Motivation Alone is not enough for Results: Personal Training Vancouver

Motivation Alone is not enough for Results: Personal Training Vancouver

Okay, the title may be a little harsh. But it’s not untrue either.

Coaches are often mistaken for being motivational speakers, the role of coaching is being misunderstood for motivating people. We don’t do that, we do more than that.

Let me explain with two quotes on motivation by Jim Rohn:

“Motivation alone is not enough. If you have an idiot and you motivate him, now you have a motivated idiot.”

“If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.”

When you’re driving out there and lost your way, you don’t need more motivation to go faster, you need the right direction. You need to stop and get off the wrong road that leads you further than your destination.

Even if it’s the right road, motivation alone is not going to be enough. I like what Michael Neill said on this. According to the popular saying “where there’s a will, there’s a way”. Well, that can work but it’s gonna be tough. Michael suggested that it can be turned around – where there’s a way, there’s a will. That is infinitely more effective.

Have you ever climb a mountain and you get tired, you may even feel like you’re not going to finish and contemplate giving up, and then you saw from a distance the approaching destination and suddenly you get a big boost, that extra energy you thought you didn’t have and press on until the finishing line? That’s because when you realize there’s a way, and the goal is within your grasp, the motivation will come automatically. You don’t have to do anything about it.

We do our coachee a great disservice if we intervene at the level of motivation when that is not what he really need.

Sometimes advices like “Don’t give up” do more harm than good when all the coachee needs is to stop and regain clarity. Sometimes the coach plays the role of the cheerleader, but most of the time he plays the role of a deep learning partner, a sounding board and when necessary, a challenger. He will push the coachee to be at his best.

What coaching does best is to elicit higher awareness from the coachee to gain insights into his situation, and enable him to take self-corrective actions that are right for him. The right intrinsic motivation drivers are uncovered to put deeper meaning into his work and life. Then the balloons and buckets are identified to keep him on track on his coaching journey.

As you can see, what a terrible waste it’ll be if all the coach does is motivational talk.

From H.T. Lee

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