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What is my biggest challenge based on my experiences with my non-producing clients?
First off: Not everyone is a non-producer… this guy, Ray is not one.
Here is his story of how he got hired for his dream job..
A decade or so ago Ray was a programmer, and he hated his job, hated his life. It needed none of his personality, which is often the reason you hate your job. I hated architecture mainly for the same reason…
One day he heard about the option to be a ‘sales engineer’, a sales person to sell software, technical stuff… Talking… yeah, that was more up his alley.
The interview was to do a sales presentation in front of two women…
He had his powerpoint ready…
His first slide said: Warning! This presentation includes subliminal messages. That got the two women puzzled…
Then he moved to slide 2 and quickly to slide 3…
Slide 2 said ‘Hire Ray’
The two women cracked up laughing, and the rest is history… Ray was OBVIOUSLY hired to his dream job.
He isn’t an example for what I am going to talk about in this article… the lack of motive power. He is an example for what’s possible when you increase your motive power.
The lack of motive power…
It is not an accident that motivational speakers harp on your why. When they ask for your why, what they are asking is this: what is the key to motivate you? Motivate yourself?
People who are good at creating, managing, keeping alive their why are going to succeed more than people who are not good at it, maybe don’t even know that they should have motive power.
Desire could be a motive power… The problem with desire is this: it can be satisfied.
Why that is a problem? Because the more it is satisfied the less it is a motive power. Just look at hunger. Or look at sex.
When it’s high, you are willing to go to satisfy it through broken glass… But once it’s satisfied, it is a meh… You can take it or leave it.
So desire is not a reliable motivator on the long term.
Hate, hating how it is, of fear of poverty, ignonimity, humility, disgrace, etc. are much better motivators, but unfortunately comfort or being comfortable doesn’t allow much room for hating.
I have been observing some high achievers. For example my two coaches feed off each others megalomania… wanting to be big and bigger, more and more powerful, competing with real powers… And the experience of power is addictive, so it is self-fueling.
According to muscletest this is what fuels Elon Musk, for example.
For a long time, and maybe even now, having someone I consider a mentor, someone I want to be proud of me is a great motivator… but few have the capacity to care if anyone is proud of them… and even fewer are willing to bust their asses to get it.
Other times having a high but impossible to attain purpose that has driven me: if I don’t do it no one will… like a savior complex, a messiah complex… great motivator.
Not letting anyone down… also a great motivator.
The problem with these is one needs to care… and it isn’t happening.
When I look at some other highly visible motivated individuals…
…Mark Zuckerberg is motivated by hate… hating failure. So was Bill Gates. Warren Buffet: greed, insatiable greed. Charlie Munger: competitiveness, wanting to be the best. Virgin founder, Richard Branson is motivated by wanting to be the best.
So if you pay attention: most of the potent motivators are for something that is unattainable… or the hate of something that you cannot surely avoid… like death.
- You cannot please a mentor and you are done… there is a next day… so unless you keep on pleasing them, they won’t be pleased.
- You cannot be the best longer than a minute and a half, unless you keep on busting your ass.
- You cannot be rich enough (greed). Sam Walton’s secret was unique: the love of business… unlike lust, love of business doesn’t get satisfied unless you keep on feeding it.
Your personality is either motivated or not… In my humble opinion you cannot motivate yourself into a frenzy… your body likes homeostasis… and if it isn’t competitive, you are not going to be able to keep putting all your energies into motivating yourself.
I have high motive power. 70 on a scale of 1-100. But not nearly as high as those famous high achievers: their number is 90 or above.
My older brother: 10. His wife: 30. My university friend: 30. Tom Beal, one of my mentors: 30. Another, Ben: 70. Troy: 60
Robert Plank had 70 before he got married. Now 30… just enough to stay in business.
It’s obvious that you need motive power to succeed.
When my 70 is not enough, because the path is arduous, I have the option to ‘adopt’ someone as my mentor whom I don’t want to disappoint, or at least don’t want to look bad in front of…
So what can you do? Honestly, not much.
Your usual flash in the pan efforts even to please your teacher, to want them to keep teaching you, isn’t enough. Won’t be enough.
In yesterday’s What’s Missing workshop I gave the assignment to each participant where their joy, their motive power is increased because they give wood to the fireplace.
When you expect motivation to come to you, you are like the shivering man who tells the fireplace: ‘Fireplace give me heat then I’ll give you wood’.
This experiment, if it succeeds, will be the methodology I will utilize in the future to increase your willingness to do work that benefits you.
Is it going to work? We shall see, said the blind man… and say I.
As with everything you need to start where you are… and that is a diagnostic issue…
And then, not surprisingly, you need to help finding something that has the potential to increase your aliveness, increase your motive power, and return you to the ‘living’.
You need to become selfish… VERY selfish… ‘if I am not for me, who is for me?’ way, avoiding the ‘if you are only for yourself, who are you?’
Is selfishness a virtue?
Since a concern with one’s own interests is a character trait that, when translated into action, enables one to achieve and guard one’s own well-being, it follows that selfishness is a virtue. … Many people use the adjective “selfish” to describe regard for one’s own welfare to the disregard of the well-being of others.
90% of what is destroying life is ‘selflessness’, or being not selfish enough…
Get selfish. Life wants you to be selfish, take care of yourself, take care of your self interest, be prepared, and grow.
If you are not growing, then you are not selfish enough.
Having a strong and high motive power is selfish.
I am more selfish with my 70 than you with your 7…
Yesterday I asked the three new questions on the What’s Missing workshop. I asked: What’s working? What’s missing? What’s next?
Already at the first question you can tell where someone’s motive power is…
The second question is to diagnose… in the face of all you do what would be the thing you could start doing that would 10x your results…
And in the third question I go really deep and help you come up with a habit, one thing, that if you did, religiously, consistently, with high energy, every day, it would increase your joy, your enthusiasm, your energy, your motive power… because you would experience what winners experience: a constant influx of success.
If you are not even interested in finding out where you are at and what you could do to have a life that works, to feel alive and to grow, I sincerely recommend that you hit the unsubscribe button. Please.
I’d rather have 10 people who pay attention and use what I say, than thousands who are just curious.
This Saturday, part of my Saturday workshop series, I’ll have a workshop that is designed to change what you see. The WHO that will do, feel, have different than your current WHO.
So we’ll endeavor to dig out, reveal your hidden WHO, that has predictably lived the life you have lived.
Unless your WHO changes, your life can’t change…
If you are very happy with your life, this is not a workshop for you. If your life falls short in any way from what you feel it could be… then this is a good way to spend 2-3 hours on a Saturday.
We’ll design ways for you to keep the new WHO from disappearing, from just being a good idea… So it is really a two-prong process.
Condition for participation: you need to be up to something… have some ambition… or we’ll have nothing to work with.
My job is to help you change what you see, so you can take the actions that will produce what you want.
Let’s change what you see
