've sort of lost my way a little bit on what your question was, but identity is super important in terms of motivation. It's hugely impactful.

SPEAKER_02 22:24

Definitely. And over the course of our adolescent years is this entire developmental period about identity. So sometimes it's gonna feel sticky and there's gonna be times where it maybe feels like trial and error because you're trying to figure it out. You're figuring out who you are, what values you have, and what does it relate to you, which leads into my next questions about relevance and value. What does relevance and value mean to students, especially in the motivational field? And how does it relate to what they want to do and how much motivation they're actually going to incorporate into their lives?

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Yeah, um, that's such a great question. And I think um, you know, this topic actually is the topic of my dissertation. And it's one that I feel like I that's like the number one things that students struggled with when I was a social worker, when I was a high school teacher, when I uh worked with college students as a as a counselor, and I coach college football and worked with a lot of those players. Yeah, it's like, why do I have to do this? Yeah, it's such an important question. And you're gonna be asking that question your life, your whole life, because you're gonna get a job and you're like, why do I gotta go to these meetings? Why do I gotta write this report? Why do I gotta do X, right? And I wrote a I wrote a blog post uh many years ago uh um uh after working with a group of middle school teachers and students, and it was like, I could be uh saving the world right now, but instead I'm solving for X. And I think like what we underestimate about humans, and especially about adolescents, is that they want to make an impact on the world. They want to do meaningful stuff, right? And that meaningful stuff isn't learn math so you can do your taxes.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

I I had I've had middle school teachers, I'll be like, hey, do you help your students find relevance for math? And I still remember this, you know, really young, energetic uh middle school math teachers, like, oh yeah, give them examples. Like, we talk about taxes and home remodeling. And I'm like, yo, dude.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

That's not gonna fit in with what they want to be doing right now.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Yeah, like negative 12% of your seventh graders are saying, Yeah, I can't wait to go home and help my parents with our taxes, right? So it's really relevant in value. It's like, what's relevant to you, to who you are, and what's what's relevant to Sadie, what was relevant to like 14-year-old Chris.

SPEAKER_02 24:52

Like, and that's the challenge of for teachers to like make it relevant for every student based on their exactly, because it's different, and it all comes again, roots from our identity, and our identity is so specific to who we are. It's like our fingerprint, no one is gonna match it, no matter 8 billion people out there. No one is gonna be exactly like you. So trying to conform all of these students in one classroom to one idea is gonna have to work sometimes, but obviously it's not gonna work others because everyone is different in that room.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Yeah, they're different, and we can do it. Like I work with a lot of teachers, right? And and my job is to convince them that sounds really hard and daunting, and you are awesome at your job, teacher. You can figure this out.

SPEAKER_02 25:32

Exactly. Because it's also fun for them. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

If you want students to be awesome at math, you need to be awesome at this. You need to help them care about it. Not most of them are not going to get a PhD in math, most of them aren't gonna major in math in in college, but some of them might. Either of those, and right now you need to get them engaged in like why are they doing geometry proofs? Yeah, and I hated just saying I hated geometry proofs. I still don't think I get it because my brain like wants to think like, hey, there's like eight ways to do this, and a geometry proof is like there is one way, you just drove me crazy. But if you can help your students think about that as like a thinking exercise and give them fun, different ways to think about like proving something, and there's there's a lot of ways to make it relevant, interesting to what they do because like we make arguments all the time. You're like trying to say, Hey, that TikTok video is stupid. Why? Okay, here's your reasons, like prove it to me. It's the same kind of logic, it's a logic problem. So, yeah, I think it's really key. We underestimate how important it is for adolescents, especially. And so that's why teenagers shouldn't get discouraged when they're in class and they're like, Okay, this is stupid, I can't figure it out. It's like, yeah, ask questions, even self-advocacy as well. Yeah, have some self-advocacy and find those teachers that like do want to do that for you, and then you know, engage with them. Um, and you might not be able to find that in every class, but there's one one space, you know, one mentor you can find who wants to help you think through that. That's a part of you developing your identity. Take a look at that.

SPEAKER_02 27:05

Definitely. And I think that's a really strong tactic to just advance your motivation. However, are there other mechanisms or things teens can do day to day to try to boost their motivation if they feel like it's slipping away, or if in a certain subject they feel like they aren't as motivated to do it. What can they do in that instance?

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Yeah, yeah. First, first off, give yourself a break. Like motivation varies within a day and and across days. Like, first off, if you're if your motivation's lagging, A, like do that. Two, um, yeah, a lot of the stuff you're asked to do in school is stupid. Like it just is. Uh, so sorry. Um, so know that. And then three, yeah, there's stuff you can do to help yourself. Um, and so uh I think what I would what I would say to folks is ask yourself a couple questions. Like when you're struggling in motivation in this situation, first off, you know, check in on your basic needs. Am I tired? Am I hungry? Am I thirsty? Now, sometimes when something's hard, we we want to like do anything but the hard thing. So we'll convince ourselves, let's go fold the laundry or pick up my room or make a cheese, make a sandwich or whatever. But yeah, but check in with yourself, like how like how you're doing. Uh, but then I would ask yourself, okay, why why would I do this? What's the point? And try to figure out, hey, is there a reason for this? And maybe the teacher didn't give you a great one. That but you you're smart. You can figure it out. Yeah, maybe there's some things you can get, like you're gonna write a paper, you think it's a dumb topic, but you're like, okay, hey, I can learn something about how to write good paragraphs here or something. Definitely is there something that you can latch on to? If not, ask a question, ask your teacher that question. But so I'm talking about school here, but this applies to anything. Like, okay, do you know why you're doing it? Second, do you know how to do it? Is part of your obstacle like you don't know how to start, or there's a part of the problem that you just you're not sure how you would do that? If you don't know how, okay, and there's a cue. Ask yourself where are the supports? How would I learn how to do this? Is there someone who can help me? Is there something I can do differently? Maybe you thought there was only one way to solve the problem, but are there other strategies that you've been learning in class? Maybe for earlier units or whatever. Okay, try that. See if there's another strategy. And then lastly, it's looking for mentors, either peer mentors who can help you, you know, who other folks who seem like they have done things in the past that could help you, or adult mentors. So why would I do this? Do I know how to do it? You know, and are there things in my way that are preventing me from getting this done and get those, get those out of the way, like, you know, I'm thirsty, I'm hungry, whatever. Who can help?

SPEAKER_02 29:49

All of those different things correlate back to struggles. And sometimes we struggle as adolescents to just admit that we need help or that we need to figure out that, oh, I can't really do this thing. I'm struggling at it, I'm challenged. And in these moments where times don't always feel easy, kids kind of get stuck. We don't always know what to do. Cause as you said, we're gonna try to distract ourselves, whether that's go make a sandwich or scroll on our phones, whatever it may be. When these challenging moments appear, we want to walk away from them. We don't want to be directly facing them. However, we have to like that's where we're emphasizing in this conversation that you have to take that stance. You have to advocate for yourself, you have to be willing to try to go more and motivate yourself, which all roots back from you. There's so many different things that external factors can do. And as you said, like peers or teachers or even parentals, they can help you with those things. But in the end, it's gonna be a decision that you make to try to be more motivated to do something or look at it in a new light. And there's so many different tactics that you can do to just change it up to fit into who you are. For me, I actually did a presentation on the history of math as one of my projects for the end of the year last year, because I did not want to write about proofs. Yeah, I was in geometry last year. I did not want to do a whole thing on proofs. So I went up to my teacher and I talked to him and I was like, hey, what is something that I can do that is tailored to me and can still give me credit? And he gave me this opportunity to do a presentation on literally the history of math, which I was so much more delighted to do. And it gave me that opportunity to actually look at where everything I was doing was rooting from, which then emphasized this opportunity and this kind of light that I had about math. Cause now I was thinking, like, oh, I recognize where Pythagorean theorem is coming from. And oh, that's where that equation is rooted from and all of these people's history, and that's how it transpired through our entire world, which I just had to advocate for myself. I had to be out there and I had to be willing to find a new strategy, which is, I think, a lot of the time the struggle that adolescents have. But I'm really glad that you emphasize that.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Yeah. And the other thing that I resonate with what you say said there, and the other thing I want to say is that it's like it's okay to not be motivated in a moment. It's okay to feel to feel tired or depressed or anxious or whatever that is. I think that's like the part maybe I should have said to start with. And I I guess I did say check in, but like check in with yourself. Yeah. Sometimes we're overstimulated. And so that can be, you know, I work with a lot of students who they're taking every class in the semester is an AP class, right? And it's like, whoa, like, okay, first off, I'm asking why. Why are you doing this? And if you're telling me, yeah, because I want to get into a good college, like I'm gonna say, okay, whoa, slow down. Seven, you know, seven APs a year times four years. That's a lot. You don't need all of that. And also, like, are you interested in any of these things? Let's think about what you're developing in yourself. So sometimes we just get overwhelmed, and that can be demotivating. So there's this point of like, hey, are there things I can take away? One of the root principles of design, like architecture, engineering, is start by taking away. Take away until only what you need, and then build from there. So a lesson that a lot of students could, and I don't know the demographics of who's who's watching this, but just something to ask yourself. Oh, am I trying to do too many things?

SPEAKER_02 33:28

Yeah, don't push yourself. Yeah, like we're all human and we need to take a break in a minute to just reset. Because as you said, we can get overstimulated, and then the end product is not always going to be what we want. And that's when we see those moments in time where even if a student is doing seven APs, maybe they don't get a five or a four on each one of those things. And then it ends up being like, Oh, I did all of these things, but now I'm angry at myself that I didn't even do well, and then they start spiraling, and then it's all these all of these different components where just kids are just like, ah, there's so much pressure. What am I supposed to do? I'm just gonna try to do more when in reality taking a step back can be more helpful.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

Absolutely. Uh the other thing in what you said is going back to identity. When you how do you what's your self-talk like? And I'm talking in general, I'm not saying you have to answer this, Sadie. But ask yourself, what's my self-talk like when I hit something that's difficult?

SPEAKER_02 34:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

Is my self-talk, oh man, I must not be smart at this. I'm not a math person, I'm not an English person, this is too hard for me. Or is your self-talk, wow, this is difficult, it must be important. And when we are in a space, the research shows when you're a space, when you're interpreting difficulty as this is important versus I'm dumb, that perceiving it as important leads to much more adaptive responses. Because I mean, think about when you blast back all the way to last year, when you didn't think you're a math person, when you hit that difficulty, like what were you telling yourself?

SPEAKER_02 35:05

In the moment, in the beginning, I was telling myself that I I was in that helpless moment where I was just like, I can't do it. There is nothing more I can do. However, over time I developed that different mentality and approached it with, okay, maybe it's challenging right now. But if I keep working on it or I try it in a different way, or I take a break or a step back just to let myself settle, and maybe I can come up with a better outcome. And then I can be that person. Yeah. I can is something that I want to emphasize because you never can't be anything. There's never that many restrictions where you can't be something or you can't be someone. We're all individuals and we all can go somewhere. So emphasizing the word you can is great, especially for adolescents.

SPEAKER_00 35:48

Or or I'm not as good a at math as I want to be yet. Yes. So yet is a great, and that connects to the idea of growth mindset that if you think you can grow and improve your abilities, that is a wonderful place to start. We all can grow. We we may not all be able to get to some final endpoint. Like at this point in my career, I play college football, but my probability of getting to the NFL is pretty low at this point. Like, I don't think it really matters what I do. That's not happening. I'm I'm 54 years old. Uh I know I look 25, but uh, but I'm just not gonna get there. Um, but I could get I could get stronger, I could get faster. So many different things. So like being at that space where like, okay, I could get better at this thing. I might not be, you know, get 100% on every calculus test ever, but I can get better. Better such a really helpful place to be. And acknowledging then that you gotta try hard things to figure out what you don't know, and then figure out what those strategies are, often asking for help, figuring out different ways to do it.

SPEAKER_02 36:55

Which is difficult for adolescents to realize, but it is so, so important to bring. But it it is really difficult in the beginning, and all of us start at that point. So embracing it and just knowing that I can get out of this space and I can change my mindset to be this growth mindset and think of everything in this new light is really, really crucial to our development. So finally, Chris, what message would you want to share with teenagers who feel frustrated or worried about their fluctuating motivation?

SPEAKER_00 37:23

Yeah, I think I'd say a couple things. One, first, you're not alone. Uh super common to have motivational struggles, whether it's vacillations in it or feeling stuck in a rut. So one, you're not alone. Second, it's natural. And this goes back, I won't give the lecture on the relationship between hormones and physical changes and our psyches, but I just want to say it's especially a part of adolescence when your bodies are changing physically and hormonally, and all the places, and that that's not just for girls when I say hormones. Boys have just as many hormones running through their systems. There might be slightly different, like ratios of everything, but you all are changing a lot. So it's natural. First, you're not alone. Second, it's natural. Third, don't be afraid to ask for help. Say, hey, I'm I'm spiraling or I'm stuck or whatever. It could be a peer, it could be a teacher, it could be a mentor, it could be a parent. You know, most parents really do want to help. Sometimes we we fall into the lecture trap. I've done it, you know. Uh yeah, I just know if I'm talking to my when they're teenagers, if I've been talking for more than a minute, I should shut up. Uh that's hard though. Uh but but asking for help and and fourth, I would encourage you to remember that um, you know, motivation and identity is dynamic. And there's probably no adult that's doing the job they thought they were gonna do when they're 15. They're also personality is different than when they were 15. You're gonna grow and develop over time, and you play a big role in that, just as the situations you're in play a big role in that. And so the final, the final piece there is if you're not happy like with the way things are, you can try to change your behaviors and you can try to change your situation and the people you're around. And both are both are are effective strategies. If you only use one, you're probably not having optimal development. Every time you don't like what's going on, you just like change friend groups, or you know, like that's that might not be the best thing because maybe those friends are giving you feedback, like, oh, maybe you do need to change something about it.

SPEAKER_02 39:43

There is something that we can all work on, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:45

But if you're always if you just always internalize it, and it's always my fault, like that's not healthy either. So I think there's a balance of that, and just know that things are dynamic and you're at a point in your life where things are changing a lot, they're gonna change more, and encourage you to to lean into that and and to to wrestle on that and know you're not alone.

SPEAKER_02 40:04

That's awesome. I love the way you closed it with it. It is so many different things. Motivation is this dynamic thing that happens to all of us and it goes throughout our entire lives. It starts in our young, young years, transpires and adolescence and becomes more crucial at this time period, but then it does continue on. And there's so many different factors that we can make it better, help ourselves, and there's so many things that we can do. So I really love that you closed it out with that broad perspective to give all of our listeners. So, Dr. Holman, thank you so much for helping us see motivation more thoughtfully and developmentally. It's reassuring to know that shifting drive isn't a personal flaw, it's often a reflection of growing independence, changing values, and identity formation. So, thank you again for being here today.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

Yeah, thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_02 40:50

So, and to everybody listening, adolescence is a time of questioning, exploring, and redefining what matters to you. Motivation may not always seem steady, but that is okay. It is important to realize this and that effort to change and keep growing is something we really need to emphasize as we continue into our adult life. So just remember that it is okay for these motivational times to not always feel the best. But if we look at it in a new light, if we have a new mindset around it, it can turn into something that we all cherish and helps us throughout our lives. So thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Growing Forward. These conversations remind us that becoming who we aren't isn't meant to be this linear journey. It's about awareness and it's about going through all these bumps in the road. Until next time, signing off with loads of positivity. This is Sadie's son of Born Malachy.