Pure Motivation: Do you have it?

“Too many times, it happens so fast, you change your passion for glory; don’t lose your grip on the dreams of the past, you must fight just to keep them alive”

I’m sure we all recognize these lyrics from the song in the Rocky movie. I want to discuss in the month’s Blog how we often can have our passions run aground and change our perspective from something worthwhile to something else, as reflected in this above passage. No one is immune to this. It has happened to me as well. I want to discuss in this month’s Blog the dangers especially for competitors to lose their own “pure motivation” and see it turn in to compulsive behaviour. The reasons for this happening are many and often a natural consequence of competitive success but the consequences can lead to all kinds of negative experiences and practices that I observe all the time in my role as coach.

“The dream never dies, just the dreamer, the dreamer never dies if it’s strong, the song never dies just the singer” While this dying of dreams happens it’s often for all the wrong reasons from the results of pure motivation becoming compulsive. And while the dream may not die, it gets altered from experience, and then the exact thing that used to bring so much joy now brings stress, alienation, heartache, and a constant obsessive pre-occupation, with results or measuring and judging everything that used to bring such joy.

First let me lay bare a couple of concepts and then let’s explore further what can happen when competitive fires burn inappropriately. It’s often said that motivation and passion or competitive instinct can be a lot like dynamite. Implemented accordingly it can be a tool for explosive results leaving everything else in its wake. But passion not handled or managed correctly can result in you blowing yourself up, and I see the competitive instinct and motivation in our sport turn in to that too many times. It happened to me as well, early on in my own career development.

Do you have a “pure motivation?”

First I’ll explain what it is and then ask you to honestly address this question. So many in our sport suffer self-deception on such a grand scale that they have lost perspective even on what drives them. Having a pure motivation or pure passion, means having just a love of training, and/or competing. Do you remember when training and competing wasn’t about anything else than the enjoyment of the process? People with a pure motivation enjoy not just training but usually experience major performance breakthroughs as well from not being attached to outwardly variables. People with a pure motivation seldom experience stress or anxiety or tension before a competition, just excitement and anticipation. They experience training on a much deeper level than just being workouts. This is what being in the zone is all about in athletics.

However, early success usually means aspiring to meet greater demands and this is where initial passions can be altered with out due attention. All of a sudden a person becomes immersed in the “how to’s” of everything from diet to training to competition.
Learning is great, but it can take on obsessive characteristics that take people further and further away from a pure motivation. All of a sudden a competitor has won a show or two and now motivation also includes “the right program, and the right approach” as well as a mentality begetting a ‘comparing and competing” mentality. I don’t mean on the stage either. I am referring to everything a person now does to prepare for the stage that they “think” is right. All of a sudden obsessive behaviours take over, and all motivation becomes an ego driven pursuit at the expense of everything else. When this happens, then the dreaded judge and measure mentality takes over. External pressure come to bare as well.

All of a sudden the log book takes on bible like importance. People start measuring their moods based on numbers in a log book, or on a weight scale of how much weight they have lost or gained. The thrill and exhilaration of “just doing” is now gone. These people don’t even stop to ask themselves if they “enjoyed” their workouts, or the pre-contest challenge. They expect such answers to be a reflection of numbers in a training log, because they have lost that pure motivation. It has now morphed in to something else.

Suddenly all variables are something to be compared to everyone else. Winning and deserving comes to be associated with “suffering” This is ego run amuck. It is an amateur trait or the sign of a very insecure person.

Instead of a “comparing and competing” mentality, a pure motivation will always remember instead that the path to rewarding experience is based on “aspiring and appreciating;” not forgetting your athletic routes but taking stalk in how far you have come, and appreciating it for no other reason. There is an old saying that “real winners forget they are even in a race; real winners just to love to run”

If you are experiencing stress and anxiety about competing then I suggest to you that you have lost perspective. If the people that you care about the most “just can’t wait till it’s over” then your motivation is not pure and comes from somewhere negative that needs to be addressed. If motivation is pure, and not ego driven, then suffering changes to “striving” motivation becomes inspiration, and discipline and commitment become, challenge. This is more of a drive based on a pure motivation. And a pure motivation will always yield an enjoyment of the process and a celebration of the event. If you are not competing with an “attitude” of celebration the day of your contest, then your motivations are less than pure and need to be addressed.

Negative Emotions and Personality Traits

Competing or becoming competitive may be a way for you to experience joy on a grand scale of the human spirit, or it may just end up being a reflection of a negative ego driving force. If you are motivated as an athlete by anger, a fragile ego, or emotional voids like a lack of respect, lack of self-respect, inner peace, a need for validation or recognition, you may indeed have pure ideals but these driving forces will not give you an optimum “experience” of competing and will more than likely result in foolish practices, even though you talk one way, you are driven another. Read all that again ten times!

I see this all the time. I see competitors who talk the talk of maturity and balance and then everything they do and say reflects the opposite. This is the ultimate in self-deception that will lead to an unhappy experience regardless of results. People whose motivations are less than pure will more often than not experience, “post contest blues” Does that sound familiar to anyone?

All of a sudden true and sincere enjoyment is only a result of something you can “judge and measure” and cannot stand on its own interpretation. People totally lose perspective and either need to control everything or they have little control over nothing.

For instance dieters lose perspective totally, and a good or bad day in life, is only reflective of a good or bad day dieting! In his book, “Eating Well for Optimum Health” Dr. Andrew Weil says that eating right is NOT just about dieting on certain foods, but also eating right is about ‘the enjoyment of the experience of eating!” Most folks in our industry have lost that capacity totally. Figure girls can no longer “enjoy” a cookie. Measuring and judging everything means either guilt associated with that cookie or compulsive behaviour that leads to eating “all the cookies till they are gone” Both of these examples negate the “experience” of eating.

Enjoyment born of a pure motivation has been replaced with compulsion, guided by guilt, reward, denial etc.

As a person has more and more competitive success, he/she becomes concerned more and more with ego driven and compulsive behaviour, that takes them further and further away from a pure motivation. They end up losing that “kid in a candy store” level of excitement to training and diet challenges. Instead it becomes all about “getting that pro card” or what the competition is looking like, what other people are saying or might say. This is why as a person progresses with an impure motivation, the experience becomes something else. Many spouses of competitors report that the competitors no longer have any fun, they have no energy for household chores, or enthusiasm for anything.

I guarantee you that an impure motivation will drain your mental energy, and stifle the joy of training and competing. (it's not your pre-contest diet!)

The new mentality will make an already tough sport more of a “survival mission”. This becomes true not only for the competitors but their loved ones as well. I’ve seen far too many competitors win “the show” but lose everything else in the process. Sure they won the competition but lost their relationship in the process. In essence they have won a tiny life battle, but lost the meaning for the war from that point on. Most unfortunate in my opinion!

Emotional Intelligence

The mind body connection is quite real and exists on levels far deeper than we realize. Also associated with that is emotional intelligence which comes to bare on the competitive mentality. When motivation is pure, our emotional intelligence nudges us toward higher performance, pushing, striving, enduring.

Once impure motivations take over the result is often burnout, health problems, suffering, mood swings, and a serious level of a feeling of over whelming ‘stress” associated to the very process that used to bring so much joy!

As world champion triathletes Brad Kearns said:

Making the right choices takes someone with awesome physical, emotional, and mental wisdom. The underlying goal of the champion athlete is to have a positive attitude, high motivation levels, intense focus and a sense of balance. (Notice focus does not mean obsessive behaviours like measuring and judging every detail of performance criteria) In contrast there are many physical talents who don’t have the emotional wisdom or mental make up to become a champion. The reasons are many: poor decision making, inability to harness their own egos and competitive instincts, lack of pure and deep seated self-confidence, impatience, compulsiveness, lack of self awareness or dis-honest self analysis, and other destructive personality traits. (2006: p6)

The above quote speaks volumes to athletes in the bodybuilding industry. Three points need to be made here. The above reflects 1) that as I always say genetics are as much from the neck up, as they are from the neck down, 2) all the more reason to have a coach that cares enough to keep you grounded and on a healthy path FOR YOU; and, what I see most in our industry is 3) rampant lack of self-awareness and dishonest self-analysis.

The compulsive motivation vs. pure motivation produces an “attachment to results and outcomes” All of a sudden how one places or even how a workout unfolds will determine a feeling of “worthiness” or worthlessness, that is all set up in the mind. Every good athlete competes to win. That should go without saying. But the very best athletes do not attach “happiness to outcome” Imagine if Tiger Woods was miserable and angry after every time he did not win until the next time he did win. That would mean a great deal of time being miserable for arbitrary reasons. Winners do not think that way. Win or lose their happiness is less attached to outcome than to “striving” to improve. That is a pure motivation.

Case in point: I recently had an inquiry from someone to train for a level one contest. Seems this person had been beyond level one but needed to requalify at that level. After reviewing my prices his opinion was he really didn’t need me at that level for that price in order to win. He may have been correct on that but his comment yields an impure motivation which will prevent him from going far. You see his mentality was only about “winning” instead of about being his absolute best. One takes care of the other when motivation is pure.

The truth is often an athlete needs to get out of his/her own way in order to succeed and proceed. Once again this can necessitate employing a wise coach.

It’s a passion for process and challenge which is why most of us choose such a pursuit to begin with, that is the key to a pure motivation and a happy experience each and every time out! The problem is a little success can often lead to external influences like concerns over rivals, what others are saying about you, which you pretend doesn’t matter, but does if you are aware of it! It leads to all the compulsive behaviours I pointed out above sure to shorten rather than enhance the competitive experience.

I implore you all to look inside yourselves and find your “pure motivation” Nurture it, protect it, let it guide you. Enjoy and appreciate the challenges again. Aspire to greater ones, not measured in log books, finish lines, or first place trophies, but that feeling inside that says to you “well done, let’s do it again!”

Begin to aspire to inspire, not others but that little kid that lives inside all of us. Be real to that kid. Forget about what everyone else has to say about your own experience and your own path.

As Henry David Thoreau said, “a man is rich in proportion to the number of things that he can afford to leave alone” You don’t need to want it all, to be happy and successful and striving for more. All you need is to be your all at whatever your pure motivation directs you toward.

Kid in the candy store.

That is the goal. Make every workout like a trip to Disney Land. If you are gifted enough to be a great competitor then compete with dignity by recognizing how special any gift is to have. Cherish such gifts. Master them with an attitude of pure motivation. Celebrate the competition day.

As usual, some of you will get it, some of you will not. I welcome your feedback on my Forums section