You Can't Force Motivation. You Can Plant the Seeds.
(Read this on the Growth EQ website here.)
One of the hardest things in coaching is seeing someone’s potential when they can’t see it for themselves. It’s right there in front of you, as clear as day, and yet for whatever reason, you can’t quite get that person to see what they're capable of.
Now, take that same situation as a parent. Your task just got one hundred times harder. You know your kid is capable of so much more, but they’re in that phase of life when nothing you say or do registers. Recently, Steve made an Instagram post on how when Mom or Dad force their kid to show up to practice or turn in their homework, those same kids may struggle once they are on their own. Good parenting relies upon building intrinsic motivation instead of relying on fear or force. But a common—and for good reason—response to that: What do you do if you see the potential, but there’s just no drive there?
You can’t force motivation. You can’t make someone passionate. But what you can do is plant the seeds and ensure the environment is conducive to growth. Those seeds might not sprout for months or even years, but if you plant enough seeds and tend the soil, then chances are, at some point, flowers will bloom.
In The Practice of Groundedness, Brad used this metaphor to illustrate the difference between letting development happen versus making development happen. “The seeds that you water are the seeds that grow.” You can’t force a seed to sprout. If you mess with it too much, you end up killing it. But you can’t neglect it either. You’ve got to plant it, tend it, and let it grow.
It’s no secret that Steve grew up as an obsessed runner, the kind who ran 16 miles a day as a teenager in the summer heat of Houston, Texas. He once did a track workout in the middle of a hurricane—why? Because it was on the schedule. Steve was self-driven to the max. In fact, his parents probably wished he were a little less driven so that they could vacation without needing to ensure Steve got in his two hours of running each and every day.
But Steve wasn’t always this way. As he wrote in Win the Inside Game, early in his sporting career, he chose soccer over running. After just missing the elementary school record in the mile and being offered the chance to train for it, he quit the first day of practice. And, instead of demanding he try to seize the glory or finish what he started, his dad was okay with it. Years later, when he was finally dragged out to train for high school cross-country, he puked on a suburban lawn and wanted to throw in the towel after his first run. Even when Steve had finally committed to running for the high school team his freshman year, he initially didn’t train on weekends or days when the team didn’t have official practice. For a while, Steve even told himself that he was just using cross-country to stay in shape for soccer.
Brad had a similar story with writing. Dating back to first grade, he had some natural talent and tested into a gifted program for verbally inclined kids. But he didn’t last long, for the simple reason that he wasn’t into writing. Fast forward to high school, and Brad was sacrificing grades in just about every other course so that he could spend more time writing and reading. Even when he got rejected from prestigious journalism schools and went to college for a different degree, he took nearly all his elective courses in writing. He wrote for the college newspaper. He turned down partying to read. He wrote as a side gig without making a penny for over a decade before he got his first paid assignment. All that drive now, but all of it lacking when Brad was a young child.
What changed for both of us? The people with whom we surrounded ourselves started planting seeds and tending to the garden. And we matured.
For Steve, it began when a couple of upperclassmen, Matt and Dane, dragged him out to run. It didn’t start well (the aforementioned puking…) but as they kept inviting him back, he was left with little choice but to show up. After all, as an incoming freshman, when two seniors with cars want to hang out every day—even if that hangout was a humid 60-minute run—you show up. To fill those seemingly unending minutes of running, they’d often talk about the sport itself. It started with their goals and aspirations, like making history and getting the team to the state championship for the first time. But it gradually expanded. It was on these runs that Steve first heard the names of running legends like Steve Prefontaine and Jim Ryun.
For Brad, it was two high school English teachers: Mr. Ozar and Mr. Pittman. They brought the material to life. They read Brave New World and discussed the parallels with the culture we were then living in (parallels that have only intensified). Mr. Ozar had all kinds of tattoos. Mr Pittman was a collegiate basketball player. They showed Brad that you could be captain of the football team and still be a 'nerd,' that you could be cool and write.
When your knowledge base and role models expand, so does your appreciation for the thing you’re doing. You start to see narratives for your own potential in a higher resolution.
The people you surround yourself with shape you by their own motivations and interests. As kids turn into teens and start to tune out their parents' messages, they need adults in their lives who can model motivation and interests and open their eyes to new paths. Who, just by the virtue of not being Mom or Dad, may have their sentiments and behaviors sink in.
Steve found this in his coaches, Mike DelDonno and Bob Duckworth. They saw a freakishly talented kid who had no idea how good he was. But they didn’t tell Steve that initially. Even though it was clear to everyone that he was one of the school’s top runners as a 14-year-old, they slow rolled it, letting Steve taste victory in a few freshman and then JV races, before finally pulling him up to the varsity squad. As we know from decades of research, making concrete progress is one of the core ingredients to intrinsic motivation. We all want to get better. And we can tilt the scales in our favor by shifting the comparison point.
Then there were the subconscious hints. The running magazines scattered in the locker room that served as the go-to thing Steve killed time with in the days before cell phones. There was a library full of running books that these coaches had in their classrooms for those who wanted to go deeper. And then, the periodic and much-welcomed day when the team only had a short jog for the workout, but then watched videos of old Olympic races.
They took a kid who was clueless about running and provided context. It started with a viewing of the Steve Prefontaine movies at a pre-race dinner. It continued with videos of past Olympics, and passing along the classic novel, Once a Runner.
And then came the ultimate seed plant: Coach DelDonno pulled Steve aside one day during his freshman year of track season and started talking about Jim Ryun. Thanks to the unofficial education from his teammates, Steve knew who Ryun was: the first boy to run under 4 minutes in high school, who still held the high school record at the time, and who went on to set the world record. Steve was enthralled. Coach Deldonno already had him won over, but then he planted the final seed no less: “We haven’t had a high school boy run under 4 minutes in over 30 years. Only three high schoolers have broken the barrier, all in the 1960s. I think you have a shot to join that club.”
His prediction ended up being one second off.
But that conversation was the final domino. Steve went home and wrote "3:54" on his wall (Ryun had run 3:55). He couldn’t quite wrap his head around beating the legend, but it was enough to get Steve hooked on the sport. He saw a new path, and for once, began to unpack where his potential may lie. Steve’s Coach didn’t have that conversation when he first saw Steve’s potential, but rather, planted seeds and waited until Steve was ready to see what he was capable of.
We often have the wrong idea about motivation and passion. We think that it’ll be like a Disney fairytale, that we'll find our proverbial Prince Charming and instantly fall in love. That we'll find the thing that ignites our passion, and never look back. Real life seldom works that way. Most passions grow slowly. It’s why research shows that if we have the fairytale, prince charming, perfect fit view of passion, we tend to give up on our pursuits early. As researchers put it, “Urging people to find their passion may lead them to put all their eggs in one basket but then to drop that basket when it becomes difficult to carry.”
From a practical standpoint, this means allowing yourself (or your kids, athletes, or employees) to explore your interests. People need breadth to see all of the available paths, whether it's playing multiple sports, exploring a diverse array of subjects, or even trying out different majors in high school or college. Exploration sets the stage. But then we need both peers and mentors who help us move from broad to deep. These people allow us to see that our pursuit is meaningful, and that we might have more to give than we once realized.
We need to plant seeds, tend the garden, and then give ourselves a long enough time to see if anything grows.
– Steve and Brad