Ferate Talk: Motivation Is Fleeting, Be Inspired.

I recently was asked to give a presentation to the University of Portland Student-Athletes to start the 2023 spring semester off to a hot start. When we first met to discuss what they were looking for, they explained they wanted to be motivated for the new year. This had me excited and curious.

I asked, “Describe to me what being motivated means?” The student-athletes went on to describe feelings they wanted to have for their spring semester. Once they finished, it hit me was they were looking to be inspired and driven by purpose. Not just motivated for an hour after the presentation or for a few days.,

My goal was to change the way student-athletes looked at motivation. Motivation can be important, especially to get started on something but in the end, motivation is fleeting. It comes and goes, we can’t solely rely on motivation to be the driver of our day-to-day actions.

We get tired, fatigued, have poor sleep, stressed out, and a lot of other factors lead to us being unmotivated. Feeling unmotivated makes the smallest things feel much bigger. The key to notice in that last sentence is “feeling”, as motivation is typically tied to how we feel in that moment not what we truly want with our life when we zoom out.

I showed the student-athletes quickly two videos that I remember motivating me a lot during my undergraduate years at Washington State University and when I woke up at 5 am for my strength and conditioning internship. The primary one was Eric Thomas's (ET the hip-hop preacher) voice-over of How Bad Do You Want It Part One. If that sounds familiar, it was the “You gotta want it as bad as you want to breath” motivational video back from 2012-2013. I listened to that video almost daily. A time when I didn’t realize the difference between being motivated and being inspired. When I look back I was much more inspired by something bigger. This video was just the 1% on top.

The point was that like many other motivational videos, we get fired up for 5-10 minutes, and then it fades away. We return to our baseline most of the time. Motivation isn’t bad it’s just fleeting. It comes and goes. What is strong, consistent, and resilient? Being inspired by your purpose. Knowing what you truly want. What you actually want to want. What you want in your life that isn’t just a norm created by society or the friends you surround yourself with. Understanding your WHY, even if it is simply understanding your WHY for the 16-week spring semester is huge!

Now that we understand what motivation feels like and that being inspired sometimes can feel similar to that specific moment. It is important to build the secret weapon, which is self-awareness.

Developing self-awareness is key to discovering what we truly want, what our WHY is, and answering the questions we continue to come back to. By becoming more self-aware we can better understand who we are right now, and who we want to be moving forward.

Awareness is a skill that starts with you being aware of yourself. Then it can evolve where you use your self-awareness to impact others around you. We can become more aware of what our small group of friends is doing. Then stepping back and being able to even see more, almost from the perspective of the coach. Catching things at practice before the coaches even see it. You are the student-athlete, potentially the leader of the team, and most of all aware of how you and your teammates are interacting at that time. The 4th level is something that I am working on better describing because it is when you gain a better understanding and a level of awareness of how you are being received by others.

In sports, when things get tough in a race, competition, or a clutch moment of the game we want to lean into our strengths. Compared to pulling something out of nowhere to try something new that we have never practiced. Coming from a place of strength is the same approach we want to have when stepping closer to the edge of our comfort zone or even out of it.

How can we use that to become more self-aware, better understand our purpose, how that can inspire us, and then have the best semester possible?

Examples that we worked through during the presentation to build more reps in the awareness space are below.

1. Journaling Daily (Brain Dump for a few minutes)

2. 5 Minute Journal Format (3 things you are grateful for, what would make today great, and an affirmation. Then at night, 3 amazing things happened today and how could today have been better?

3. Writing out your current strengths.

4. Feedback from others you are close with about your specific strengths.

All athletes in some way reflect after a competition. How was that? Many times we are our own worse critics. Naturally, when you are 18 to 23 years old you beat yourself up on the things you can improve (Don’t fool yourself after 23 too…)

It is important to change your perspective, looking at these moments as awareness moments, noticing what went well or could be improved, instead of them being judgemental moments.

What are student-athletes great at? What do they think they are good at?

A lot of the answers from the student-athletes were about managing their time, being disciplined, goal-oriented, resilient, and competitive. It is important to work from a place of strength when we are trying to develop a skill that is out of our comfort zone. Athletes have so many practice reps of being resilient, disciplined, reflecting, and managing their time, it is now time to use that skill on becoming more aware.

I closed it out with this great mental model that I heard AirBnB did. AirBnb asked the higher-ups at the company one day how would they describe a 5 out of 5 experience. What would that look like specifically? Then what would it look like if we expanded the way we think and define what a 6 and 7 out of 5 experience could look like?

The example I loved the most was the 7 to 8 out 5 star experience. You would get picked up from the airport and dropped off at your Airbnb. When you get there the fridge is filled with your favorite drink, the coffee pot was on a timer for when you checked in, and then 30 minutes after you checked in they had local tacos delivered (the host noticed in your profile you like Mexican food). Wow!

How can we apply that same model of thinking to the spring semester? For graduating seniors what would look like to have a 5 out of 5 spring semester? Getting specific with what is in your control and what you want to shoot for to make it great. If you don’t attempt to define it you are shooting into the dark hoping for a good 16 weeks. It is not easy but a good challenge to get specific with what would be an ideal spring semester and then what would be a phenomenal spring semester!

Asking yourself what kind of person do you want to be by graduation on May 6th. What experiences do I want to have? Where would I like to grow the most?

Then start to work backward to make it possible with the time you are given. The point of this process is to start. There are no wrong answers other than not doing it all. Write something down. Physically write it down because writing can be a forcing function for clarity.

More clarity on who you want to be and what inspires you.

Best Day of the year until tomorrow…

Ferate