People who care do a better job in everything they do.
Why do people care? What inspires them? The answer is almost anything you can imagine.
Some people are driven internally by their own competitive juices. Some are driven externally by their thirst for approval and appreciation. Some are driven by a desire to succeed for their families, while others are driven to succeed to show up their families.
Use what you really care about to make yourself passionate about how things turn out.
“I’d rather become a furniture mover” is how seventy-year-old Lorna responded when her doctor told her she needed to exercise regularly. She said exercise would bore her out of her mind.
Lorna and her doctors realized that exercising was so unappealing to Lorna that she was unlikely to follow through with it on her own. So her doctors helped place her in a women’s exercise group that met three times a week at the University of Wisconsin.
While she was no great fan of the exercise regimen, it was the fifty other women in the group who first changed Lorna’s attitude. “The wonderful women kept me coming back. It’s one of the neatest groups of women I’ve ever met in my life. They have depth to them.”
Over time, the rewards of the exercise brought their own joy to Lorna’s life. “When I first started with this group I had back trouble and had laser surgery on my knee and a lot of pains and stiffness. But I’m back now. I can twirl and jitterbug every bit as good as I did when I was a kid. So that’s amazing.”
When tested in national surveys against such seemingly crucial factors as intelligence, ability, and salary, level of motivation proves to be a more significant component in predicting career success. While level of motivation is highly correlated with success, importantly, the source of motivation varies greatly among individuals and is unrelated to success.
Bashaw and Grant 1994