There Are Better Forms of Motivation

Daily Dad August 5th

Does someone work hard and take risks if they already have their father’s approval? Can someone be successful if they have confronted and risen above their trauma?

Yes.

In today’s meditation in the Always Be A Fan section of Ryan Holiday’s Daily Dad, he examines types of motivational fuel and their associated emotional cost. As a parent, you want to be able to support your child towards their goal. It is the responsibility of the parent to provide motivation to help their child make progress on the promises that they’ve made for themselves and to help them reach the payoff of those promises.

It’s commonly seen in media and literature as the apprentice arc, where someone needs to learn something to complete their goal. They need to practice, to fail, and then rise above the failure so that they can have faith in themselves when the time comes to show the mastery of their apprenticed skill. As readers and individuals, we like this arc, because it is foretold at the beginning of the process.

An example Brandon Sanderson uses in his online lectures (I am using his three-step plotting process here of promise, progress, and payoff) is Luke Skywalker.

In short, he needs to become a Jedi, that’s the promise.

He needs to show progress, so while he is with Yoda, and battling the little floating shooting thingy, we see him practice and meet a lot of failure. Though he does begin to rise above those failures as it continues-

And then we get the payoff where he uses his skills as a Jedi to defeat the evil that confronts him.

Along the way, Ben Kenobi provides motivation by speaking into Luke’s head. He gets negative motivation from Han Solo, but as Han’s arc moves him from mean guy to nice guy, his motivation changes as well, from ridicule to brotherly support.

This same structure can be drawn across many different goals: If I want to become a master blacksmith, I’ll have to take a lot of time learning how to shape metal. If want to become an elite gymnast, I’ll have to spend a lot of time in the gym and work on my routines. If want to become a writer, I’ll have to spend a lot of time on the keyboard and work on my words. The blacksmith will have to make a lot of crooked and thin nails, the gymnast will have to fall and get injured, and the writer will have to release and share a lot of bad writing. But we know from stories that the process does have an end, that success lies at the end of the tumultuous path. The payoff.

So where does motivation fit in?

It fits in between the practice, after the failed competitions. It is the words a parent says to their child when they are considering making bad on the promise they made to themselves. It is a realignment tool to help the child stay true to their word and what they want to make of themselves.

The traditional hard-edged motivation comes in the form of belittling and backhanded compliments at best. It is an approach of fear and self-hate that is turned out towards one’s own child. It is an inferiority complex that is warped like a Grecian myth, where the child is usurping the father, and the father begins to claw at their child instead of doing what they can to lift their child up above themselves.

What Holiday suggests is that the emotional toll this has on the individual is greater than the work that is divined from them. As we have seen, with Tiger Woods as the star example, it is those emotional tolls that are the hardest challenges to overcome. Instead of a satisfying ending, where the hero gets their payoff, they are left with a loose end, the unsupportive father and emotional stability tied to their performance. They embarrass themselves and their families because they are not able to properly align with their emotional self. The promise turns from being successful in the field they are apprenticing into a promise they make to themselves that they will earn the respect of their father.

I am appreciative that my own dad uses the kind of motivation that has a positive fuel. When I graduated college, after a lot of struggle and hard times, he said he was proud of me. When I got married, and took on the responsibility of being a father, he said he was proud of me. When I made an effort to get a promotion and saw it through until the result came, he said he was proud.

With each instance of success, he helped me have a conclusive payoff. Each was a promise that I made, that took practice and failure. Each had difficult times between events where he was there to support me. What that has done for me, is allow me to step towards the next promise, the next goal. It gives me the freedom many don’t get, the freedom to achieve greater and more beneficial things. I am able to take the next step because the engine of my soul does not have the carbon build-up from less clean burning motivational fuel. Beyond my large goals, it allows me to tackle the day-to-day, humdrum small goals, the mouse threads, and the little things, and be resilient enough to not let those deviations distract from the big picture.