I remember my first major motivational speech at a business meeting. I was young, still in college, and worked for a private enterprise in the training space. This is where I cut my teeth on technical topics in computer networking. I also learned to play Quake, but that is a story for another day. The company was struggling with sluggish sales growth. The owner decided to hire a consultant from a similar but larger firm. So we all gathered together in one of the classrooms where we were introduced to Dogbert. Now, I had not been exposed to Scott Adams’ Dilbert comic strip yet, but looking back, this consultant was none other than the evil Dogbert in disguise. He clearly thought what was needed was a good shot of adrenaline through a motivational speech that only he could deliver. He stood up on a chair and started yelling at the top of his lungs, “What is our mission?” We tried to come up with good ideas. Teach people? No. Make money? No. Support our families? No. Dogbert then pronounced our new mission, “We are going to take over the world!”
Everyone left that room feeling energized and excited about this new motivational consultant that was going to turn us around. Two days later, Dogbert settled into a closed office, listening in on sales calls and snickering to himself while the rest of us really dialed in our Quake-playing skills. Team Fortress, anyone? The great motivation lasted two days. Dogbert lasted about 3 weeks, and the company went right back to where it was before all the hoopla. I think we have all seen this play out in one way or another many times. When we hear someone on stage make promises or commitments or cheer loudly for ambitious goals, we all go back to our phones and check whatever feed we are monitoring. “I will believe it when I see it” is the choral refrain recited by the masses.
Motivation is comparable to a drug. You can take it and feel great for a few fleeting moments, and then you are right back where you were craving more. You then never “feel like doing anything” because you just do not have that motivated feeling anymore. Here lies the first major concept of this article: motivation is a myth. Feeling motivated is not how you will achieve your goals. If you need motivation every day that you are trying to get to your goals, then you will be found wanting, discouraged, and back to doing nothing. This concept is universal. You will never “motivate” a team to do anything, just as you will never “get motivated” to finally get off the couch. Motivation does not provide the will to persist in pursuing your goals and aspirations. Ultimately, you need a much less tasty ingredient to fuel your daily pursuit.
You need discipline. I know. I hate that word, too. I associate the word discipline with a personal trainer, pushups, and my 3rd grade math teacher. However, there is no escaping this. This is the bitter pill that we all have to swallow. The only way you can ever achieve an objective is by sheer, unrefined, daily discipline. Unfortunately, discipline is not acquired easily. I hear people say frequently, “I am just not disciplined.” That is correct. Nobody is. Discipline is something difficult to gain and easy to lose. You acquire discipline through repetition. This is the way, and there is no other substitute. You become disciplined at something by repeating over and over again. You persist through failure, you ride the wave of success, but you are constantly repeating. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. That is the least exciting mantra that you can have, but probably one of the most powerful.
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Stay off the roller coaster. Motivation comes and goes and is unreliable. If you expect to motivate your team to reach the targets that you set, well, you will find out how ineffective that is. In a company I worked for, the CEO got the idea of broadcasting a “big win” email out with some accolades and encouragement to bring in more deals like this. Everyone was excited and was in awe of the tremendous win that was being heralded. If that were the only email on this subject, then this would have been quickly forgotten. However, the Big Win email became a daily ritual. Every day, the big win announcement would come, and people would wait in anticipation for the reveal. Soon, everyone was clamoring to be on one of these emails. This was every day. Repetition. This served as a far greater tool for inspiring the team than any speech the CEO gave. I don’t remember any one of his many speeches, but I do remember the Big Win email.
Personally, I have found motivation all the time. I have gone out the door many times and launched many new campaigns because a moment of inspiration and motivation put some wind in my sails. Every time, I failed. My ship would launch out to sea, only to have the motivational winds die. I would be floating in a dense fog, in the doldrums, once again feeling discouraged and overwhelmed. One day, I realized that the only way out of this was to get my oars out and start rowing. No matter how difficult, no matter how miserable I felt, I just rowed. After many days of repetition, I built discipline that came with a volume of strength. The spirit of resolve filled my heart, and I no longer required some trivial emotion like “feeling motivated.”
Some call this grit. That may be a good name for it, but the word resilience is also a consideration. Regardless, the fortitude to overcome your personal resistance to change by repeating the new behavior frequently and often is the key ingredient to any transformative effort. For business or personal, the same rule applies. A continuous pursuit like this will, over time, produce a habit. Once you have a habit engrained, the energy required to force yourself to act starts to reduce. You no longer need as much strength of will because the newly learned habit is “just something I do.” Do you ever hear yourself or someone say that? This is just the way that I am, they say. Yes, that is true, and if you want to change, you are going to have to transform your behavior and build new habits through sheer force of will until you get past the hard part. There is no way to sugarcoat that reality.
Most of my writing on The 365 Commitment is focused on helping myself (and perhaps others) to stay firm in the resolve to repeat good behaviors until they become habits. Only then does true personal transformation succeed.
