The Paradox of External Motivation

When I make a YouTube video and it starts to go viral, damn right I get excited. Or when I hit a great golf Shot on Hole 17, I sure want everyone in my group to have seen that shot.

But for the important things in life, success comes from fire that burns from within.

Tiger Woods, Steve Jobs, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein.

The All-Time greats. The untouchables. How do they do it?

I will say this — by no means was Kobe seeking validation from his 4am practice session.

Where External Motivation Falls Short

In this world of social media, it is so easy to go down the rabbit hole of posting everything and oversharing in order to get someone to tell you or comment that OMG YOU ARE GREAT. While those moments may provide dopamine spikes, they are not the reason we do what we do.

The more you find yourself needing to tell other people about all your success is the moment you should look within and figure out why you are doing such a thing. Look some of us thrive on this type of validation but when I take such action (which happens), I typically find myself insecure about the situation as a whole — an important classification to make (at least for me).

Where External Motivation becomes a Superpower

I often hear new dads citing kids as the purpose they’ve been lacking their whole life. This very notion excites me for fatherhood one day (not soon though — haha).

But as a single guy in their mid 20s, I find it rather difficult to find this deeper purpose in the work that I do. The “why.”

What I’ll say is this: when you find someone or a group of people that is tremendously impacted by the work you do, they become your motivation. Not to toot my own horn but there have been several instances this trip where I’ve met people that are touched by what I am doing. And if you are reading this right now and you are one of those people, just know, you are the external motivation that drives me forward. So thank you.

14 days on a solo road trip will never be easy. Honestly, it has been mental torture at times.

But what pulls me through those moments, where my internal battery is fully exhausted, is understanding this is bigger than me. It’s you.

If you’ve read to here, thank you, and especially thank you to the ones that are touched by my work and have expressed that.

It means more than you think.

-Jack

PS the highlight of the day was droning over a flower field in New Jersey with my cousin!!!