Hello everyone, and welcome back to English With Dylan! You’re listening to Episode Seven, What Motivates Me? I hope you’re having a great day so far, and I want to thank you for tuning into this episode of my podcast. I’ll just quickly remind you that you can find the free transcript to this episode at www.englishwithdylan.com, in case you want to read along while you listen! 

So the inspiration for today’s topic was really just my own mind. I sat down after deciding that I wanted to pick the topic for this episode myself, and within ten seconds the idea of motivation came to me. I suppose it’s been on my mind quite a lot recently. Ironically, despite the fact that the most recent episode of this podcast was all about good habits, the past few days I’ve had a little lapse in productivity. It’s not like I sat on the couch and did nothing. I did stay steady with the gym and cold showers, but I haven’t studied German in four or five days, for example, and I fell short of releasing an episode of this podcast last friday. While it’s true that I had quite a long week at work, I do not want to excuse myself because if I’m fully honest, I could have accomplished more, and so I am a bit disappointed in myself. But here’s the thing, beating down on myself will not help me at all! So instead, I’ve decided to spin it in a positive manner, using this week’s episode as an opportunity to reflect on the things that motivate me, which will give me a boost in productivity. 

Recently, the questions of the week have been very long; interesting, yes, but long! So this week, I picked a really easy one that will only take a minute or so to answer, and then we’ll hop straight into the main topic. This week, a follower of the podcast asked me what my favourite kind of music is. This is a difficult question for me to answer because I love music so much and listen to so many different kinds of it. So I’ll answer this question in a few pieces. First off, my favourite band of all time is The Beatles, though I will say that I am not as “obsessed” with them as I was in my mid teen years. There was a time in my life where most of the music that I listened to was by The Beatles, I watched interviews and “Beatles funny moments” videos, I learned their songs on the guitar, everything. I was absolutely hooked, not just by their melodies and harmonies, but also by the phenomenon. The cultural impact that The Beatles had still fascinates me to this day, and I often wonder if we’ll ever have such a socially impactful musician or a group of musicians again. The music of The Beatles, as well as other artists from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s such as Billy Joel, Elton John, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Clash, The Rolling Stones, and more is the first music that I would say I ever loved, the first bands and genres that really caught my attention and that I fell in love with, particularly the 60s. However, that’s just one side of the story. I’m also a fan of some even earlier stuff, I like a bunch of 50s songs by Frank Sinatra and Johnny Cash. And finally, in more recent times, I’ve found myself mostly listening to rap/party music since I started going to the gym regularly. The Beatles are great, but not exactly the best to hype you up for a workout! 

With that out of the way, let’s get into the main topic of today’s episode. I think that motivation is a very interesting topic. I believe that each person has a core set of motivations that will never change for them no matter what happens in life. I also believe that we have additional motivations that change for a variety of reasons depending on what we are pursuing as we mature and as we gain and lose people and opportunities. There is also a debate to be had about the concept of motivation as a whole. Is it unproductive to wait to be motivated? Is the expectation of “motivation” making people these days mentally weaker? I am going to touch on all of this! 

First thing’s first, what are my core motivations in life? I had to sit down and think hard about this one. And there are different answers depending on which aspect of my life we’re talking about. My career as an actor is without a doubt one of the most significant and defining undertakings of my life, and the truth is that there are a plethora of things that motivate me day to day, week to week, and year to year. And the first that comes to mind is my mom. My mom was on set with me every single day from when I started at age 4 all the way to age 17, save for maybe 20 or 30 days in total with my dad, grandparents, or aunts and uncles. Think about that: in 13 years of relatively consistent work, including a combined 6 months spent living in Toronto away from family and friends, my mom was there for nearly every single day. When my days were 8 hours long, she was there. When I turned 12 and they changed to 10 hours long, she was still there. And of course, when I booked a role across the country with 12 hour work days, she was there too. And I truly struggle to remember a time where she had a complaint. There were times that she was not happy to be in Toronto, but hey, she’s a west coast girl, I don’t blame her! And that was just because of the city. She absolutely adored being on set with me whether it was early in the morning or late at night; in Vancouver, Montreal, Regina, or Toronto; whether it was 35 degrees or -20 degrees. She would get her work done in my trailer and then watch as much of my work as she could. My mom taught me how to be a professional on set, and this allowed me to form good working relationships with adults in the industry – even at a young age – which still play a big role in my life to this day. She practiced my lines with me, no matter how busy she was, she would always say yes when I asked her for help. Every time I’ve had an audition to do from home, she has gotten behind the camera and read with me. My mom has done all of this for me, and she truly has never expected anything in return. It was all so that I could do what she knew I love to do. She did all of this for no reward other than to see her son happy, to see her son succeed. I suppose that she is the kind of mother for whom there is no greater reward than her child’s happiness, and for that I’ll be forever grateful! 

Of course, I couldn’t talk this much about my mom without saying something about my dad. My dad hasn’t been as present in my actual days on set, but that’s not at all because he didn’t want to be, he has always taken every chance possible to spend the days on set with me. In fact, last year he was able to get two weeks off work and so he made the move to Toronto with me, and my mom eventually took over. But my dad came to set every day, watched my work, and also cooked me some amazing dinners after work. My dad is an excellent chef. Especially when I was younger, his job was always quite busy and it required him to be there in person. And you know, an actor’s life doesn’t just take place on set. Auditions make up the bulk of most actors’ time, and since my dad did work downtown so often, I remember that my mom would drive me into Vancouver, drop me off with my dad, then head home because she had to teach skating. So my dad would take me to quite a few auditions, and he always gave me fantastic pep talks (a pep talk is something like a motivational speech you give to someone before they play a sports game for example, or in my case, before a big audition). Beyond his involvement in my acting career, as a young boy (at least in my experience) my dad was my absolute hero, and I still model the man that I’m becoming after him in many ways. He taught me how to properly shake someone’s hand, to look them in the eyes and to have a firm grip. He taught me to open the door for people. I feel that a lot of my social ability comes from him as well, he is extremely charismatic. I’ve been on set during some rough periods of my life in terms of mental health, and my dad has always been my rock for mental health struggles because he had very similar problems at a very similar age. I remember one or two days in particular that I was really struggling, I had so much anxiety that I was almost in tears between takes and I found it hard to focus, but seeing my dad there, just behind the set watching me, motioning with his hands for me to relax, it always got me through the next take. Those days were a struggle, but my dad was there for me as my strength when I had none. Nowadays I don’t have tough days like that anymore, but if I ever do again, I know that I now carry my dad’s strength with me. 

Naturally, there is no way I could talk so much about my amazing parents without mentioning the rest of my family. I have two sisters, one granddad still with us and three amazing, dearly departed grandparents who I love and live for every day. My great family, for me, is all the constant motivation I ever need. I want to make them proud. I also want to take care of them. One of my goals is to achieve a level of financial success that will allow me to give back to my parents, to give them the most amazing retirement they could possibly imagine. As for my sisters and my granddad, I would just like it if my whole family never had to worry about money again. I know that my little sister in particular will have no problem accepting gifts from her big brother, and that’s exactly how it should be! Being her older brother, it only seems right that I spoil my little sister. It’s her right! I want to make it clear, money isn’t everything in life, and there are certainly much more meaningful ways to take care of a family that don’t involve money at all. But the fact is, money does play a part in forming one’s lifestyle, and all I want is to be able to provide my family with whatever lifestyle they please. I hope to contribute much of whatever money I earn throughout my career to them! 

Essentially, my family is my biggest core motivation, a motivation that does have a lot to do with my career, but also extends beyond that. I try to approach every situation in life, every single day, as a proud Kingwell: proud to be the product of my mom, dad, and grandparents, proud to be the brother of my sisters. From what I have seen, most people in my generation seem to have lost sight of – or have different values regarding – the importance of family. I don’t know very many people who are as proud to be from their family as I am. Granted, I recognize that I am absolutely blessed with a great family, but even the people I know that come from great families don’t seem to think too much about this. I myself think about it all the time! I feel that those of us blessed with a good family have so many reasons to naturally feel motivated. As a young man on the journey of becoming a grown man, I have very big shoes to fill (that is to say, I have had great examples whose expectations will be difficult to meet) thanks to the men in my life, like my dad, grandfathers, and uncles, who have shown me that there are many ways to be a good man, that it’s not purely about being physically and mentally strong (though that is extremely important for both men and women), that compassion and emotional awareness plays a huge part too. Aside from being a man and what that means to me, my family is filled with hard working, successful individuals. Their achievements are an excellent motivator for me, as I feel the pressure (in a good and productive way) to live up to and try to exceed them in my own life. So yeah, I’m extremely proud to carry the name Kingwell!

While I’m on this topic, there is another side of this family conversation too, but it’s a bit more ancestral. Something else that I’ve thought about which I don’t see being talked about a whole lot is the responsibility that I feel I have to make my ancestors proud, or at least make sure that their efforts to survive weren’t in vain. Of course this starts with my parents and grandparents, but if we go one or two generations further on the family tree, we all have family members who have lived through some exceptionally difficult times on a global scale. We all have ancestors who have struggled and fought through tough times to raise a family which ultimately lead to us being here today. There are so many stories of bravery, strength, and pure hard work in our family histories that we will never know about, but we know that it happened, because life is not easy, and it was especially difficult in the past for a lot of people. I think about this concept rather often, and I truly do feel so incredibly thankful to all these people that I never got to meet. For example, my Austrian great grandfather who, in 1929, boarded a ship from France and made it to Canada 8 days later, where he eventually met my great grandmother and worked a tough manual labor job his whole life to provide for his family and allow my grandmother to become the amazing woman she was. And the people that came generations before him who fought through famine, disease, and wars to have families that eventually lead all the way down to me. I feel I owe it to them to work as hard as I can every day, to achieve as much as I can in my time on this earth. The way I see it, I’ve had a much easier life than they have, so I have no excuses!

I think it’s clear to see, my family and ancestors are my biggest motivation in life in general. But of course, there are many others as well! With regards to acting, I am naturally motivated by a lot of personal things and ideas that come from myself. The passion that I have for the art, as well as how much I enjoy simply being on a set, for example. For me, the most incredible thing about acting is that I have the opportunity to make people feel something through my work, and that thought really does get me out of bed for every 4:00 or 5:00 AM wakeup. I feel privileged to have this opportunity and it is one of the driving forces behind everything that I do in this business. Furthermore, I am definitely a perfectionist, and I want to be the very best at what I do. I am the kind of person that, once I am passionate about something, I do my very best to achieve the highest level possible. It is absolutely one of my dreams to win an oscar or an emmy one day, and though that thought isn’t at the forefront of my mind all the time, it has been my dream ever since I was a little kid and I know that it keeps me motivated subconsciously. This is also one of the driving factors that motivates me to continue learning languages. I do want to be a very high achiever because I love languages so much, and that’s why I’m aiming to become conversational in three new languages this year, that’s why I am already planning the languages I’ll start learning next year as well. With languages, there are some more specific motivations there too. I have many friends from foreign countries who I want to keep in my life forever, so learning their languages is very important to me. I also love traveling and connecting with new people that I otherwise never could have formed a relationship with. 

My acting career and my journey with foreign languages both fulfill me, but in very different ways. I love them both, and am passionate about both even aside from all the motivations from other people. But my career is where I strive for greatness. It is the part of me that holds my biggest and wildest dreams, it is one of the ways in which I hope to be remembered long after my time on this earth. Foreign languages on the other hand are for my “soul”. They represent the side of me that hopes to spend much of my adult life surfing the waves off the coast of Portugal, sunbathing on the beaches of South America and Spain, taking a retreat in a rural village in Switzerland, eating authentic carbonara in Rome. The side of me that wants to be surrounded by my friends and loved ones, that wants to enjoy the world and all that it has to offer as much as possible. My career is motivated by the high achiever in me, and my languages are motivated by the adventurer in me. Neither is more important than the other because I believe that I’ll need to pay equal attention to both in order to be the happiest version of myself. 

Finally, I’d like to close by commenting on motivation as a whole. I do feel that there is something to be said about having the strength to do what you should do, or what you have to do, even when you lack motivation, even when you don’t feel like it. Feeling motivated is amazing, it’s like a superpower because you don’t really have to be mentally strong or tough to pursue what you’re currently feeling motivated about. But the fact is that in life we encounter many situations in which the right thing is not exactly something that we feel like doing. And one of the pillars of mental strength is, in my opinion, the ability to do that thing anyways. This is one of the reasons I take cold showers every morning. In no way whatsoever do I wake up at 5:45 AM and feel excited to douse myself in freezing cold water. But I have stayed committed to doing it regardless to teach myself the lesson that sometimes the best thing to do is not the one I’ll feel excited or motivated about (plus the countless health benefits). I do think that many of us, including myself, have been and still are weakened by the expectation of motivation. Despite my best efforts, this still does happen to me today. It’s the whole reason why I chose this topic for the episode, to remind myself and to get my productivity back up to where it needs to be. The sad fact of the matter is that, especially considering the way that our phones and social media have absolutely messed with our dopamine levels and thus affected our likelihood of putting consistent, hard work into something, you will probably not go very far in life if you are unable to work hard at something unless you’re feeling very excited or motivated about it. We all know this, too, but it’s still hard to beat. I know it and still fall victim to it sometimes. But the best thing to do is to persevere, to try and rewire our minds to be ok with challenges, to be as excited about hard work that will lead to long term results as we are about short term comforts.

So there you have it! That does it for this episode of English With Dylan, and I really hope that you enjoyed it. I loved writing this episode, it was definitely a much needed reminder for me and I know that it has helped me get things back on track. If you enjoyed, please remember to leave a rating and also to get the conversation started on my instagram, @englishwithdylanpod! I hope you have a great week, and until next time!