What Is Your Inner Drive?

"Passion is a huge prerequisite to winning. It makes you willing to jump through hoops, go through all the ups and downs and everything in between to reach your goal."
-Kerri Walsh
     Motivation is part of a person's everyday life. Anything you do has something to do with motivation. If you are hungry, you are motivated to eat. It you're tired, you are motivated to sleep. There are many different factors that can influence your motivation and your motivation can naturally change overtime. Every person is motivated by different things. Motivation affects every part of your performance. Cheadle says," When your level of motivation is low, it can do many things. Affect your desire to train, be a strain on your relationships making it difficult to communicate with your coaches and teammates, knock you off course, make you feel like you can't handle the obstacles you encounter, cause you to barely have enough energy to go through the motions in practice, stunt your creativity, affect how you feel about yourself as an athlete, and affect your enjoyment of the sport." (Cheadle 28) These are all the very things that make athletes want to participate in their sport, and with lack of motivation, it makes it harder for athletes to compete or participate in these activities. Cheadle explains that in sports, athletes constantly get the romanticized message that if they have enough love for the game, they can overcome anything. Motivation is often oversimplified into terms like passion and heart, when in fact there are many factors that contribute to an athlete's level of motivation. (Cheadle 29) Sometimes athletes feel like they are extremely motivated to train, and other times it is the last thing they want to do. Having times of low motivation is really normal, but athletes should figure out what is going on because even though it may be normal, but not wanting to train or being motivated is not something that you should just push aside or sweep under the rug.
     Many things influence which direction people focus their efforts in. There are two sources of motivation according to Cheadle. Internal motivation and external motivation. Internal motivation is the desire that comes from inside of you. External motivation is the motivation that comes from the outside of you. Internal motivation is your "inner drive" or your love and passion for what you do. This is really what makes your sport meaningful to you. External motivation is when you are influenced to do something by things that are outside of you. You might participate for external rewards, winning trophies, making friends, etc. External motivations are the reasons that you play/compete other than just the pure joy of participating.
     Cheadle has helped me understand more that just having passion and liking a sport will not ultimately reach an athlete's desired outcome. Motivation and having the desire to work hard and get better is what will help you be successful, and people can't just hope for something good to happen if they don't put time and effort into it. Having a strong inner drive is very good because it can help turn disappointments into positive outcomes instead of negative ones. Whenever I am having bad days or bad games, I have been much more capable of turning my game around by getting my head right. I know that I did something bad and it had a negative impact on the game, but there isn't anything I can do about it and I have to try and focus on the next play because that is what really matters.


What motivates you when you wake up every day and how does it help you achieve your goals?
Citation: Cheadle, Carrie. On Top Of Your Game. Petaluma: Feed The Athlete, 2013. Print.