Unorthodox

Unorthodox

Monday 30 June 2014

Motivation.

Hey Guys,

Today I started to write a post about motivation and what it took to succeed at a goal.



I started to look at work habits and things that successful people do. I looked for trends and commonalities because as we all know, success leaves clues.

When I started to look at all of these factors I realised that no matter what the field, whether it was sport, business, education or art, the one absolute common factor was motivation.

Each single person was highly motivated.

However they were not motivated by winning, being the best or being rich or successful. They were simply motivated to keep going for the love of what they did.

This started me thinking about my own motivation and where I would like it to come from. I realised that the most successful people in any endeavour had an internal motivation that came from love, not external motivation such as possessions (medals, trophies) or glory.

They did it for their love of their craft.

The problem comes when using an external motivation is that, that motivation can go away.

What happens if you never win another game?

What happens if everyone in the world thinks you suck?

What we get then is negative feelings towards what you are doing as how you feel about it comes from your external desire and motivation to be successful. If you are never successful, then you will eventually run out of motivation (as very few win forever).

However if you are internally motivated from love and passion, any external factors will never matter as they cannot effect your dominant motivation to keep going and working on your art.

Now I am not saying that the desire to win and be the best is a bad thing. I look up to a lot of people who are incredibly competitive and fuel a raging fire from that motivation. Having a strong desire to do well is a great tool in becoming the best person you can be.

But it still needs to be about becoming the best version of YOU. Winning alone cannot be your sole motivation for any passion, but it most be passion for the craft that leads to your desire of winning. That way when you lose, the love of the craft will get you back on that horse again.

I know at this point I'm rambling and I probably lost most of you (especially competitors) around the time I hinted at winning isn't everything. But take a look at the people around you and you will see two different type of people who love winning and competing,

  1. People who just want to win. These are the sandbaggers in the gym. It doesn't matter what they are doing as long as they win (the sport/art/task is irrelevant, it's the winning that matters).
  2. The second are people who win because they are devoted to the craft. If you told them that they could never compete or recognised again, they would still practice their craft.
Now saying all of this doesn't mean that the world is black and white. The world is full of greys. Most people fall somewhere in the middle (we are after all, only human), and the very elite of any sport can be a mixture of the two (e.g. Marcelo Garcia does it for the love of BJJ, Dan Gable did it for winning), so don't quote me on anything here as gospel.

All I am trying to say is that when it comes to my own life, I want to be internally motivated by love with what I do. Being successful is never the main goal but being happy is.

Some however, would call that successful...

Stay healthy,

Mike

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