How to Be a Rock Solid Leader: Living Your Motivation

Motivation is something most people have completely wrong. It’s a topic even so-called “motivational speakers” get wrong. The reason for this is there is no such thing as a motivational speaker. Continue reading, and you will see why.

For you to build a business successfully, you already know you need to be a rock solid leader. Part of being that rock solid leader is being motivated to reach your destiny.

I remember many of my leaders in the navy telling me part of my job as a leader was to motivate my junior officers and sailors. If you’ve had leadership positions, you’ve probably been told the same thing.

For me, it was always a source of confusion. The reason for the confusion was I was always motivated and nothing anyone did actually changed what I was motivated to do.

It’s not that other people who were my leaders didn’t have an effect on my drive, but they simply did not provide the motivation.

What is Motivation Really?

Time to Start Living Your Motivation

Webster’s Dictionary says motivation is: 1. the act or process of giving someone a reason for doing something :2. the act or process of motivating someone the condition of being eager to act or work : 3. the condition of being motivated a force or influence that causes someone to do something

Honestly, I find definitions 1 and 3 completely wrong, because as soon as your source giving you a reason to do what you are trying to achieve or the source influencing your actions starts to exit the picture, then your drive to achieve also begins dissipating. If this source doesn’t return, then your chances of succeeding at whatever the goal was becomes very poor.

The only motivation that will ensure your success is definition 2, where your motivation is a condition. It must be a condition of your mind. Your motivation must exist internally for you to achieve major goals.

What made me realize this ultimately was the time of my divorce in 1992/3. I had a terrible marriage to a truly destructive woman. You can ask all the questions why I would marry this woman, but that isn’t the point here.

How I Lived My Motivation

The fact is, I married her. I knew she had major psychological battles, but I believed I could overcome anything, including her rages, and love of opiates. I wasn’t going to give up. I was always faithful to this woman, despite the many horrible acts I could tell you and most would not believe. Most of all, I never harmed her physically… ever.

In the end, this woman sold my possessions while I was at sea so she could buy more drugs. She opened credit cards in my name and charged them to the max. She threw objects like stones, and irons, and whatever she could find at me. She crashed my car intentionally. She would literally attack me. Ultimately, she bought a gun and began threatening to kill me. But I still wouldn’t give up.

Finally, one evening her mother called. I was sitting on the bed in a room I generally considered safe. Her mother wanted to speak to me because my ex had gone into a rage on the phone. My ex gave me the phone and continued listening in.

While I was talking to her mother, me ex went berserk. She jumped on me, and I tried to push her off while her mother was still connected. Then my ex literally bit my thigh. I don’t mean some little nip. She clamped on, and wouldn’t let go.

I was yelling at her to stop and her mother is the phone just scared to death of what could possibly be going on. When my ex finally let go of her animal bite, she then started yelling at me how she was going to kill me, and started pointing her fingers at me like a gun. Normally, this isn’t threatening, except she had actually bought a gun.

In this same week, my ex had been calling the Navy’s spouse abuse hotline and saying I was attacking her. Like it or not, when a woman calls such a hotline, the man is guilty until proven innocent. Ever tried to prove you didn’t do something? It’s like dividing by zero… you can’t do it.

I went to work the next day and was confronted by my commanding officer, Jim Patrick. When I told the story, he noticed the swelling on my thigh as I sat in his office. It was visible through my uniform trousers. So I had to tell the whole story, including the death threats.

He directed me to get a doctor to examine my leg and verify the human bite mark, and then for me to report the death threat to the police. He also had the military order me out of my own house for my own safety since he could not order her out of the house.

That’s where I began to understand motivation. What could possibly motivate me to want to stay in such an inconceivable situation? Also, what could move a woman to such a violent personality?

How to Live Your Motivation

That motivation was not external. There was no one giving speeches, no one patting us on the back to do what we were doing, nobody doing anything on the outside to encourage our progress or demise. We were both motivated from within. We were both motivated from our environment in our childhoods.

I had developed the internal motivation to succeed overwhelmingly at everything. This included marriage. I was not about to fail at marriage, even if it killed me. It took an external force to set me straight. Thank God for Jim Patrick, or I seriously may have been dead in a matter of days.

Patrick was not a motivator. He was an inspiration. Other people and leaders inspire you to take action through their own actions.

A leader inspires people to either build an internal motivation or excel at existing motivations. The inspiration you provide as a leader, only becomes motivation when the listener or observer internalizes it as an overwhelming desire.

Succeeding in business requires this same motivation. Having mentors that inspire with their knowledge, guidance, and actions is very important. But if you don’t have the motivation internalized deep within your being, your success likely will never occur, or never achieve it’s real possibilities, or never sustain itself for long.

You must want to succeed more than you want to breathe. No one can give that to you. You must make it part of you or you will find excuses to do something else. In learning business online, if you don’t have the motivation, you say everything is a scam when you can’t get it right.

You will blame a product, a service, another person, your spouse, your kids, your job, etc. You blame anything but yourself. The reason:  you don’t have the internal motivation.

Look deep into yourself and find the real reason you want to succeed as a business owner. You must have reasons beyond satisfying others. There must be a real and personal satisfaction to achieve if your motivation will become powerful driver.

One great source for you to find your motivation so you can be a rock solid leader is here…