Self-Motivation is the ability to do a task on one's own initiative, to do it for oneself, and not just to please somebody.  It's only with self-motivation that a child can fully realize all the hidden potentials.  For with self-motivation, a child will learn things and do things on his/her own volition and not because Mom and Dad or Grandma and Grandpa said so.

The child can be taught self-motivation by exposing him/her to different small household chores, like helping Mom sort the laundry, pick-up toys scattered on the floor.  The parent's attitude towards doing the chore will affect how the child conceives the work, whether as something fun, helpful and makes him feel like grown-up or something tedious.   Engaging the child with some types of  artworks like coloring, drawing or painting will bring out creativity as well as induce self-motivation to accomplish.  Playing musical instruments is very helpful especially for the musically inclined child for this will help develop consistency in practice to arrive at the desired results.  The most important thing is to establish a reachable goal that will allow the child not only to reach it but even excel.  

The recommended ingredients to help develop self-motivation are:

•  reachable goals with some allowance for mistakes and detours.

•  lots of encouragement, positive and constructive comments and no  nagging.

• quiet time of an hour or so, and during this period, the child should be trained to sit down and to work on something by himself/herself quietly and with no direct supervision.

• flexibility, let the child play out his/her imagination; don't stifle creativity by establishing rigid rules, better results can be accomplished by making it fun and enjoyable; don't underestimate the child's abilities.

Always emphasize the positive, and praise the child for the initiative to help regardless of the results.  Try to provide the child with easy, simple tasks that should be done regularly at a specified time, then praise the child whenever the tasks are done without being reminded.  Add new tasks that the child can perform easily and make him/her feel good about doing them punctually.  This daily routine will make your toddler a responsible self-motivated child if done consistently.  The key to effective child training is consistency.