Motivation…It’s A Marathon, Not A Sprint

You hear that Marathon/Sprint phrase bandied about a lot these days. But when it comes to motivation, it’s actually truer than you might think.
The world is filled to the brim with motivational speakers. They sell books, appear on talk shows, do live events, podcasts, individual and group sessions, tweets, memes and virtually every other form of what we call take-it-or-leave-it communication.
And I’m happy for them. But at the same time as these people are raking in big bucks for all the stuff they do, I can’t help but wonder if motivation in any of these forms really has a positive long term effect on anyone relying on it to keep themselves pumped.
There are a couple of reasons why I think this way.
Reason one is that a great deal of the motivational industry is really about getting you pumped up in a very general get-out-there-and-do-it-because-you-know-you-can sort of way.
I have a a feeling that the half life of this type of motivational modus operandi is anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and then it’s back to business as usual.

The second reason I think this way, is that most of this motivational stuff is up for the individual to agree to participate in. And that, for a lot of people, opens up a huge can of worms, from ‘Do I really have time for all this?’ to “What’s it really gonna do for me?’ and everything in between.
Now don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against motivation or even the industry is has spawned. I think it’s great that there are people around that other people look to for inspiration. I’m just really questioning the nature of the beast, and whether, for the most part, it’s really as effective as it’s cracked up to be.

The Real Motivation For Me

Most of my personal inspiration and motivation came from people who weren’t part of the motivation industry at all. These included many of the very talented people I met over the years, like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Mordecai Richler.
But it also included the people who inspired me just by bring really good at what they did. Like Bill Bernbach, who pretty much invented modern advertising, director John Sayles who made great movies with next to no bucks and writer producer Chuck Lorre, who has done the impossible by keeping a sitcom called The Big Bang Theory at the very pinnacle of network TV shows for nine whole years.

The Current Manifestation Of My Motivation

When Charlene Norman and I started Bullet Proof Consulting, we understood that there would be a certain amount of motivation involved in the work we would do for our clients.
And so we evolved a platform that included motivation, not on an event or series of events basis, but as an integral part of the relationship that we would have with our clients which is as much motivational as it is business system and communication based.
The platform statement looks like this:
At Bullet Proof Consulting, we believe that achieving and sustaining success in business is about these 3 essential things:
1. Instituting a system that ensures the ability to grow consistently year over year
.
2. Adopting a winning mindset or an invincible cloak of armour.
3. Having a trusted ally (mentor, advisor) in your back pocket.
Our goal in designing a platform of this sort is to provide continuity and consistency for our clients in terms of A) adherence to the system we work with them to create or refine for their business, B) the communications and/or branding we do for them and C) the ongoing motivation we provide.
In essence we become part of the fabric of our client’s business. Which, when you think about it, is a much more solid and stable way forward than anything done on an ad hoc basis, including going out to big time motivational events.

Our Why

We have structured this service to be affordable and make real business sense to both larger and smaller organizations. And what we bring to the process, besides a genuine business maturity, is the motivational continuity than can often be the difference between moving forward with real confidence and something less desirable.
So while I am a big believer in motivation, I am an even bigger believer in continuity, or the marathon aspect of motivation. Because while sprinting definitely has it’s place, any business that tries to run itself that way is just begging for a serious hamstring injury

Jim Murray is a marketer, communication strategist, writer, art director and blogger His partner, Charlene Norman is a business systems and operational analyst. Their collaboration is called Bullet Proof Consulting, headquartered in St Catharines, Ontario. Bullet Proof is designed to help companies change their thin king for the better, to become more productive, efficient better branded and successful in today’s highly competitive business world. You can get a very clear impression of how we think by reading our business blogs at www.bulletproofconsulting.ca/blog

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