This movie is about a young drummer who gets to be mentored by an instructor who keeps pushing him to get better using an interesting technique (you can read more about it here). This method that the instructor uses is the opposite of positive thinking and somehow it works.
What the instructor is doing works because he knows what “buttons” to push and in this case I see two: high ego and even higher motivation. When someone has a high ego and someone else talks sh*t about him, he/she will do whatever it takes to prove the second one that he/she wrong. The key here is that the topic must be important for the person with a high ego, otherwise it won’t work. The motivation is important because if that proving requires too much effort, the one with the high ego won’t start the proving process.
Of course, the young drummer really wants to be big, but the extra push from the instructor is what really makes him go all the way. It’s a great example of what success requires: it requires lots of motivation, lots of pain, lots of perseverance and a great amount of passion without which the effort cannot be justified.
Just think about how you do things when you have to do them compared to when you want to do them. When the motivation is external, it will go away much much faster compared to the situation when the motivation is internal. That’s why every successful person tells that we must be passionate about what we want to do, otherwise we’ll fail. When we don’t love what we’re doing, we won’t be that motivated whenever we encounter obstacles and every rock looks like a mountain. But when we love what we’re doing, every mountain looks like a rock.
Think about reading a book… when you love it, you’ll finish it in no time, you’ll be spending your nights reading it, you’ll be sad when it’s over and you’ll start looking for others that can give you the same feeling, but when the book is bad, you’ll stop reading it because it doesn’t worth your time. That’s what is happening in our lives. When we love what we’re doing, we’ll do it day and night almost effortless because the process gives us energy instead of drawing it, but when we don’t love it, we’ll feel powerless very quick.
Have you found the process you love in this life? If so, what is it?
An interesting post. Enjoyed reading it.
As one of my favourite followers I would like you to do me a big favour (if you have the time).
Could you review Read After Burnout .com the ebook? You can find it on Amazon. Mike Evans
Mike
Thank you! I’ll see what I can do! 🙂
Thanks. Mike
I really enjoyed this post. Your last paragraph on how we do things in our lives really hit a personal note for me. Thanks for sharing!!!
Thank you for your kind words! It’s a really powerful movie and I tried to express and adapt from it the most powerful ideas.
You did great!! Would you be OK if I took that last paragraph and used it in a post to share what I got from it?
Yes, of course! Thank you! 😀
You are so welcome!
You and your thought provoking questions… I have to say my process is creativity. If I can be creative in doing something – explore new techniques, or engage in a set time frame or habitat to be creative in… Nothing else gets done. It IS the focus.
Creativity is a path to evolution!
I think I am binge reading your articles 😂 anyways… Its so true about High Ego. It’s totally me . If someone says I can’t do something, I go all the way to prove them wrong by acting on it. It’s like I am unstoppable.
About reading a book as you gave an example. I am slightly weird. If I pick a book, I finish it no matter what. If I enjoy the book then I read it day and night. Even if I don’t like a book, I do finish it, but yes, it takes a loooot of time.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts 😀
Thank you for reading and for sharing your experiences! I noticed that whenever we like or love something, we develop some sort of hunger that makes us go all in.