Lights, Camera, Motivation!
When I think of motivation the first thing that pops into mind is the 3-hour Consumer Behavior exam I took back at university. I was one of those students staring off into the distance, face all screwed up. Somehow I thought that by squinting really hard Herzberg’s two-factor theory would just appear in front of my face. Unlike the other units I took (which seem to have dribbled from my brain completely), Consumer Behavior has stuck, as the heart of its theory remains prevalent in my life today; I’m motivated by my needs and goals and they come about from the environment that I’m exposed to.
Two Factor Theory (also known as Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory) was developed by Frederick Herzberg, a psychologist who stated that there are particular factors in the workplace that cause job satisfaction and dissatisfaction. So, for example, I have to watch several films a week for my job and this gives me great satisfaction, so it’s ultimately what motivates me. I have always loved watching films. Films take me to places I’ve never been before. They give me ideas and fuel my dreams. Films allow me to see the everyday physical actions of other people in faraway places; they create a visual narrative of the world I live in beyond my everyday life. I’m a habitual daydreamer – so feeding my brain with cinematic imagery shapes my dreams about who I am today and how I want to be in future. During the Melbourne International Film Festival (which just finished) I spent an ungodly number of hours inside cinemas but loved every minute of it. The experience left my mind swirling with ideas and re-ignited a feverish passion to travel. It got me motivated!
Growing up here in Melbourne, my Dad would often tell me about his involvement in the Mods and the Rockers riots of 1964. This resulted in me watching the movie Quadrophenia a countless number of times and vowing to see Brighton on my first trip to England. By the time I was 21, scenes from films by Fellinni, Visconti and Rossellini had been dancing around my head for years - until it became a real goal to live in Sicily. So I put my mind to it, got a second job and started to save madly. For months I worked all day marketing products from an office, only to whip off the suit in the evenings and pour beers behind a bar. And then one day I was finally able to leave Australia and move to the little village of Scordia, where I realized my dream and successfully carved out my own Sicilian experience, consisting mainly of cheese, wine and men. Much of my life has been like this, with film heavily influencing and then motivating me to go out into the world and experience different cultures. Works by the great David Lean and cult classics by Mike Leigh, Danny Boyle and Neil Jordan piqued my curiosity and drove me to try living in London and then Dublin, so that I could experience it all first hand (minus the heroin, of course).
Australia doesn’t have summer camps like in the States, so films like The Parent Trap (the original, not LiLo’s), Little Darlings and even Meatballs convinced me that camps would be a great place to work , so one Summer I decided to become a Camp counsellor. I should note here that the three months I spent in a backwards girl scout camp in Michigan was nothing like Meatballs, Meatballs Part II, Meatballs III: Summer Job or even Meatballs 4, for that matter. But I was keen to give it a try and boy was it an eye-opening experience, especially for someone who can’t play sports. Yet another testimony to the power of film though - it can motivate you to do the most outlandish things. I mean, I know for a fact that I wasn’t the only one to jump off a high point after watching the 1986 film The Boy Who Could Fly?
Australia is so isolated that film serves as a bridge or window into the rest of the world - that is, until you travel. So film really is the key driver that sends so many of us Aussies backpacking around the world. In this way, the relationship between film and motivation to travel is also circular, because it’s the morphing of cultures and people’s stories as they travel through life, which motivates film makers to capture such events. Whenever we visit or live in a foreign place we bring our culture, we create new culture by affecting the places we visit and we take culture away with us as stories of our adventures. And it’s these stories that make for the best screenplays – and the films I love to watch the most.
So far I’ve found that this powerful art form can motivate me to turn my dreams into attainable goals. Watching movies has inspired me to visit 56 cities and because the pipeline of inspiring movies is seemingly eternal, my globe-trotting will go on for as long as possible. Just last week, after watching Woody Allen’s new film Vicky Christina Barcelona, the lights came on, the credits rolled and I found myself once again squinting into the distance, this time thinking I must move to Spain. I must move to Spain!
So of course, I highly recommend going out to get your hands on an eclectic mix of the best films from around the world and just indulging your imagination. Let film give you a motive to pick up and go see the world!
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Yo Leash great piece love it!!