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Heart First Leadership
Welcome to Heart First Leadership, the podcast that explores a revolutionary approach to leadership. In a world that often prioritizes success above all else, it's easy to find ourselves leading from a space of fear, doubt, and unworthiness. There is a new way!
Join me, your host Ryan Sawyer, and my co-host and wife, Heidi Sawyer, on a transformative journey as we seek to inspire and guide leaders, parents, and athletes to unlock the secrets to a truly fulfilling life—one that resonates from the heart. In Heart First, we challenge the conventional norms and embark on a voyage together, where heart-driven leadership becomes the compass for a life well lived.
Are you ready to redefine where you lead from? Let's dive into meaningful conversations, insights, and practical tips that will empower you to embrace a new paradigm of leadership.
Heart First Leadership
Motivation is Not the Problem
This episode is a heartfelt call to embrace the internal game over the external spectacle of success, urging listeners to detach self-worth from outcomes. Life's trials become less about the score and more about growth and introspection. By empowering ourselves and the younger generation to navigate the world with a sense of individual meaning, we open up pathways to consistent, purposeful action that isn't reliant on fleeting bursts of motivation. Join us as we navigate these transformative ideas, underscoring the notion that what makes us irreplaceable isn't the medals on the wall or the accolades in our inbox, but the unique journey each of us undertakes to discover the irreplaceable value we bring to the world.
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Hey, team, welcome back to the show today. I want to talk about motivation a little bit, and I've been hearing this a lot, working with individuals, with athletes, with teams. I've been hearing parents and coaches talk about how they believe that there's a motivation problem. So, first of all, let's understand the motivation is fleeting. Motivation comes and it goes, and and. So if we're going to create the life that we want, if we're really going to reach potential and we're going to uncover our uniqueness and and be able to contribute to the world through our using our gifts, then we cannot wait for motivation, first of all to know like it comes and it goes, these little moments, these little fluctuations from one moment to the next that comes and it goes. We do not have a motivation problem, but we have, in my personal opinion, is a meaning problem to understand that we, as humans, are governed by basic human needs and One of those needs a team. Welcome back to the show today. I want to talk about motivation a little bit, and I've been hearing this a lot, working with individuals, with athletes, with teams. I've been hearing parents and coaches talk about how they believe that there's a motivation problem. So, first of all, let's understand the motivation is fleeting. Motivation comes and it goes, and so if we're going to create the life that we want, if we're really going to reach potential and we're going to uncover our uniqueness and and be able to contribute to the world through our using our gifts, then we cannot wait for motivation, first of all, to know like it comes and it goes, these little moments, these little fluctuations from one moment to the next. That comes and it goes. We do not have a motivation problem. What we have, in my personal opinion, is a meaning problem to understand that we, as humans, are governed by basic human needs and One of those needs is the need for meaning, for contribution to be significant. But even sometimes this might be Talked about as purposed. This could be misunderstood as well.
Speaker 1:One of the narratives that I hear from man, a lot of different teenagers who I work with, is what's the point? What's the point? There's so many expectations on them. Maybe there's so much pressure, school and sports, and friends and peers. It creates this narrative of what's the point, and I can relate to this. There's been times, and there's still is times, when I'm not connected, when I'm not connected to truly what is my unique contribution to the world.
Speaker 1:When young adults begin to come online, meaning that they are approaching their teen years and they're preparing themselves to enter into the world and to be independent, the basic human needs of physical well-being, of connection, of having a sense of self or autonomy, and then having meaning, begin to become more and more important, which means they kind of need to move up this hierarchy where they'll be given more choice, which gives them a sense of control in their lives To be able to explore and to search what makes them different and unique and irreplaceable. Something to think about is when we start to search for these things, we tend to look outside of ourselves, we tend to look to the world, we tend to look to everything that's already been created. The reality is, you're not going to find the meaning of your life, what makes you unique and irreplaceable, by looking at it with somebody else's created, with somebody else's doing and with somebody else's things. In this day and age, in 2024, we are bombarded with information, bombarded with stimulation, bombarded by everybody else's highlight reels. There's so much freaking noise out there that it causes a drawn attention, like legitimately, your attention is being sucked out of you into everything outside and around you that has legitimately nothing to do with you. It sucks your energy. Where your attention goes, energy flows. It sucks your energy legitimately out of your body and into all kinds of things that you cannot control and that have nothing to do with you. When we do that, the individual gives you a lower sense of autonomy or choice because your attention is elsewhere News, media, social media, whatever. We then try to overcome this. But reality is, by trying to overcome a lower sense of self, we create struggle, we create obstacle, we create suffering.
Speaker 1:What does it mean when I say that we don't have a motivation problem? We have a meaning problem? If you try to determine the meaning of life and the totality of life, it's just too big of a question for you or me to answer. It's too big of a question. It's a conversation that you need to have with God. It's a conversation that we may never understand. If you do understand it, it probably means you've passed on. But if you're struggling, you have to come through to make it happen and to certainly so.
Speaker 1:It's about being able to determine what is the meaning of your life. What is the meaning of your individual life based upon your conditioning, what you've experienced, your upbringing, your interests and being able to help our kids, our athletes, our environments to explore this in a way that is unique to them, to allow for them to have the space and the time to explore what makes them unique and irreplaceable. It creates the greatest sense of psychological safety, and when an individual feels safe to learn, to explore, to take risks, to grow, to make mistakes, they find a meaning and they find this fleeting thing that we all call motivation. Oh, they're just not motivated. Who's ever motivated on a day in and day out basis, without meaning?
Speaker 1:And it's different than purpose. Purpose is some external thing that you're doing. You're a doctor, you're a lawyer, you're this. My purpose is to play football. My purpose is to play the sport. No one's purpose is to do something externally. That's the vehicle that you choose. Great, you choose this vehicle.
Speaker 1:Let's say it's a sport. Let's say it's football. That's my thing, right, that's what I used to play, that's what I used to coach. That in itself, the sport winning is meaningless. This is the truth. It's meaningless Until I place what I decide to make it mean how I use my experiences, how I use the win or the loss and being a part of a team and venturing towards a specific outcome or goal, how I use that to develop myself, to strengthen my sub-concept, to make myself more resilient to place, to find out, to explore, to figure out.
Speaker 1:Why am I here? Because you are here for a reason. Why am I here, man? It's a question that we should all be asking ourselves. Instead of saying that we have a motivation problem, instead of continuously looking outside of yourself to try to motivate yourself to what others are doing, spend time just taking a look and figure out. How can we begin to create an understanding and a sense of clarity around the meaning of my individual life, even to place a meaning on things that are hard, that are a struggle? Here's a little bit of a tip for you to understand You're not going to be able to connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect the dots looking back, which means that you can only take your life as it is right now and determine what's the meaning of my life today.
Speaker 1:When you begin to explore and you begin to have clarity of the meaning of your individual life, it awakens something. It awakens something inside of you that is potentially currently lying dormant. It awakens a beast. It awakens a level of passion. It awakens purpose. It awakens clarity of the next challenge. It awakens that you're going to go and do everything in your power to potentially excel at a specific sport, build a business, whatever it is that you're adventuring on life. You're going to set a goal to awaken this part of you that's lying dormant within you. I say set the goal to awaken your soul. We can all decide this for ourselves, in any circumstance.
Speaker 1:The thing that nobody can take away from us, the thing that is completely unconditional, is how we choose to respond and the meaning we place on things. This comes from Victor Frakel man's search for meaning. We have these different values in life. One is a creative value, which means the work worked, what you bring to the world. The experiential value, what it is that you experience within the context of your life the love loved, the experience had. And your attitude, your attitude, no value. It's your attitude that nobody can take away from you. Somebody can take away the creative value, someone can take away the experiential value, and you can be left with very little of those two things being of a supportive, positive nature. But the one thing that absolutely nobody can take away from you is your attitude, what you decide to focus on and what you decide to make. It mean how you decide to respond to the circumstances unfolding in front of you and what you decide to place on that. What kind of an agreement, what kind of an agreement do you decide to make about yourself because of the circumstances unfolding in front of you? Because the winning in itself is meaningless. You won the game. You lost the game? Yeah, sure, maybe it has something to do with you, but it also has a lot of other factors that you are in control of.
Speaker 1:The reality is is that motivation will never be a problem again. When you begin to learn how to determine and explore and find the meaning of your individual life, and knowing that you can decide that and then you can build upon it, it becomes this beautiful exploration and journey where you're able to venture into the unknown, you're able to take risks and you're able to do what we call compete untethered. So we don't have a motivation problem, we have a meaning problem, and this meaning problem continues to, let's call, fester, because every single time that we try to solve it, we're focusing on the wrong things, we're focusing on things we can't control, we're putting a sense of worthiness and worth in a role and identity and a specific outcome, rather than just exploring and creating space for us, for you, for me, for the leaders of the world, to explore and create environments where kids and athletes can explore what is the meaning of their life, and you'll never have to worry about motivation again. When you begin to find it, when you begin to realize that you have this power to determine what is the meaning of your life, your individual life, you'll find what makes you unique. You'll find what makes you irreplaceable. You'll create this sense of psychological safety where you never have to have anything outside of you, be a certain way for you to be okay again, which will allow for you to unleash and compete untethered, in a way that is uncommon and most people don't even fathom, which means that if you lose, you quote unquote fall short.
Speaker 1:You're not a loser. You can place whatever mean on that. It's a redirection. It's an opportunity to learn and grow. It's an opportunity to evaluate yourself. There is no good nor bad. The positive or the negative influence upon your life, your mind, your self-concept is 100% in your hands.
Speaker 1:So you wanna build a stronger self-concept, begin to learn how to choose the response that you're gonna have to the circumstances unfolding in front of you and decide what you're gonna make of me.
Speaker 1:This is the intergate. At the end of the day, it's the only thing you have control over is your attitude. Your attitude is a combination of, again, how you choose to respond to what you place as meaning or an agreement upon a circumstance that's unfolded in front of you. So hope that this sparks a new thought, challenge how we currently view competitive environments, meaning of our lives, creating an environment where people feel safe to explore their uniqueness. That's what I want for you, that's what I want for the world, that's what it means to be in the arena, that you feel blessed for being somebody on the arena floor doing the work, exploring, letting go of outcomes, competing untethered, getting up every day, being ready, willing and open to lean into the unknown, take risks and learn what it is and what it is that you need to learn from the unfoldment of the circumstances in front of you for you to grow and evolve, to strengthen the meaning of your individual life.
