(Y.O.L.O) You only live once...
The acronym not only just makes you appreciate the odds (1 in a few hundred billion) of getting a chance to live; but also indicates that it is the only (possibly) chance you've got.
The problem: Most of the people take is as an excuse to procrastinate and focus on living a selfish life fulfilling their own desires instead of working for development of the ecosystem (the life support).
What can be done?
Over the time, I've experimented with and found out that motivation can only come from self. You can guide someone but the ultimate decision is theirs. Now, their decision depends on few controllable factors and something called productive anxiety is a result of balancing them.
Few pointers to be experimented:
Step 1: Develop a curious mind: A curious mind by default has a tinge of productive anxiety that makes them yearn for knowledge and discovery. Step 2 can help do this.
Step 2: Introduce them to a problem domain; judge their interest; debates and group discussion on different social, scientific, and historical topics can fire the spark in many.
Step 3: Ask them to prototype a solution; It can be an inspiring paper, a proof of concept; or anything similar.
Step 4: Keep the fire lit: Curious minds tend to wander all the time and keep finding newer and interesting problems to solve. It raises another problem; they fail to keep working on same problem over long time. They get bored easily in simple terms. To address this issue, techniques discussed in step 2 should be repeated over the course but scope limited to problem in hand to keep the fire going in the right direction.
I understand it is a challenging task in itself but I walk in both the shoes at the same time and I know very well how much more challenging it gets when you've to follow these steps with yourself all the time. Having a mentor to focus on these aspects really help.