Maria’s mission is to increase both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation by providing a news platform dedicated to good news and teaching philosophy, Sparks of Inspiration, a podcast series called Psych Hacks, and a platform to gain insight on philosophy and pursuing passions called School of Athens. She cater to anybody and everybody who wishes to be motivated, wants to learn about philosophy, who appreciates the small things in life, or just wants to promote a community of inspiration. https://themotivationproject.net
Rachel: So today at we have a special guest Maria who is starting a project called the motivational project where she informed readers in her audience about motivational tips and strategies and writes blogs on her website and we’re going to be interviewing each other and trying to figure out each other’s passion project and getting are you getting a feel for each other’s work and trying to get more people to I’ll be happier and to be motivated to do so many things that they wanted your life my first question for you Maria is why did you start this motivational project
Maria: Hi everyone of us to introduce me I am Maria and I’m excited to be here so basically I started the motivation projects during quarantine where everybody was in this existential slumps and not really motivated to do much, and I figured that I wanted to help people and I wanted to decrease the lack of information that I’m seeing in my local community and even broader than that. So the motivation project originated, my partner, Ben, and I, currently have the projects. I manage the website and I make more of the executive decisions, but he writes the blog posts and I record the podcast episodes and yeah I’ll get into that later. So what about you Rachel?
Rachel: Yeah, so just for the viewer here watching a movie is also going to ask me a couple of questions about my passion project so she can post this video on her project, so she is going to ask me some questions too. So thanks for asking Maria and the reason why I started this project was because I wanted to shed a light on middle school children since most of them are heading off to high school many do not have the right strategies to kind of ace the class, so I wanted to compare them through my project some of the strategies and helpful tips that they can implement so they can have a great academic life in high school. So these strategies I talked about in my passion project I want them to have a feel for it and middle school that when it comes High School the more prepared and they don’t just everything just doesn’t like just come at them they have effective strategies to kind of you know to fly through high school and practice them in middle school, so that’s why I started this project.
Maria: Yea, I definitely would be Middle School. I think everyone agrees it is a particularly difficult time. So can I ask you another question, Rachel? So, what do you hope to accomplish with livestudyhacks? I mean, you sort of touched on this, but can you elaborate a bit more.
Rachel: As I said before I wanted I want to make it a place that has like an impact on those middle school children and I just want them to feel motivated and their academic pursuits, and I mean going into school, being in middle school, not the fun thing, you know studying and everything, it’s not the thing that would most people want to do, but if if you apply it and you use these strategies, when you start seeing results on your test and quizzes then obviously like it becomes more fun and I want to tell people that this is what this is the secret this is what you have to do in order to be successful in Middle School.
Maria: I definitely agree.
Rachel: And I have the same question for you Maria. What do you hope to accomplish with your motivational project?
Maria: Yeah so my partner and I hope to uplift people to make changes and their own lives and examine the world more conceptually and see how they can help improve the world around them after improving themselves. So, it is like a community effort.
Rachel: I also have a follow-up question, what is the most fun part of the process for you in making your project.
Maria: So I had the podcast section of our project, and I have to say it’s really fun to give people practical advice on small things they can do that go a long way like we had one on food mindfulness recently for the month of June, and man, the more I was researching the more I realized how much your diet can affect your energy levels and how by just fixing that small thing you can automatically feel better. So yeah, I love giving people practical advice. What about you Rachel?
Rachel: I totally agree. I agree with you giving people advice and learning from it and the same process and trying to implement it in your life, is also a very fun part of the process. Guys, please make sure to check out Maria’s podcast and everything because we’re a community and I’m also doing something related to motivation, I want to motivate those who are my audience please check out Maria stuff there and she had some interesting stuff in there, and to answer your question the fun part of this is just seeing the number people who watch my videos and talking about something I’m passionate about the same time and again seeing the views of the people who are watching my videos. For example, one of my videos got a thousand views and you know like seeing that like all the work that I’ve done and people are actually getting affected by it you know is a like I get really happy to see that people are actually engaged in the enlightened by my work so that’s the fun part of the process.
Maria: That’s exciting. So how do you reach out to your audience?
Rachel: Like most for most of the past, I have a website, and it is called livestudyhacks.com, and also I also have a YouTube channel so I post videos every Wednesday and Saturday. Sometimes I don’t upload frequently, but those are the days, and that’s how I reach out to my audience and we’re also thinking of reaching out to my audience also by doing a Bootcamp, which I’ll be explaining later in the video. What about you Maria, how do you reach out to your audience?
Maria: Yeah so I also have a website. It’s themotivationproject.net that is the URL, social media-wise we mainly reach out through Instagram, but we’re also sometimes active on Facebook and Reddit, so tech community.
Rachel: Yes, then I have another question for you Maria what career do you think you’ll pursue like you know when does motivation and just project probably have a picture in my mind of what you going to do in the future
Maria: Yeah so quick question whatever I do I think it’s going to be in the field of psychology or more specifically I think I’ll either be a clinical psychologist working with patients or a neuroscientist who researches the brain and examines consciousness and about other stuff we don’t know much of. What about you?
Rachel: Yeah something similar. I want to be a neurosurgeon and hopefully start a business one day as well because I really like learning about businesses, so yeah neurosurgeon it seems really cool and research is also something that I would like to do in the future. Maria, can you give a brief overview on some of the tips that your passion project covers to our listeners about what are some of the things that you talked about and how is that reaching out to people and affecting people.
Maria: Yes, so in the podcast section we talk about things like how to stop procrastinating, and how to eat better, the food mindfulness episode that I was talking about, how to reduce stress, and many of these are relatively easy tips and information that you can apply in your life. As for the blog section, which is called “Spark of Information,” we mainly talk about more philosophical ideas but we always make them practical, so for example of my partner, Ben, recently for last week’s spark, he wrote about Buddhism and how even if you’re not Buddhist, you can take some of the lessons we learn from that faith and apply them to your own world so I can reach a better sense of calmness and inner peace. So what about you Rachel?
Rachel: So for livestudyhacks, some of the things that we cover are, brain food like you talked about Maria, we also talked about foods and how the energy level affects you. We also cover in livestudyhacks about Stress Management because you know as middle schoolers get stressed last minute we procrastinate, and how to limit that energy, we also talked about self-control and the marshmallow test, and talked about how to implement more self-control and have a better future in the long run and see more success in life, so how you can exhibit self-control. I mean as a middle school and as a teenager and as one we get very addicted to a lot of things. I can speak for myself, I would rather you know watch a YouTube video than do my homework, so saying no to that and it doing your homework that’s something that we talked about lifestudyhacks and talk about our, you know, our project and everything and all have we always have an end goal, right, so what is your Dream College?
Maria: My dream College okay so Harvard or Stanford and I know those are like the top two schools somewhere up in the rankings, but I myself am pretty competitive, so I want to make myself proud and I’m sure you have a similar mission as well.
Rachel: Yes, we like competitive schools! Just to let you guys know Maria has a research position at UC Berkeley where she works with a professor and everything, so like that you know that she kind of motivates herself and everything, so I feel like Harvard and Stanford are not out of the picture, she can easily get in. My dream schools are Princeton, Yale, and Harvard so yeah going big. Princeton is 10 minutes away so hopefully, that’s a school that I really would like to get into.
Maria: I’m sure you will be okay.
Rachel: Thank you, Maria.
Maria: Do you have any hobbies outside of passion projects that you enjoy?
Rachel: I play Badminton and I also play the violin so that’s some of the things, the violin I really like it it’s super cool and yeah, what about you Maria, do you have any hobbies?
Maria: Yeah I play guitar, read books, go on hikes, and I write music with my guitar sometimes.
Rachel: Yeah, music is amazing!
Maria: I agree, definitely.
Rachel: Music speaks so much, whenever I feel stressed out music just helps me relax.
Maria: Yeah we had a podcast episode on that. So you can check it out if you’d like.
Rachel: Yeah, everyone go check out Maria’s stuff, she has some amazing things there.
Maria: I would appreciate it.
Rachel: Ha! My very last question, we can both answer this one, where do you see your project 2 years from now.
Maria: 2 years from now, so my project is fairly new, but I do have a general sense of what I wanted to do, and again that’s to expand my reach to like as many people as possible, kind of aiming for somewhere in the thousands and build a community of enlightened individuals. People who aren’t afraid to do hard things knowing that there’s a promising future ahead of them and people who want to make the world a better place. What about you Rachel?
Rachel: I think that’s also somewhat that goes with what I want to do 2 years, and you know I really want to build a community with those around me and feel like I explained before I am having a Bootcamp coming up in August and hopefully the first or second week of August and I really want to start a community with these middle school kids through the Bootcamp, and I want them to be more engaged, more lighted and you know it’s the whole purpose for my passion project, to limit the “suffering” for the kids and for those around us for our community and I want to get more people engaged in a want it to be like a Tony Robbins height and motivational Workshop. I just want people to get involved and hyped up about the Middle School Journey so yes I want to have like 2 years from now I want to have a community that people are motivated to tackle through tests, tackle through quizzes and not all stressed about it, which is a really big thing, but to feel more relaxed and that’s what I want to do, reach out to people and give feedback
Maria: Yeah, that is very essential, and very needed.
Rachel: So I just want to thank you, Maria, for coming onto the livestudyhacks channel and everyone please check out both of our projects and look at what we have and we have some amazing advice for you guys and if you really want to see change please check Maria’s project.
Maria: Once again thanks for having me, Rachel, I’m looking forward to what you do in the near future, not even the next couple of years, but yeah, exciting to get to know you a little better right.
Rachel Yeah, same to you, okay, bye guys, I’ll see you in our next video, and go check out both of our projects. Bye!