I hope by writing this to clear up some confusion between drive and motivation and how we can start to be better at managing the drive within us.

Let’s start with motivation, something that can spark us into action. It can come from reading an inspiring post or an amazing video, it could be someone sending us a message or just a beautiful morning sunrise. This is a great fuel to push us towards action. (A very simple explanation)

Now we need a little detail to explain Drive. Drive comes from within us, it is a deeper more powerful fuel, it’s a fuel that can be ignited by motivation but will also work on its own.

A simple example of Drive can be to do everything in our power to prove to ourselves and others that a previous a past wrong put on us does not define us and we will do all we can to prove to ourselves and others that we are not that past mistake. It can be a misfortune in life which you swear will not happen again and so becomes a deep fuel.

What I want to distinguish here is that some contemporary motivation is having an adverse effect and stopping people in their tracks, seeing such inspiring images all over social media is creating more of the “I could never do that”, these images don’t come with an instruction manual of how they got to that place. This in my mind is a negative motivation (maybe a call on people to give more insight to how they have gotten to be in that place).

 

The next point is also an important one, we cannot take on other’s drive, I will jump back in time to give an example to help explain this –

I took part in a university study about 12 years ago looking at the impact of music on maximal performance in cardio activity. For me it was a neutral test on treadmill (no music) then repeated with my own play list. The ramp test was approx. 15-20 minutes and I totally dived in with Rage Against the Machine for 3 tracks and then Cold Play’s “Fix You” for the last. Those conducting the test were a little lost with my choice, but for me it made total sense. I had to dig deeper for the final part of the test and lift myself. (Think of the film You Me and Dupree-you will know when the loser character starts to dig himself out of his mess and build his life Cold Plays song kicks in, a whole montage of inspiring clips as he lifts his life up). It’s clear that works for me, its personal and will not work for everyone, I had a connection to this and so it gave me the fuel I needed.

What I am saying is, you need to look deep into you to find your drive, don’t turn to Instagram, Facebook, Joe down the road. It’s yours and you must own it to give you the power to push forward. It may not be nice to look deep into you but if you have the courage to do it the fuel is better than any other.

The last point to make about Drive and hopefully to help you even more is that consistency will help lock your Drive in. We can have the drive but occasionally it can dip, if we have built a positive routine off our Drive, when we have these dips we can just keep going because of the patten we have created.

Please do not think that either Drive or Motivation make the training or work easier, they don’t, they get you out the door (which is the hardest part) but you still have to put the effort in to burn the fuel you have created. So next time you are scrolling Instagram looking for that kick, go look in the mirror and have a hard conversation with yourself and get out that door.

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