How To Motivate Yourself (and why I lost an Ipod)

Posted on 18. Nov, 2008 by Per Bristow in Performance

How do we motivate ourselves? Well, let me tell you a story about how I lost an Ipod last weekend. What that has to do with motivation might seem puzzling, but let me explain. 

Last weekend, my 10-year-old son had another swim meet. As he was hanging around waiting for his first event – the 50 yards freestyle – he noticed I had my Ipod with me and asked to borrow it…

I handed it to him and he quickly searched for his favorite song. But before he became totally engrossed in it, I asked him what time he was aiming for in the 50 yard.

I fell silent.  Because the time he mentioned was 6.5 seconds under his personal best.

“Okay”, I mumbled, fumbling for words – not sure how to address this child’s disillusioned belief system. It’s true that he hadn’t swam the distance all that recently, but 6,5 seconds? Why would he believe he could do that? What if he “only” broke his personal best with, say, two seconds?  Would he consider that failure? Was he setting himself up for disappointment by not understanding that one doesn’t break a personal best by that much?

After all, he’s only 10 years old so he may not understand the concept of time, and that breaking your personal best with tenths or hundreds of seconds can be quite significant in sports – and well worth celebrating by the way.

I started muttering something about how even a far slower time would be okay, but lost in the music, he took no notice. Suddenly I blurted out: “Okay, if you do that I’ll buy you an Ipod”.  Apparently my voice was suddenly heard fine through the guitar solo because he turned and faced me with a grin: “Really?”

It suddenly dawned on me that I had possibly made things even worse. Now he might be even more disappointed. Therefore, I quickly added that I’d buy him that Ipod whenever he beats that time, however long it takes – even if it takes a year…

So the race is on. I watch how his form seems to have improved, his nice turn and finish…

Then I look up at the board… and my jaw drops…

…He has crushed his own record by 8.5 seconds…

Now here are two questions:  How is this possible and was the Ipod an issue? 

Today I am going to stick with the issue of motivation as it is a dear subject of mine.  Was the Ipod a motivating factor?

There is one thing we should realize and that is that internal motivation is far more powerful than external motivation. 

If he were to swim fast for the reason of pleasing his parents, he would be motivated for external reasons.  External motivation is weak and never lasts. 

But is getting an Ipod external motivation? Yes, maybe. Yet, it depends. Olympic athletes don’t train like crazy to get some golden color thing that hangs around their neck and which they seldom wear around their neck again. They want to win the medal because of what it represents internally. They train because of the internal driving factors. The trick is to internalize the external rewards and use the external rewards – medals, times – etc. as measuring sticks of progress.

Did my son swim faster because he was getting an Ipod?  Maybe.  Was the inner satisfaction of seeing his dad’s reaction after the race a factor?  Maybe. (Obviously if I had seriously disbelieved his potential, it could easily have destroyed a 10-year-old’s motivation.) Was the inner satisfaction of doing something he had set out to do stronger than the satisfaction of getting the external reward. Yes, of course – although the external reward may have triggered an extra fire within. Was he already fired up to crush his record?  Yes, clearly.

There is a lot to say about motivation, and how we can motivate ourselves. But rather than go into depth on this subject at this time, I’ll end with a couple of open ended questions for you:  Why is it that we sometimes have a hard time motivating ourselves to do what we know we should do?  Why is it that so many never take the step to take their lives to greater levels of satisfaction?  Is it because of motivation? Why is it that so many look back into the past and wished they would have been more motivated? What is the relationship between motivation and taking action? 

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Most importantly, I’d like to know: How do you motivate yourself to bring out the best in you?