Anyone who has experienced failure has also had to deal with the spectre of giving up. As the saying goes ‘nothing worth doing is ever easy’, after all if it was everyone would be doing it … and crushing it.
But we know things are hard. We fail forward. We learn valuable lessons from setbacks and there are those that pick themselves up and keep going while there are others who throw in the towel.
Aside from a need to change, at the core of every transformational success journey lies a motivator—a powerful force that drives the change long before objective results are seen and measured.
So what is it that separates those who keep getting back up like Captain America and those who stay down?
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Internal and External
Right or wrong no one gets results from day one! Everyone’s journey starts off with the investment of time and energy into their endeavours and when they pay off people notice. When they don’t the only person who suffers is the person or people that have made the commitment but have yet to see a return on their investment.
What we all don’t see before anyone becomes ‘successful’ are the setbacks and failures that the ‘rogue entrepreneurs’ go through during their journey.
For every success story there are tens or hundreds of other failed stories who never got off the ground. And the root cause is down to the motivation at the core of the dream.
There are infinite motivators out there but they boil down to four key types.
Firstly there are internal and external motivators. Exactly as they sound, internal motivators are driving forces that come from within such as wanting to go on a holiday within the next 18 months.
External Motivators are forces that drive action from external sources, such as a task with time pressure to get something done by a certain time.
Positive Motivators (Goals)
Positive motivators aren’t as clear cut as they seem. Ultimately a ‘positive’ motivation is a drive towards an ‘improved’ position.
An improvement can be defined as any number of things such as wanting more time, wanting to help others, do more for family, do more for the community, the list goes on.
Positive motivators also tie in with Internal or External forces which add mass to the motivator itself.
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Negative Motivators (Anti-Goals)
And finally there are the ‘negative’ motivators. Just like positive motivators these are not as clear cut as they sound and by no means are they ‘Bad.’
Negative motivators typically involve a form of avoidance or prevention of some future state. In fact avoidance or prevention of a negative outcomes actually form extremely powerful motivational forces, such as not wanting to lose a job, not wanting to let down family, refusing to fail to make a bank repayment, not wanting to miss out on family time due to an excess of work hours, etc.
As can be seen here, negative motivations are not bad, but instead can be defined as an ‘anti-goal.’
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The foundational fall back
It is important to know that when it comes to having a motivation it should be expected that during reflection you can have more than one—in fact it is possible to combine motivations from all four areas.
In fact the more sources, reasons, goals and anti-goals that you have, the more likely that motivation will keep pushing you to keep going despite any failure or setback you encounter.
No success story is quick, and they are never easy. Setbacks and failures hurt. They cause you to feel doubt and they will even ask you to question whether the journey is worth it.
When the time comes and you ask yourself whether the effort is worth it, the first thing anyone should do is remember your ‘Why.’ If your ‘Why’ is one of or your key motivators, then get back up and keep going.