"Why do I get so focused and consumed with the wrong things?"
My friend Colby Donovan recommended a podcast on his Coaching Coaches weekly email two weeks ago (Read and Subscribe HERE.)
The podcast featured a mental performance coach named Gio Valiante.
I wanted to share one powerful concept that he shared in this podcast.
There are two kinds of motivation orientation. Or to put it simply and very generally, we are motivated by two things:
- mastery
- ego
Mastery Orientation
Mastery orientation is when you are motivated by gaining mastery. You love to coach. You love to lead. You love to golf. ect.
The joy and reward are in the actual thing that you are doing.
You have fallen in love with your craft. You are passionate about growing and improving. You are often consumed with getting better.
Ego Orientation
Ego orientation is when we love what our craft gives us more than we actually love the craft.
We don't actually love to coach or lead but rather we love what those things bring us or do for us.
We actually love the paycheck, the acclaim, the notoriety, etc. We love the identity of 'coach' or 'AD' or 'CEO', etc.
The Fade to Ego.
Here is what often happens (I wrote about this several years ago but didn't have this language-HERE).
We start doing X. We love doing X. We are on a passionate pursuit to be our very best at X.
We love reading about, studying, and working on X.
Then we get recognized for being good at X. Or we get promoted for being outstanding at X. And we love the props that doing X at a high level gives us.
We continue to progress in our careers. We are making more money, have more power, and are starting to be seen as one of the best at X in our region.
And over time, without recognizing it, what we once loved doing, we now just tolerate it. We are stressed.
Fear creeps in. A consistent narrative in our minds sounds like this "If I don't continue to produce, I lose my job, we have to sell the house we love, move to another town, and endure the embarrassment that is sure to come." Or maybe it's not as extreme as losing your job. Maybe you hate to be corrected because your identity is a "great associate AD". You fear embarrassment and failure.
These thoughts then produce more fear of failure/embarrassment and it can often spin out of control.
This slowly begins to wear on you.
Over time we have gone from mastery to ego and often don't even know what happened to us.
How do we prevent this?
Good question.
It is really hard.
I have written about attachments HERE and want to briefly revisit this idea.
When we can detach we can be truly free. When we are attached to things, reputations, roles, ect. we are essentially in bondage.
We are in the very handcuffs that we created.
So...easy to say and hard to do...we must continually detach. Spend time daily letting go of the attachments...letting go of your reputation, your grievances, the results, etc.
When we let go of those things, we will also let go of fear... replacing that with joy. That same joy we felt when we first started.
When you start to get back to a mastery orientation and enjoy your craft and detach from all the junk that constrains us...then we really start to perform at an elite level.
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One of my weekly disciplines is scouring the internet for articles/tweets I can learn from and/or use with those I work with. Below are two that I hope help encourage and equip you.
Article 1- Boredom might be the best thing a leader can practice.
Article 2- What's your working genius?
Podcast: Kate Drohan. Softball coach at Northwestern University. Awesome leader. Super intentional. Has built an elite environment!
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Three Ways I Can Help:
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Training Day - During this transformative experience, I will guide you through the essential principles that lay the foundation for an elite environment in your program. Our approach is entirely interactive, ensuring an engaging and dynamic learning journey for all participants.
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