If competition is a lousy way to motivate people, what can we replace it with? To discover the answer, we have to reframe the question.
Asking how to motivate people assumes that motivation is something people do to other people. People praise each other, punish each other, judge each other, motivate each other. But the best motivation doesn't come from anyone else. The best motivation comes from within. So the real question is, "under what circumstances do people naturally feel motivated?"
The highest form of human motivation derives from passionate mastery. That which we love and excel at will draw us back again and again--to the written page, to the basketball court, to the computer screen, to the drawing board. Every human activity holds the potential of passionate mastery, the promise of masterful passion.
We understand intuitively that this is the highest human motivation. Which employee would you rather have on your team: the employee who is working desperately to beat out every other team member, or the employee who is working passionately out of a profound love for the work?
Driven competitors want to show up everybody else. Passionate masters simply want to share the results of their mastery with others, to participate in something greater than themselves. This is what draws us to such people--this, and the intuition that we ourselves are capable of the same.
Stellar athletes describe the magic of "the zone," when all thoughts of winning and losing drop away, and they find themselves playing on a whole new level of ability and awareness. They feel themselves to be participating in a grand synchronicity of pattern and perfection. All human tasks can inspire this level of ability, this level of commitment. But the inspiration must come from within.
When we talk of motivating others, we trap ourselves in a world of hierarchy and disrespect. We are trying to make people work harder, faster, longer. We are not tying to connect to the whole human being who stands before us. Instead of asking, "Who are you, and who do you want to become?" we are asking instead, "Why are you not who I want you to be?" Where is the motivation in that?
In order to bring forth the motivation within--the passionate master within every human being--we must begin by building a genuine relationship with other human beings, within a framework of equals. And this begins by building a genuine relationship with ourselves.
If we do not honor our own passions, how can we hope to connect to the passions of others? A life without passion is a dull thing at best, a miserable thing at worst. We can not connect to that which we envy. If you want to connect to the passionate master in others, begin by nurturing the passionate master within yourself. When you are doing what you love, you will naturally inspire others do the same, just by being you.
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