Motivating Athletes with Million-Dollar Dreams and Five-Dollar Habits
It’s frustrating to coach an athlete who dreams to play in college, go to the Olympics, or go pro but doesn’t show the work ethic to back this up. I call this having million-dollar dreams with five-dollar habits.
The go to method to motivate these athletes is to use rewards and punishments to try to light a fire in them. Sometimes this works, but more often than not it will only work temporarily. A permanent solution must avoid external motivation and instead instill self-motivation.
Self-motivation is the drive to do an activity for only the satisfaction gained in doing the activity. This satisfaction is the result of an innate mental stimulation that comes from an athlete’s core values. These core values typically include the following:
1. Purpose
2. Sacrifice
3. Discipline
4. Integrity
5. Preparation
6. Personal Growth
7. Work Ethic
8. Commitment
9. Responsibility
10. Quality
In the case of athletes with million-dollar dreams and five-dollar habits, my experience has shown that one core value in particular needs more emphasis. Integrity…
Integrity comes down to doing the right thing even when no one is looking. By and large, this means you can’t force someone to have integrity. Integrity is a choice. Similarly, just like integrity is a choice, having self-motivation is a choice. A choice to do something because you want to do it not because you have to do it.
It’s fairly routine for the average person to show self-motivation to do fun activities that provide immediate gratification. It’s not so easy to show self-motivation to do things that are both uncomfortable and only provide benefits in a distant future.
In essence, this latter type of delayed gratification self-motivation is what athletes need. They must learn to have integrity with their future self. This is doing the right thing when no one is looking and no one cares, at least no one in the present moment. There is some distant version of the athlete in an unknown future that will care. This future version of the athlete is the only one who can hold that athlete accountable for this type of delayed gratification self-motivation.
Grasping this “future self” concept is a foundational mental skill for the type of “delayed gratification self-motivation” athletes must have. If you are working with an athlete with million-dollar dreams and five-dollar habits, you must teach them to have integrity by thinking of the future version of their self as a stakeholder in the decisions they make today.