Do your goals make you come alive?

The Dip

I’ve been told I’m ‘a dreamer’ on multiple occasions by different influential people in my life. This has not always been framed in a positive light, some people say that my expectations are unrealistic and there may be some truth to this. However, what that dreaming gave me was an internal desire to take action towards these dreams. I didn’t realise how important this was until I stopped dreaming and the internal fire was temporarily extinguished. When that happened this year, it forced me to embark on a journey of self-discovery (supported by some fantastic people).

The Reflection

Have you ever stopped to wonder why Roger Federer & Serena Williams still play tennis, Lewis Hamilton still risks his life in an F1 car or Richard Branson invests millions in space travel at the age of 71? All of these people have made more money than they can spend, achieved what any person would define as success and could easily pack it all in and lead a relaxing life. I appreciate that these are extreme examples, the point is that they’ve achieved things that started as dreams, so the question that pops into my head is ‘what continues to drive these people?’ and ‘How can everyone unlock this feeling when working towards a dream?’.

We’ve all heard the term ‘Motivation’, it’s not a new concept and we all, pretty much, know it’s something positive that can help us achieve a goal. I’ve known this for many years, I’ve even gone as far as to analyse what motivates me. Yet, even with this knowledge, I still managed to fall into a fully unmotivated work state for 3 months. It’s only when I decided to look deeper into Motivation that I started to understand firstly, why this was and secondly, how to reactivate and sustain it over time.?

The Learning

Motivation is defined as the ‘Driving Force’ behind any human action or behaviour. This is eye-opening, because what it means is that every one of my actions is driven by a motivation. Whether it’s when I know that I need to be prospecting and I’m making myself busy with emails, or if I decide to have 10 tequila shots and I know that I’ve got something to do the next day. None of these actions are wrong and it’s really important to understand this. However, they all have consequences and when we assess this against the dreams that we have we need to ask ourselves ‘Why did I do something that negatively impacts the likelihood of my dream?’ and ‘How important is this dream to me?’.

It turns out Motivation towards any given task can come to us in two different ways; Extrinsically and Intrinsically. Extrinsic motivation comes from outside of the self and takes the form of Rewards, Recognition, Deadlines and Social Status to name a few. Intrinsic motivation comes from inside the self and a few examples of this is Passion, Enjoyment, Health, and Achievement. Once again this is commonly understood, but I wonder how many people apply this knowledge to their life and use it to help stay motivated towards their dreams. I mentioned earlier in the article that I now have a better understanding of how to sustain motivation. My ‘Ah Ha’ moment came when I started identifying and tapping into my intrinsic motivation.

The Application

Think about how this applies to the common goal of losing weight after we’ve spent a week drunk and eating everything in sight over Christmas and New Year. Typically everyone formulates a diet plan and joins a gym in January and by February the gyms are empty and everyone is back to eating takeaway food. Why does this happen? ?To explore this, let’s take a look at four different examples of the same new year resolution.

Resolution 1 – I want to eat better and do more exercise

Resolution 2 – I want to lose 5kg by the end of March

Resolution 3 – I want to lose 5kg by the end of March because I will be more attractive.

Resolution 4 – I want to lose 5kg by the end of March because I will reduce my chance of heart disease.

Which person do you think is most likely to stick to the new weight loss regime? We can easily discount Resolution 1. Although it sets out the right intentions it lacks any measurable outcomes. Resolution 2 would be considered a strong goal by many people because it follows the S.M.A.R.T methodology however one thing it does lack is personal meaning. That leaves Resolution 3 and 4, and the more I think about this the more I believe that one factor in persistence towards a goal is to create goals that focus on an Intrinsic Motivator. Goals centered around an extrinsic motivator, such as the example of recognition in Resolution 3, are still powerful and likely to lead to action. However, the motivator is dependent on external factors, such as someone telling you that you look nice. What happens when nobody notices that you’ve lost any weight in the first month? We can end up feeling demotivated by the very thing we set out to achieve.

Understanding this made me reflect on all of my previous goals and I realised that they have been set around extrinsic factors such as money, rewards, deadlines and social status. When I review my persistence towards these goals, I would argue that they’ve not made me come alive in a sustainable way and not resulted in consistent behaviors towards these goals. I also asked myself, how many of these goals did I actually achieve in the originally stated timeframe? The answer provided a clear indication about the motivational power of these extrinsic factors on me. I concluded this moment of reflection with a final question; what affect will it have on my ‘Driving Force’ when I create a dream, goal or resolution that focuses on Fun and Enjoyment, rather than on Money and Social Status?

The Next Steps

Roger Federer said in an interview this year ‘It's not like there's one particular reason that I wanted to keep playing tennis other than I enjoyed playing tennis’, Lewis Hamilton told the Times newspaper that it is his enjoyment of Formula One, rather than winning an eighth world title that will be his motivation for staying in the sport beyond this season. Moving forward with this new found understanding, I’ve made the conscious decision that I will create future dreams based on an outcome that is internal to me and not fully reliant on factors outside of my control. There are some extrinsic goals that I will be unable to avoid, such as my sales target, however achieving this goal will now be linked to an Intrinsic outcome rather than solely the more obvious extrinsic rewards that come with Sales. I’ll promise to write about how this pans out, but for now I can say one thing, my 1,000 word University coursework took me 2 months to write and still failed, this article was finished in one weekend…………..