Drive: The 3rd D to Success

Dana Lynn Bailey said “If you have Discipline, Drive and Determination, nothing is impossible”. In the past couple of weeks, we covered both Determination and Discipline.

Determination is having a firmness of purpose. It is knowing what you want to accomplish and being single focused in reaching the goal.

Discipline can also be described as self-control and is all about exercising restraint over own momentary impulses and desires because we are striving for a bigger outcome. It’s about delaying gratification until our objectives are met.

What is Drive and Why is it Important?

Drive is the final ingredient and is defined as the urge to attain a goal. It is what keeps us moving forward even when the going gets tough. It has an element of ambition to it and is the energy behind achieving success.

Have you ever wondered why some people are able to meet their ambitious goals while others give up or don't bother trying at all? It's drive that makes the difference.

The first thing to understand about drive is that it is not the same as motivation. Motivation is having the willingness to do something whereas drive is a planned effort to achieve.  The difference between the two is akin to the difference between having gas in the tank (motivation) and knowing how to drive. The good news is that you can increase your drive, just like you can learn how to drive a car. When you drive somewhere, you have a specific goal in mind; you have a destination, much like you do when you’re chasing a goal. You may have the desire or motivation to reach a goal, but drive is what will get you there.

Drive: The Force Behind Making Changes and Succeeding

Drive is the force behind making changes. Some people are driven by fear, some by love, and others by power. There is no right or wrong way to be driven; it just depends on what motivates you.

People who are driven know how far they want to go in life and what they need to do in order to get there. They know their strengths and weaknesses as well as the skills they need to make it happen. They set specific and realistic goals that are challenging enough to keep them motivated.

When you are driven, you push yourself out of your comfort zone and test your abilities and limits. You understand that being uncomfortable is necessary for growth and improvement. You welcome challenge as a way of learning, refining and growing stronger and you maintain focus on the task at hand instead of using distractions as a reason to quit or slow down.

Learning is a key aspect of drive and having a growth mindset. Children who are raised to embody the growth mindset learn that mistakes are simply one way that something didn’t work. As adults, they don’t see failure as the end but rather as a learning experience. When they fail, they discover what doesn’t work. Then, they can then try something new that will lead them closer to their goal! They are not afraid to try new things, approach problems in a different way or make those mistakes because they see success as a journey, not a destination. It’s all part of the game and they use these failures as steppingstones to meeting their objectives.

On the flip side, people with a fixed mindset will become paralyzed or give up when the going gets tough. They have not developed their drive and learned along the way that failure equals a lack of intelligence or innate talent.

Daily Ways to Cultivate Drive

In order to be successful, you have to work hard. Having a strong work ethic not only benefits you at work, but it also contributes greatly towards academic achievements, emotional stability and personal relationships with friends, family members, and significant others.

That's why I'm here with a few tips on how to stay motivated when things get tough, so you can keep reaching for your goals!

Focus on the End Result

Do you know what you want? Are you clear in why ”this” matters to you? Have you given any thought to how achieving this goal will make you life better?

Before embarking on any journey, we have to be clear about where we’re headed. That’s why having goals is so important. They keep us on track. We may hit some setbacks from time to time. We know the road is never smooth! Life generally has other plans for us, but being convinced about what we want to achieve, why that is so and what we expect the benefits to be on the other side of the journey will keep us on a straight and narrow and drive us to succeed

Get Out of Your Head

Life will throw us curveballs. And it’s OK to feel bad, get mad or take the hit. Just don’t live there. Don’t go down the rabbit hole.

Instead, ask yourself

• What is the lesson here?
• What did this experience teach me?
• What can I do differently moving forward?
• Who can help me brainstorm options (you never have to do it on your own unless you choose to)?
• What can I anticipate as other potential challenges?
• How can I build solutions into my next steps?
• And keep asking “what else?”

Stay in Your Lane

Your journey is yours to follow. Do you remember the swim meet between Michael Phelps and Chad LeClos in the 2016 Rio Olympics? LeClos had led the race until the final lap. When he saw Phelps overtaking him, he took his eye off his race and started worrying about what Phelps was doing. This cost him the podium. He didn’t even qualify for a medal.

The moral of the story is stop comparing yourself to others or worrying about what they are doing. Run your own race and do you. Focus on what is driving you and your goals and you will get there! There is no need for comparison.

Remember Why You Started

Do you write your goals every day? Doing so keeps you sharp. It helps to frame what you do during the day. It reminds you of what is important. Keep your WHY front and center too. Knowing where you’re headed gives you direction, but your WHY fuels your drive. You obviously started this journey for a reason. Never lose sight of that.

I left my corporate job in January to pursue coaching passion. It hasn’t been all roses. It’s hard switching gears so drastically, especially after having worked in corporate for 30 years! But I know my mission. I know the impact I want to have in my community. I know the legacy I want to leave and that is what drives me to keep going on the days when it feels like I’m going nowhere fast!

Embrace the Suck

Remember that it's not going to be easy, but if there were no challenges then we would never grow stronger or better. We would never become the person we need to be in order to succeed and make our difference in the world. So yeah, there will be moments when it’s hard. We need relish those moments because they are what gives us the gold to getting to our destination.

So, you have two choices:

1. You can ring that bell, like SEALS recruits do when they’ve had enough

OR

2. You pull yourself up by your bootstraps and keep going no matter what, through the pain, through the tears, through the disappointments. Yes, it sucks, but diamonds are formed under pressure. Your drive will help you through those moments

Final Thoughts

Our brains are always looking for ways to avoid discomfort, which is why it can be so hard to get started. As you may have guessed from the title of this post, drive has a lot to do with our ability to stick with something until we see results. And you CAN learn to become more driven. Here are the 5 simple steps that will help nurture your drive (and hopefully provide some relief!) 1) Focus on the end result, not on how challenging or difficult things seem now, 2) Get out of your head by staying in the moment and asking yourself the right questions, 3) Stay in your lane and run your own race, 4) Remember why you started and use it as fuel to keep going and 5) Embrace the suck and become the person you need to be to succeed in your journey.

Which of these 5 tips for cultivating drive have been helpful for you? Let us know so we can help more people find success!