Motivation by Challenge

I was talking to a friend a couple of weeks ago about my plans for when my book comes out. I shared with her that in two and a half years I would be a full time speaker and workshop leader and would leave my current job. She said to me, “Bob, there is no way you are going to leave the security of your present job to become a speaker. No way.” Now normally if you were to tell me this story, my knee jerk reaction would be this person is a naysayer, and should be immediately removed from your social environment.

Naysayers can rob you of your motivation by making you question your successability, your confidence in your competence. What was funny about this exchange, however, was that her comment did not have that impact on me. To the contrary I considered it a challenge. In fact I immediately made a small poster, writing on it only, “The Challenge” and taped it over my desk, my physical environment. Every day when I sit down to work, it motivates me.

As I sat down at my key board to write this blog entry, I came up with several other examples of how naysayers with their negative comments had motivated me to push even harder. I recall how when I mentioned to a fellow lawyer that I was working on my Masters in Education, his comment was to the effect, “That’s your goal today. What are you going to come up with tomorrow?” Not that there was much doubt in my mind that I was going to continue working on my degree (even when they cut the funding for tuition payments) but if there had been, that challenge would have played a role in keeping me marching onward.

In one Glazer Kennedy marketing group meeting I was in the hot seat. I explained what I was doing and what my goals were, public speaking and workshop leading, and some issues I was facing. Next was feedback from the group. One guy suggested I try out public speaking first, before I dove into it, because I wasn’t at all dynamic. He said he had been answering emails as I was talking, that’s how unengaging I was. Didn’t this clown know I had been in Toastmasters for over ten years, in fact was a Distinguished Toastmaster and yes, had even been paid to teach public speaking? If he did, he wasn’t particularly impressed. I was externally gracious, especially since I knew I hadn’t been particularly dynamic in my presentation. But inside I was angry, and swore that this guy would eat his words. In retrospect I realize he taught me an important lesson: I am always selling myself and my products. There is never a good time to get sloppy.

So how does motivation by challenge fit into the M=f(V,S,E) model?

The “E”, environment, is the obvious one. This person is in your social environment, and will impact your motivation.

But the challenge also relates to the vision, because most often the challenge is directed at your vision. “You will never become a full time speaker; you’re not good enough,” or “you’re not motivated enough,” or “you’re not engaging.” But the stronger you are connected to your vision, the more worthwhile it is to you, the more likely you will hear such negative words as a motivating challenge rather than demotivating truth.

The challenge also relates to your successability, because if you accept the negative words, it will detrimentally impact your confidence in your competence.

As intentional man, we control how we respond to these negative words. Sure, we can let them gnaw at us and make us unmotivated. But we are so much better off when we respond to them as a challenge, and use them to fuel us to work even harder to achieve our dreams.