Monday Morning Motivation – Game
(Sharing Resources to Help You Grow Personally, Professionally & Financially)
Sometimes it helps to get a little dose of encouragement — along with a good cup of coffee! — to start the day.
Hopefully the message below will help you get off to a good start for the week. Please feel free to forward the newsletter on to others that you think would benefit from the content.
Game
For the next couple of months, I am going to draw motivation for my Monday Morning Motivation from Steven Pressfield’s “The War of Art”. You can find a summary of this awesome book here. This book is one of my all-time favorites as it takes on the topic of “resistance” which you might think of as that strange force that makes it difficult to accomplish things in life. Pressfield does an awesome job of describing what resistance is, discussing how to overcome it, and framing it in the context of a larger power.
This week I’m going to take on the topic of “Game” in the context of “Love of the Game”. In our sports obsessed culture, it is nearly impossible to spend a day without some reference to or viewing of a sporting contest. The contests range from the soccer game our 5 year old kids are participating in, to the college hardwoods, to the exorbanant stadiums that baseball player star on.
Unfortunately, at just about every level, the love of the game has taken a back seat to the financial aspects. We think of our kids getting scholarships, the college players dream of the life as a pro, and the pro player dream of the next big contract.
And all of this makes the game a bit less enjoyable – to the participants and to us.
Playing for the love of the game involves a passion for the event itself REGARDLESS of the outcome or rewards. We all understand this – it’s why we love to see certain Olympians, why we cheer for the underdog, and why many of us much prefer the amateur (although even this is a slight misnomer!) version of many sports.
When we look at our chosen profession, we also have a choice to make. Are we “playing” for the money; or, are we playing because we love what we do. I am afraid that too many that read this are going to answer in alignment with the former versus the latter. And I’m guessing that if you do answer that way, it will make you feel a bit sad.
The great thing is that we have free will. We can always choose to drop the monetary focus and adopt a passion focus. No, I’m not being naïve or Pollyannaish. Rather, I am simply suggesting that we all have the opportunity to choose where we will draw our satisfaction and motivation. And I would argue that choosing the love of the game when it comes to your profession may be one of the most important choices you will ever make.
With that in mind, here is this week’s question:
- What would it take to switch your focus from the love of money to the love of the game?
Thanks for sharing a bit of your time with me this Monday morning and I wish you all the best for the week.
Curt
(Note: Each week I publish “Monday Morning Motivation” in the hopes that one person will find a bit of inspiration and that inspiration will have a positive impact on their life. My motivation comes from experiences, reading, sermons, and discussions.)
Blog post from this past week:
At F5 Financial Planning we focus on helping individuals and families find balance between faith, friends and family, fitness and finance. We make sure that they have the financial freedom to enjoy those things in life that are important to them. And while we believe the left-brain facts and data are critical; we work with our clients to get them in the right state of mind to focus on the goals they want to achieve.
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