I heard a presentation a few weeks ago by a start-up company called the “+3 Network.” The idea of the network is to provide a vehicle to connect individual people who exercise with both charitable causes and corporate sponsors. For every mile that an individual runs, bikes, kayaks, or otherwise accumulates in their personal exercise and logs into the company’s online network, a chosen sponsor company will donate “X” amount to the athlete’s chosen charity. If you buy a GPS and validate your uploaded logged miles, the amount per mile increases.
It’s kind of like a fund-raising walk or marathon, without having to show up anywhere on any particular date. The site also offers a kind of social networking among members, so there’s that. But what struck me about the people listening to the presentation was that there was far less talk of “Gee, this will let me make my running(biking/kayaking) serve a good cause” as there was “Gee, this will actually motivate me to exercise.”
Fascinating, how having a goal … or computer network … or way to get “rewarded” for every mile traveled … might influence people to actually exercise. Of course, the real question to answer (which the company is still too new to have an answer for) is how many of those people really stick with it, if they weren’t motivated enough without the network.
The flip side of that might be how embarrassingly Pavlovian and trainable we humans are, if simply getting us to hit some buttons and get some kind of satisfaction, pat on the back, or social-conscience reward actually trains us to change our behavior.
On the other hand, cognitive behavioral therapy is based on the theory that if you get someone to change their real-time behavior, changes in their internal thoughts and beliefs can follow. So can passion follow practice, instead of the other way around? Possibly … if this Outside magazine article is any indication.
In it, author Christopher Keyes talks about his road to becoming an ultra-marathon runner. He’d always liked the simplicity of running for exercise, but says that after a while, running without a goal wasn’t enough. So began the quest. Each longer distance goal met led to a quest for an even more distant goal. The never-ending quest for “more” might be an interesting idea to pursue, in and of itself, but the part of Keyes’ story that’s most relevant here is what he says he began to get out of all that running.
At first, Keyes was focused on the goals. But now, he says, when he’s in the midst of an ultra-long run, “Mostly I’m in a groove, just planting one foot in front of the other. And that sensation is really why I run. I’ve tried meditation for years, but the closest I’ve come to Zen clarity is while running. The longer I go, the closer I get. Thoughts are gradually stripped away, like the chaotic layers of paint on a Jackson Pollock, until all that’s left is a blank canvas and the things that really matter. Family. Wife. Child. Salt. I shouldn’t need six hours of exhaustion to realize what’s important, but, hey, it works. And the epiphanies are addictive.”
Sometimes, we pursue things because we have a passion for them. But is it possible that sometimes we only see, or find, the gifts that spark a passion for an activity, place, or adventure by immersing ourselves in it first? And if that’s true, what does that say about what paths we should try or follow?
I suppose that we all need a little extra motivation at times to get things done, even things that we WANT to do. Finding the right motivators or, to continue the Pavlov reference, learning to “ring our own bell” can be the key to reaching our long-range goals. Ultimately, it is the pursuits that require the least external motivation that become (or reveal themselves to be?) our passions.