My oldest loves basketball. He loves playing, watching, reading about, and every other element of the game. I’m trying to be interested and engage with the sport because he is important to me. One facet of the sport that actually fascinates me is the argument about which player is the greatest of all time. I don’t know enough to engage it meaningfully, but I’d argue that Michael Jordan has had the greatest cultural impact. From the game itself to pop culture to how the business of basketball is conducted, he is the “slam dunk” favorite in the conversation. That presence, which transcends the sport itself, is fascinating.
Jordan had a lot of physical attributes that made him a dominant player, but what really made him stand head and shoulders above the rest was his drive. He trained, practiced, and played with an intensity and drive that was almost supernatural. I recently came across the term: competition fuel. Competition fuel is a term coined by writers to describe his habit of surrounding himself with motivation. His training area was covered with newspaper clippings highlighting his rivals, criticizing his performances, quotes dismissing his team, and reminders of games where another player outperformed him. It became his “mental wallpaper.”
Jordan discovered that these slights and defeats motivated him to train harder. He made it a point to look at them daily and remind himself of who he was competing against and what he was training to overcome. In one interview he famously said: “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” He kept track and remembered them all, using them as fuel to drive himself to work harder.
This approach to excellence, which begins with finding your objective and what drives you to become that version of yourself is what psychiatrists call goal priming, environmental cueing, visualization, and adversity based motivation. He thrived on it and filled his mental and emotional gas tank with that fuel at every opportunity.
Negative reviews and critiques aren’t the only way of doing this sort of thing. Arnold Schwarzenegger famously covered the walls of his bedroom with pictures of body builders and other athletes whose physiques he wanted to acquire. He stared at them daily and pictured himself looking like that. That visualization and environmental cuing fueled his drive to become Mr. Olympia.
Most people aren’t trying to become a world class athlete. However, most people have life goals that take time and sustained effort to achieve. From achieving a career, to losing weight, to mastering a musical instrument, learning the building blocks of motivation is fundamental to long term effort and success.
The first step in the process is identifying your objective. After that you must discover how you are best motivated to strive toward achieving that goal. Finally, returning regularly to the well of inspiration and reminding yourself of your goals are fundamental to staying on task and remaining fueled for the journey.