You don’t need more motivation… you just need to release the brake..

If you’ve ever been to Great Yarmouth, you may know two very different rides.

The Snails are pretty much exactly what you’d imagine. You sit inside a giant snail and gently trundle around the track. Nothing too dramatic happens. You know roughly what’s coming, it’s familiar, and there’s not a great deal of risk involved.

Then there’s the Roller Coaster.

An old wooden roller coaster with climbs, drops, bends and considerably more uncertainty. And unlike most modern roller coasters, there’s actually a brakeman riding on board, manually controlling the speed as it makes its way around the track.

I used these two rides recently when I was giving a talk because, actually, they’re not a bad metaphor for how many of us approach work and business.

We say we want to grow, be more visible, put ourselves forward, charge more, have the difficult conversation, make the decision, record the video, approach the client or finally do that thing we’ve been talking about for months.

But somehow we keep ending up back on the Snails…. Safe. Familiar. Predictable.

And then we get frustrated with ourselves.

We think we need more motivation, more discipline, abetter plan. Maybe another book, another course, another podcast or perhaps a really stern word with ourselves on Monday morning.

But what if motivation isn’t actually the problem?

What if your internal brakeman is simply doing its job a little too enthusiastically?

Because sometimes the part of us that hesitates isn’t questioning whether we’re capable. It’s questioning whether it’s safe.

What if people judge me?

What if I get it wrong?

What if I upset somebody?

What if I fail?

And, strangely enough, sometimes even…

What if I succeed and suddenly people expect more from me?

Our conscious mind can be shouting GO, while another part of us is quietly pulling the brake.

And pushing harder doesn’t always release it.

Sometimes you need to find out why it’s being pulled in the first place.

Something to try

Think of one thing you’ve been procrastinating over, avoiding or endlessly overthinking.

Instead of asking yourself, “Why can’t I just bl**dy do it?”, try asking:

What am I worried might happen if I do?

Then go a little further:

And if that happened, what would it mean about me?

That second question is often where things get interesting.

“I don’t want to record a video” can become “people might judge me.”

Which can become “if they judge me, perhaps I’m not as good at this as I think I am.”

Suddenly it makes a little more sense why the brake keeps appearing.

Something worth watching

If you have eight minutes this week, have a watch of Kat Cole’s TED talk, The Hot Shot Rule to Help You Become a Better Leader.

I particularly like the way she talks about confidence because she turns the usual thinking on its head.

We often think we need to feel confident before we act.

But sometimes it’s taking the action that actually creates the confidence.

And that feels very relevant here.

Because your brakeman doesn’t always need another pep talk.

Sometimes it needs a little evidence that you really can handle the ride.

The answer isn’t to rip the brakes off completely because we need them.

It’s about recognising when they’re protecting us from a genuine danger… and when they’re stopping us from doing something simply because it feels unfamiliar.

So perhaps there’s a question worth asking yourself this week:

Where in my working life am I still riding the Snails when I actually want to get on the Roller Coaster?

And if you know there’s something holding you back, but you can’t quite work out why, that’s exactly the sort of thing I help people uncover.

Sometimes moving forward isn’t about pushing yourself harder.

It’s about finding out what keeps pulling the brake.

And that I can help with.

Shirley x