Imagine yourself making your way forward. As you are going along, you come to a wall. On the wall is a door, but it’s locked. You look around trying to find how to get past the wall. You could try to climb over the wall, you could look for another door, or you could just accept that you can’t go forward anymore. Now, if you are determined, you will do everything you can to get past the wall. You’ll be creative, you’ll find some dynamite, you’ll call in a helicopter, you'll get some friends together and build a human pyramid to get over the wall. The point is, the wall creates drive. The wall is something to push against.
Walls are important because they represent resistance, and we need resistance to push against. People respond differently to walls though. Some people are easily stopped by resistance; they don’t have the drive to overcome what’s pushing back on them. When a wall gets in their way, they are stopped by it. Other people thrive on resistance. They do best the more difficult the obstacle. These are people with high drive.
People can have high drive for many different reasons. Sometimes it’s because of pure energy. They get over and through walls by sheer persistence. For others, it’s because they learned to get through walls that weren’t as daunting. Perhaps when they were young, they got through several walls, so they believed they could keep overcoming walls. Other times, people went through walls because they had no choice. Maybe they were forced by parents or circumstance, and as they grew older, they kept pushing through walls because that's what they were conditioned to do.
Depending on how far a person wants to go, there comes a point where it’s simply not possible to make it through all the walls in front of them. Walls create resistance, but too much resistance makes it’s impossible to move forward, no matter how much drive a person has. So, to keep moving forward, there comes a point where you need help moving past some walls.
Overcoming walls with other people's help can work in one of two ways, either they can support you to get through the walls, through encouragement or a push, or they can simply unlock the door and open it for you. When people support you, they create more drive. It’s motivating to have people behind you pushing you through walls. When the doors are open in front of you, it’s possible to move quickly forward, but the lack of resistance lowers drive.
Out in the real world, if you want to move forward, you can pay someone to get you through walls, either by having them help you push through it, or by unlocking the door in front of you. As examples, a personal trainer will push you through walls whereas an agent will unlock doors. People with more resources have better tools to get through walls.
For those who have few resources, they have to rely on either their drive or the support of others. The problem with support is it inevitably creates a sense of entitlement. The problem with entitlement is it creates low drive. If you’ve been pushed through every wall you’ve ever come up against, or had every door open in front of you, you’ll never know how to get through things on your own. Opportunity creates entitlement. Entitlement creates low drive, which eventually means a person stops moving forward. People who are entitled wait for someone else to do things for them. They don’t know how to move forward, so they wait for a push. They wait for someone to unlock the door for them, or for a push.
The opposite of entitlement is humility. A humble person will do the things they don’t want to do. They are grateful for the things that come to them, and they go out of their way to acknowledge it. They do the things that are hard and that aren’t fun. They aren’t afraid of work. More than that, they seek it. They look for opportunities to be useful. They don’t wait to be told how to move forward. They don’t wait for a push. If a door is locked, they try to find a way through it. A person who is humble is responsible. They do things they know they need to do without being reminded. If they say they'll do something, they do it. They are in control.
The minute a person says, “I deserve,” their drive decreases. Why? Because they lose sight of what matters. When people are chasing their goals, they work hard and push for success. Once they have success they say to themselves, I deserve this success. As soon as they do that, they stop thinking about what matters. And what is it that matters? Execution.
If you have to be reminded of something, it means your drive is low. A high drive person will figure out how to remember things they know they are supposed to do. They will create a system to execute without being told.
When a person executes poorly on little things, it also shows up in the big things. Why? Because that’s how behavior works. As an example, you can tell a lot about how a restaurant is run by looking at their bathroom. Is it clean? Is it nicely designed and decorated? If a restaurant goes to the effort to have a nice bathroom, you can bet they take care of their kitchen. The same is true when you look at a person. You can learn a lot about a person in how they dress, how they hold themselves, how they execute basic tasks. Is there thought put into the way they dress? Do they show up? Do they work hard without being told? These things matter because they are a reflection of how capable a person is.
Ask yourself these questions. Do you initiate? Do you wait to be told what to do? Do you expect a certain level of support? Do you do the work that needs to be done to move forward? Do you push through barriers? People with high drive take advantage of their opportunities and they remain humble, accountable, determined.
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