Are you motivated to achieve your goals, or are you inspired? Most people don’t know the difference, including most coaches. This is one of the fundamental distinctions between average and 7-figure coaches. You ever wonder why Nick Saban, coach of Alabama football, earns $11 million per year while the average high school football coach in the state of Alabama earns less than $50K? Watch this short video for an important part of the answer.
Video Transcript:
Hello everyone, this is Steve Siebold back with mentaltoughnessblog.com. Critical thinking question for you today. In your business or career, are you motivated to do what you do or are you inspired to do what you do? Motivation is wanting something. Inspiration is loving something. It’s one thing to be motivated. A lot of people, I would say most people, are motivated to go to work. Why? Well, they wanna make money because they have to put a roof over their head. We all do, and we have to eat and feed our families and all the rest of it, right? So we’re motivated because we want something, and that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that.
But when you’re inspired, when you’re inspired because you love something and that’s your primary motivator to do it, that’s a whole nother level. People who are motivated are powerful. People who are inspired are dangerous. Dangerous in the sense that you can’t stop them. You can’t stop someone who loves what they do. I mean, I’ve been in businesses before years ago where I made a lot of money, and I was uninspired. I was motivated to make money and I did, but I never loved it. What I really wanted to do was write books and give speeches and work with the media to spread my message of mental toughness. Basically what I’m doing right now on this little blog, and I wanted to do that worldwide.
I wasn’t motivated to do it, I was inspired to do it. I loved it. So when you love something, you think about it 24 hours a day. It’s like being in love with someone. You can’t stop thinking about it. People say, “Well you go on vacation and you work.” It’s not work, when you love doing it.
Now when I was motivated to work, when I just wanted to have something as a result of taking action, I didn’t think about it when I was on vacation. But as soon as I did something I was inspired to do, that changed my life. It changes everyone’s life because now you’re thinking about it 24 hours a day because you love it. It’s not about getting something, it’s about loving something so much that you can’t stop thinking about it. When you can’t stop thinking of something, when you’re dreaming about it all night every night and you’re thinking about it when you’re on vacation and it’s the first thing you think about when you wake up and it’s the last thing you think about when you go to sleep, you become a very dangerous competitor.
Very few people can compete with someone who’s inspired. So my critical thinking question for you today is are you more motivated in what you do for a living or are you more inspired? And if you’re just motivated, nothing wrong with it. Consider doing something that inspires you. Something you love so much that you would do it for free, yet you’re going to get so good at it eventually because you love it, that you’re going to do it for a fortune.
The difference just couldn’t be any bigger. Now if you’re coaching people, this applies the same way. What you want to do is find out what inspires people, not just what motivates them. Oh a lot of things motivate people. Money motivates people, all these different things motivate people, right? To have things, to get things, to be things, all those kinds of different motivators. Motivation works, it’s just not even in the same league as inspiration.
For example, I was motivated someday to live on a estate, like I live on as the Bona Allen mansion, there’s the six acre estate. It’s wonderful to live in a mansion like this and a property I really, really enjoy it. But I gotta tell you, I’m more inspired to help other people get their mansion or whatever it is that they’re after and live their dream. I love that. I like this. There’s a difference in motivation, there really is. Maybe that’s because I’m already here, and I’ve arrived at where I wanted to go in my life and that type of thing. Maybe that’s possible, but I find myself now thinking about not so much about being here where I am in life now but about how do I help other people live their dream?
That inspires me more than anything else, and that’s just an example. I don’t know what inspires you. Maybe it’s coaching people, but if you are coaching people, are you inspired to help them get what they want? So try to make the distinction with yourself, and if you’re a coach I know a lot of you guys are coaches, try to make the distinction between motivation and inspiration because the difference is huge. Just couldn’t be any different.
Motivation is … Here you can hear the money train in the back of the … You can hear that. That’s the money train going by the mansion. Motivation is when you want something, and inspiration is when you love something. That’s where you wanna be. You wanna be inspired. Something to think about. So thanks for watching the mental toughness blog. From the Bona Allen mansion, I’m Steve Siebold. Thanks for watching.
