Posted by Anybody who listens to the podcast regularly will know that I absolutely love running. It’s something I do on a regular basis. It’s not just for the health benefits – one of the reasons that I enjoy it so much is the amount of time it gives me for thinking.
Recently I’ve been doing very long, quiet runs near my new house. I go along the country lanes and there are no cars or people around, you might see the odd cow but that’s about it. It lets me get into really deep thought, and one of the questions that popped in my head recently was, just how well does someone really know themselves?
And when I ask how well do you know yourself, I mean, do you know what motivates you? I don’t mean superficially, like wanting to make lots of money. I’m talking about those really deep-seated core values, psychological drivers that motivate your behaviour. Once the idea was in my head, as I ran along, I began to give it more thought.
What motivated me to want to be successful in property? What motivates me to go running? It started to dawn on me how amazing it is that these thoughts and impulses can be there driving your actions, but you may never recognise the real reasons you’re doing something.
What is it that might be pushing you away from something and pulling you towards something else?
A question I was asked recently was, what drives my motivation to continue putting out my podcast? Again, I don’t mean that on a superficial level, like I have an audience. I mean at a core psychological level, is there an innate motivation that’s created the desire for me to keep showing up and putting out the information?
When I think about it, it goes right back to my early 20s. My dad died at the age of 45, and he was my hero: I had such a great relationship with him. After he died, I got involved in his business. There were various projects under construction, and his business partner told me that we had to finish them so we could repay our bank loans. We had to finish construction, sell the projects and then use that money to pay off the bank.
I had absolutely no experience whatsoever in any of this: my dad never really shared any of that stuff with me, and if I’m honest, I never really had much interest in it when he was alive. But suddenly, after he died, my ability to support the family was hinging on it, and the one person that I would turn to for advice was gone. I had no mentors, no network, no events to go to like we have nowadays. Of course, I had plenty of friends who were students like me, but nobody who was in the construction or property business.
Within a couple of months of my dad dying, I got a job working for Scott Tallon Walker Architects, where my bosses became my mentors. They didn’t have business experience, but they had the wisdom that came from being architects for such a long time! So I learned about architecture from them, but
where were the answers about how to do business deals? How do you do property transactions?
There was nobody to give me those answers, so instead my solution was to read voraciously: books, magazines, the papers, you name it. That was my way of filling in the blanks and understanding what strategy looks like, or what you should do in a certain situation. And of course, it wasn’t always the correct answer, but I certainly felt like it was pointing me in the right direction.
So I really think that one of the drivers between behind me creating a podcast and putting out regular information was my lack of access to the right information and the right people back when I was in my 20s. That created a real sense of urgency and lack in me, and so now, in a sense, I’m trying to create the missing link that I didn’t have back then. I’m trying to be that missing piece for the audience.
Try to figure out what it is that drives you, because it’s not always obvious. Sometimes you might think that you want to do something for a superficial reason, but it’s likely that you have much deeper motivators are going on. If you’re a younger person, I’m sure you’re heavily motivated by peer pressure, and so you might want to do certain things in order to live up to their expectations. But as you get older, I think that becomes less of a driver, and you start to default to your original programming, those things that are buried deep within you.
They’re what I would call your intrinsic drivers. And what you might actually find, as I have, is that your intrinsic drivers can be in conflict with those of your peers. I have lots of friends who like to go out and have a load of drinks, and they have lots of fun doing it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hold anything against them. But I have zero interest in doing that, because of seeing my dad, who was a heavy drinker, die so young. My mindset is much more focused on health than it is on going out and having a good time. You’ll have different motivators, but always remember to be true to yourself.
Don’t allow yourself to get swayed by other people, and don’t let them tell you what they think should be motivating you – what’s right for someone else won’t be right for you, because it won’t be coming from the same place, and someone else may not always have your best interests at heart.
Try to understand your true motivations, and try not to push too hard against the deep-seated ones, because you might find that those are the ones you will ultimately default back to!