Episode 17: Igniting the Fire Within: The Synergy of Motivation, Discipline, and Passion

Unlock the mysteries of what drives us as we explore the intricate dance between motivation and discipline, passion, and planning. If you've ever wondered why your drive to achieve waxes and wanes, this episode is your roadmap to understanding the forces at play. We dissect the dichotomies of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, revealing that the road to success is not paved with motivation alone—discipline, planning, and knowledge are the critical companions on this journey. I'll share my personal motivations and insights, emphasizing how connecting with our inner passions can transform our day-to-day existence, making every task more meaningful and every challenge more surmountable.

Feel the weight of the world on your shoulders? You're not alone. Together, we'll navigate the treacherous waters of burnout, identifying the red flags before they engulf us. Drawing from my own experiences and the well of professional wisdom, we offer strategies to set healthy boundaries and emphasize the power of supportive networks and environments. Burnout can be a silent saboteur of motivation, but with the right tools, it's not an insurmountable foe. This episode isn't just about identifying problems—it's about providing solutions and support to keep the fires of passion and motivation burning brightly in all areas of your life.

To cap it off, I lay out the building blocks for sustained motivation and success. We tackle the idea that perseverance is the secret sauce, discussing how to set and achieve goals that keep us moving forward, even through setbacks. The episode challenges the "fake it till you make it" philosophy, shedding light on its potential benefits and drawbacks in leadership and personal growth. Get ready to embrace the power of incremental victories and learn why embracing your unique passion might just be the key to a life of fulfillment and achievement. Join us, as we chart a course to rekindle your inner drive and stoke the flames of your professional and personal aspirations.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Full Circle with Sean. I'm your host, sean, and today we're talking about motivation, so let's jump right in. So what is motivation? Motivation is the internal drive that compels individuals to take action toward achieving goals. It's as simple as that, right Now, what are the types of motivation?

Speaker 1: 0:19

So there are basically two types of motivation there's intrinsic motivation and there's extrinsic motivation. So intrinsic motivation is you are driven by your interest or your enjoyment in the task that you're doing, or your own goals. Extrinsic motivation is you're driven by external factors like rewards, higher salary, bonuses, stuff like that. But what is motivation not, right? It's not a constant state. Motivation levels can vary day by day, even moment by moment, and it's not solely dependent on external rewards or recognition. Internal satisfaction can play a crucial role of your motivation. In fact, it's. One of the misconceptions about motivation is that motivated people are always energetic and enthusiastic and, in reality, everyone experiences ups and downs in both energy and in motivation.

Speaker 1: 1:18

There's a lot of people that think that all you need is motivation to succeed, and while motivation is an important factor of that, it is not sufficient for success, right? You need discipline, you need planning, you need knowledge. There's a lot more that comes than just motivation. And then some people think that motivation can only come from within. And it doesn't have to be from within, it doesn't have to be purely intrinsic. There are lots of external forces that can motivate you. I mean, have you ever listened to a song and by the end of the song you're singing along and you're excited about what's coming up or what you've been thinking about when you might have been a little down before about it, and that's more of an external factor that's helping to motivate you.

Speaker 1: 2:04

So let's look at some of the different sources of motivation. So they could be your passion. And here we're talking more about your personal passions. Maybe it's going out and playing soccer, maybe it's your passion is to sci-fi. Or, you know, go to all the parties, the sci-fi parties. Or you know your passion is to meet new people. I mean, there's a lot of things that you can have passions about. You know your own passions Career ambitions.

Speaker 1: 2:33

Career ambitions could be your passion. So you motivate by doing the hard yards because you know you're getting to that next tier that you want to get to, because you have ambitions in your career, financial incentives so you could be on commissions or you could get bonuses for different work that you do, or you could be chasing again that next promotion because of the financial incentives. And then you have your social influences, so your peer group, social media. There are a lot of things in your social life that can influence you as well. So in looking at motivation, we should look at our personal goals, our personal values and the interests that we have that drive our individual motivation, and then we should look at how we can tie those things together and use our passions to give us a better quality of life. And we can talk about quality of life probably more in another episode. But our quality of life comes from our motivations, comes from what makes us happy, what drives us and it is really a personal thing, okay. So what drives me every day? So what does drive me? What drives you every day, sean?

Speaker 1: 3:50

I get out of bed every morning and I put on my pants, one pant leg at a time, like everybody else in the world that wears pants. I'm not a shorts person, I'll make that clear. But I get out of bed every day and I think what amazingly awesome thing is going to happen today and it could be. I go into work and somebody has cracked something that's been very difficult and we're changing something that I thought might take a long time, or it's been a long time and we've just cracked it. Or somebody's going to come with a problem, a new problem, and I'm going to be able to really think about how to sort that problem. Is this going to lead to a new technology breakthrough? Is this going to regardless? It's going to allow me to work through the different pieces to understand this problem and it's going to let my brain exercise, and that's what I like.

Speaker 1: 4:52

I like to dig into things, I like to find out how to fix them, I like to find out how to change things and be innovative, and that's what my team's about as well. Right, so it's not just me, it's the entire team gets to get involved and achieve something amazing. So I get out of bed every morning and I'm like what is going to happen today? Okay, it doesn't matter what happened tomorrow, it doesn't matter how yesterday ended for me, it doesn't matter if I'm still under stress for other things. It still gets me out of bed because I know that I get to look forward to that part of my day and I don't know what it's going to be yet, but that's my passion.

Speaker 1: 5:31

Okay, if my passion was I look forward to to go into the gym every day, I'd love to work out. I don't, I'll tell you right now, I'm sorry but I don't. But if that was my passion, I have friends that they really look forward to that. Friends that run marathons and they look forward to that every day and the personal goals that they set and their heart rates and it drives them. And I have friends that have hobbies, so when they get off of work, they want to go fly their drone or improve their drone, and this is what they love to do and it motivates them. And I have other friends that like self-improvement.

Speaker 1: 6:13

You know, what can I learn today? What class can I take next? You know who's going to give me a certificate for something really cool that I can learn and I can showcase that. You showcase that I'm smart and my knowledge is still improving, and that's fantastic. You should never stop learning and that kind of self-improvement is amazing and there's obviously lots of ways of self-improvement as well. And then there's people that want to work their way up into leadership learn how to do all types of leadership, learn how to deal with team dynamics, learn how to influence the motivation of others.

Speaker 1: 6:49

So there's a lot of things between personal and professional life that you can have your own motivation. You have different motivations that drive you, but a lot of that comes from passion, and passion can naturally enhance your motivation, so it can make tasks, make work, feel a lot less like work, or feel a lot less like something that you have to do because it's something that you want to do. It's something that you strive to do. It's something that you might want to do better. It's your passion.

Speaker 1: 7:32

Now, one of the things that people ask me is what's the difference in motivational issues and burnout? Right, because we've all heard of people just burning out, completely emotional shutdown, physical, mental exhaustion. I know some business owners that have went to hospital with it. So it's how do you know the difference and how can you fix your motivation? How do you backtrack from burnout? What can you do? So let's start with what is burnout.

Speaker 1: 7:59

So burnout is normally due to prolonged stress. That's how you get it and it's. It includes things like chronic fatigue, always feeling tired, always lacking energy, feeling physically and emotionally depleted, a level of increased irritability. So, basically, having a shorter temper than you're used to being easily upset or frustrated in situations that didn't used to really bother you. Reduce performance, so you struggle with concentration. You experience declining work performance or you feel less capable at work or even at home. Lack of motivation, which is what we're talking about, so losing interest in work or activities. You used to enjoy Cynicism or detachment, so you feel disconnected from others. You feel negative or cynical toward work or activities. You might have physical symptoms, so you might disconnected from others. You feel negative or cynical toward work or activities. You might have physical symptoms, so you might have headaches, stomach issues or even muscle tension. Emotional exhaustion, so you're always feeling drained, you're unable to cope, you're just emotionally depleted. And then a lot of people have sleep disturbance, so insomnia or even the opposite of that. Right Oversleeping, you might experience restlessness or basically not getting good sleep even when you are sleeping.

Speaker 1: 9:19

So how do you address burnout? So the first thing you need to do is you need to set some clear boundaries. So learn to say no, define your work-life balance and avoid overextending yourself. I mean be open. Not all leaders can recognize burnout. Not all leaders are there yet in their career path and they will not know unless you tell them. You can then prioritize self-care. So engage in activities that promote well-being, like exercise, hobbies, even sleep right.

Speaker 1: 9:53

Seek professional help. So it never hurts to talk to a therapist or a counselor. In fact, I've talked to a counselor well, when I was a child, when I was in foster care, I talked to a counselor, and even when I got out of the military I had a couple of sessions with a counselor as a sounding board because I was struggling a little bit with what was going on. There are plenty of relaxation techniques. You can practice Meditation, let's say mindfulness, or even yoga can help reduce stress and improve your mental health.

Speaker 1: 10:25

Take regular breaks. So regular breaks in the day can really help to maintain productivity and mental sharpness. And you don't have to be a smoker. You can go out, take a break, get some fresh air. You can reevaluate your goals. I mean, if you're burned out and you're working like that or just burned out in your life, well, maybe you need to take some reflection as well. Set some goals. Set some personal and professional goals and make sure they align with your values and even your capabilities, so that might really help reduce your feelings of being overwhelmed. You can get social help right, so you have a supportive network of friends, you have family, you have colleagues and open up, talk to people. People don't know what you're going through unless you tell them. And you can prioritize sleep, as we said before. So getting a healthy amount of sleep. It impacts both your physical health and your mental resilience.

Speaker 1: 11:21

So now that we've taken that detour from into burnout, let's get back to motivation. So how do we maintain our long-term motivation Over, say, really long periods of time? We want to stay motivated. How do we do it? Well, there's a lot of factors actually. I mean, it's not. Obviously we have the passion, and your passions will change and you need to be aware of those changes. And maybe you're in a job where you used to have the passion, but that passion has dissipated. So is it time to find something else? Do you need to remember what it was in that job that made you passionate and address the things that are taking that away from you? But also your environment. So different environments can give you different motivation, and those could be your your environment. So you know, different environments can give you different motivation and those could be your social environment. So your friendship group, the organization itself and you know there's lots of things with the environment, with your environment, with your personal environment. You're the only one that knows that that can really impact your motivation levels.

Speaker 1: 12:30

And then some motivational strategies right are, you know, setting your own goals. So a lot of times you have a passion and you're like I'm going to achieve this because I want to get here, but you want it yesterday, you want it done in as short amount of time as possible. But you need to set clear goals, set realistic goals. Look at those goals all the time, adjust those goals. I'm not saying change them to three years from now, because I'm never going to get there. Right, you need to, but they need to be realistic. And you need to create accountability to yourself, because you are accountable to yourself for how you're achieving your goals. And then you need to celebrate. Celebrate every win that you have, celebrate yourself, celebrate with friends, however you want to celebrate, but you should always have some kind of celebration for all of your small wins Because, remember, it's all those small wins that get you where you want to go.

Speaker 1: 13:25

Nobody ever goes from zero to 100. Everybody has to walk up to the first floor and then up to the second floor and then up to the third floor. And that's just the way that life is. And if you jump too fast, some people might. Some people might go from the first floor to the 30th floor, but the person that put them there probably didn't have the best understanding of being a leader, because they're moving them so quick that they're almost setting them up for failure. And I'm not going to say that in certain circumstances that's always the case. I mean, somebody might have come into an organization on the ground floor but they actually had the skill set to be at the next level or the level above that. They weren't given that opportunity, so they might move up a little bit faster.

Speaker 1: 14:11

But from my experiences, most people need the learning, the time in each level to do really well in the next level. I mean, what's the greatest saying is fake it until you make it right, and a lot of leaders will do that. They will do their best to do when they get promoted to the next level. They'll do their best until they completely learn how to do that. They will do their best to do when they get promoted to the next level. They'll do their best until they completely learn how to do it, and they'll always be learning different parts of it, but they'll learn how to do it decently within an X amount of time, but until then they will fake it until they make it. But if you get moved from zero to 20 or zero to 30, you have to fake a whole lot of things and learn a whole lot of things, and it's just setting people up for failure which isn't fair to the person.

Speaker 1: 15:01

And as we're talking about motivation is, if you have a setback, if you have a passion and something sets you back or you do fail, it's not a reason to lose that motivation. It's a reason to learn off of what happened. Because you know, as Winston Churchill says, success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts, and it's yeah, it's very smart. It's the importance of perseverance, right, the courage to keep moving forward, even when you feel not so motivated or you've had a bad day. Remember, everybody has a bad day, not every day. You will be highly motivated, but you should have more good days than bad. You should be motivated more times than not in what you're doing and if you're not, then you're. The standard of care that you're giving to yourself may be too low. It, you might not be doing the right thing by yourself, and I guess that that really ties to strength and vulnerability, okay. So if you, if you admit, you need to admit to yourself where there's an issue, and then you can also admit to your social group or your friends or your family, and it should be seen by you as a sign of strength, not a sign of weakness.

Speaker 1: 16:22

When we reflect on ourselves, we can grow. So, when it comes to motivation, we need to find out why we're not motivated. What is different than it was before? Because something motivated you to to do this in your personal life, or somebody motivated you or you motivated yourself to do something in professional life. So where, where did it? Where did it get lost? And then and then fix that. Okay, it's kind of part of our lifelong learning process. So every challenge, every learning is an opportunity. It's an opportunity to grow and experiences. If we take our experiences and view them through the lens of growth, we can begin to understand them and they can teach us very valuable lessons, even about ourselves, and sometimes we need to reflect on that. So again, let's just recap If you really want to stay motivated and you have these really big goals and sometimes these really small steps. You need to reach these goals. Celebrate your progress. Remember that there's empowerment through action. So every time that you reach that next step, then you will get more motivated and you will feel closer to that goal.

Speaker 1: 17:49

And I understand that we're an instant gratification society now. Understand that we're an instant gratification society now, but this is not how most things work in the world. Sure, with our physical needs I guess you know our material needs we might get some instant gratification. But in careers and in our personal life and where we want to get to, it's not that way, right? You've all seen the really junk. You know, do this workout and you'll lose 50 pounds tomorrow. You know, oh, I did this workout and within a week I was this thin and whatever right.

Speaker 1: 18:29

But that doesn't work, or it doesn't work in normal cases and going that fast is actually not healthy. It's the same as in your career. If you go that fast, it's not healthy, it's not healthy for your mental health, it's not healthy for your stress and you very well might burn out and you're going to feel overwhelmed because you need to take the little steps and you need to learn and you need to reflect and you need to grow. But the whole time, if you look at that, if you look at this path, if you set these goals and reflect on these goals and celebrate your wins and celebrate your failures, okay, because we're all going to fail and we're all going to go back a step at certain times in our life and then we will learn from that and time will heal that and we will move forward again. So it's about reinvigorating that motivation when we lose and finding motivation in the failure that we're going to excel above that loss. And that's not always easy Definitely not always easy, but we can do it. We've done it. We can do it. We can do it again and that's what sets us apart.

Speaker 1: 19:41

But it does become a lot easier to stay motivated if you're connected to your passion, and I would like to take a second to talk about passion. So your passion, somebody else's passion, everybody's passion is going to be different. Okay, sure, you might share similarities with certain people on your passions. No, passion is is should be looked down upon, okay, so if your passion is you want to be the best dishwasher in the world, fantastic, be the best dishwasher in the world. If you want to be president someday, then work your way up there and go for it.

Speaker 1: 20:19

If you want to, no matter what you want if you have the passion for it and it's legal let me put in that little clause then you should go for it and you should find the path that aligns to that, because that's what's going to make you the most happy in life, that's what's going to give you the motivation to reach your goals and to strive to be the better part of yourself and to be happy and have a much more fulfilling life. So I guess my suggestion at the end of the day would be if you're lacking motivation, if you're experiencing burnout, then create a simple, actionable plan to start addressing it and baby steps is fine, but you got to address it because burnout doesn't get any better, it only gets worse, right. And then, if you're lacking motivation, if you find that you're lacking motivation, if you find that you're lacking motivation, it's not really burnout, you're just not motivated very often. Then then look at the reasons why.

Speaker 1: 21:21

When are you motivated? What are you doing? What would you like to do? Do you sit around daydreaming about things that you'd like to be doing and that that motivates you? So maybe you you should look at that and with that, that is the end of this episode, and thank you again for joining Full Circle with Sean. The next podcast we're going to take a little break from this foundation building that we've been doing and talk a little bit about some innovations that we need, like the tech of tomorrow. I'll try to keep it not so techie, but let's just have a chat about that.