The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win

by Jeff Haden

The solution is easy: Create tangible reminders designed to pull you back from the impulse brink. For example, a friend keeps a copy of his bank loan taped to his computer monitor as a constant reminder of an obligation he must meet. Another keeps a photo of himself when he weighed fifty pounds more on his refrigerator as a constant reminder of the person he never wants to be again.

Step 6: Remove temptation altogether.

Let Your Past Inform Your Future—but Don’t Let It Define Your Future The past is valuable. Learn from your mistakes. Learn from the mistakes of others. Then let it go. Easier said than done? As I said before, everything depends on your perspective. When something bad happens to you, it’s an opportunity to learn. When another person makes a mistake, it’s an opportunity to be kind, forgiving, and understanding. The past doesn’t define you. Just make sure that next time, you know what to do differently.

See Your Life—and Future—as Within Your Control There’s a quote often credited to Saint Ignatius of Loyola (and you have to love a fighting saint): “Pray as if God will take care of all; act as if all is up to you.” The same premise applies to luck. Many people feel luck has a lot to do with success or failure. If they succeed, luck favored them, and if they fail, luck was against them. Most successful people do feel that good luck played some role in the success they enjoy. But they don’t wait for good luck or worry about bad luck. They act as if success or failure is totally within their control. If they succeed, they caused it. If they fail, they caused it. By not wasting mental energy worrying about what might happen to you, you can put all your effort into making things happen. (And if you do get lucky . . . hey, even better.)

Learn to Ignore the Things You Have No Control Over Mental strength is like muscle strength—no one has an unlimited supply of focus. So why waste...

Don’t Just Aim for Tenacity; Aim for Adaptability

“With special ops,” Tyler told me, “it’s not people who are the absolute best at any one thing but people who are really good at a number of things. That means you have to be adaptable, because no one is good at everything. “People tend to think Darwin said, ‘Only the strong survive.’ That’s not what he said. Darwin said the number one survivability trait is adaptability. Adaptability is what will get you through these selection processes. Adaptability is the ability to recognize the construct and working mechanisms of a system, figure out how it works, adapt to it, and then adapt it to your needs and goals.”

“Discomfort is growth,” Tyler says. “To constantly improve, and to be more resilient and adaptable, whenever there is a fork in the road, choose discomfort over comfort and you will grow. We’re used to choosing comfort. We’re used to choosing the easy way. Yet all our success and growth comes from choosing the hardest and least comfortable way. Say you’re an entrepreneur: You

Don’t Resent; Celebrate the Success of Others

Resentment sucks up a massive amount of mental energy—energy better applied elsewhere.

Resist the Temptation to Complain, Criticize, or Whine

Your words have power—especially over you. Harping about your problems always makes you feel worse, not better. If something goes wrong, don’t waste time complaining. Put that mental energy into making the situation better. (Unless you want to whine about it forever, eventually you’ll have to make it better.) And do the same with your friends or colleagues. Don’t just serve as a shoulder they can cry on. Friends don’t let friends whine; friends help friends make their lives better too.

Count Your Bl...

Think about what you want to become. Maye you want to become fit, trim, and healthy. Maybe you want to become a CEO. Maybe you want to become a business owner. Or a millionaire. Only you can decide what you want to become. But once you do, you can’t blindly choose how you want to proceed—not if you want to succeed. To be a certain thing—to become a certain thing—you must make the decisions that will get you there.

That’s how Herb Kelleher, the CEO of Southwest Airlines, makes so many decisions every day. Kelleher applies a simple framework to every issue: “Will this help Southwest be the lowest-cost provider?” If so, the answer is yes. If not, the answer is no.

The most effective people apply the same framework to the decisions they make. “Will this help me reach my goal? If not, I won’t do it.”

The list of examples goes on. Would a person who wants to become a supervisor, a manager, or a CEO treat other people with anything less than dignity and respect? No, because that’s not the way good leaders act. Would a person who wants to be a good parent ignore a child who is struggling in school because spending time on social media is more—however oddly—gratifying? No, because that’s not the way good parents act. What do you want to achieve? Whom do you want to become? Place yourself there. Say, “I am fit.” Say, “I am a CEO.” Say, “I am a millionaire.” Say, “I am a great parent.”

Process is everything. Routine is everything. Let nothing stand in its way.

Give a Better Sense of Purpose Everyone likes to feel a part of something bigger. Everyone loves to feel that sense of teamwork and esprit de corps that turn a group of individuals into a real team. The best missions involve making a real impact on the lives of the people you serve. When the people around you know how their effort contributes to the business, or to customers, or to the community, work takes on greater meaning. That’s especially true when people are given the freedom to create a mission or two of their own. Feeling a true purpose starts with knowing what to care about and, more important, why you should care.

Make it incredibly easy for people to offer suggestions. Ask leading questions. Probe gently. Help people feel comfortable proposing new ways to get things done. When an idea isn’t feasible, always take the time to explain why. Employees who make suggestions care about the company, so do everything you can to ensure they know their input is valued—and appreciated. That premise is even more applicable to families; after all, employees expect to be told what to do, at least part of the time. Does your significant other? Do your kids?

(The best bosses treat each employee differently while treating every employee fairly. There’s a big difference between sameness and fairness.)

Give Private Criticism No employee is perfect. Every employee needs constructive feedback. Every employee deserves constructive feedback. Good bosses give that feedback. Great bosses always do it in private. So do great partners and great parents.

Give Public Praise Every employee—even a relatively poor performer—does something well. That’s why every employee deserves praise and appreciation. It’s easy to recognize and praise the best employees, because they’re consistently doing awesome things. (Maybe consistent recognition is a reason they’re the best employees? Something to think about.) You may have to work hard to find reasons to recognize someone you work with who simply meets standards, but that’s okay; a few words of recognition—especially public recognition—might be all the nudge an average performer needs to start becoming a great performer.

But in most cases, our limits are self-imposed. Here’s an example of a self-imposed limit: effort. It’s easy to rationalize that we’ve done enough. It’s tempting to think we’ve done all we can, especially when we’re tired. And so we stop. But that little voice lies: With the right motivation, or under the right circumstances, we can always do more. Stopping is nearly always a choice. We don’t have to stop; we choose to stop.

Eliminate One “Permission” You probably don’t think of it this way, but everything you do “trains” the people around you to treat you a certain way. Let employees interrupt your meetings or phone calls because of “emergencies,” and they’ll feel free to interrupt you whenever they want. Drop what you’re doing every time a friend calls, and that person will always expect immediate attention. Return e-mails immediately, and people will learn to expect an immediate response. In short, your actions give other people permission to keep you from functioning the way you function best. How do you change that paradigm? A friend created an “emergency” e-mail account. He responds to those e-mails immediately. His employees know he checks his “standard” e-mail only a couple times a day. They act accordingly. Unless his wife is calling, a stay-at-home dad I know answers his phone only when his kids are napping. People know he’s not always available and they act accordingly. Figure out how you operate best and then “train” the people around you to let you be as productive as you possibly can.