Love yourself before you love your work
Jim Loehr works with gold medalists. He’s a legend. He’s worked with 17 Olympic medalists and hundreds more.
When people reach the top, they usually don’t celebrate. They just feel…guilty. Undeserving. Less than.
Best case scenario you make it to the top and you realize that it’s not what you were chasing.
What if you only make it to 2nd place, and always wonder what could have been? Was your happiness deprived from you forever?
How many times have you gotten an achievement but just wanted more? You got a promotion and the next week you felt guilty that you didn’t get an even bigger bonus? Or that you got the best job in the world only to realize everyone around you at the job did too, and they want success just as badly, or more, than you.
You are not alone.
This can’t be the way forward: that your happiness is determined by what titles you achieve. Titles, after all, are just a social construct.
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Love yourself first. Achieve that. Once you do, then you can pursue greatness. But you won’t persue it for yourself. You’ll pursue it for those you love.
If you don’t love and accept yourself, you’ll forever seek in your outward pursuits what your inward will never give you.
Many top athletes yell and curse at themselves. Jim asks “Why? Who taught you to talk to yourself like that?” Instead: coach yourself how you would coach others. Or better, coach yourself how you’d want others to coach your kids. Kindness.
You didn’t achieve greatness up until today because you were savage to yourself. You didn’t succeed in class or work because you constantly doubted yourself. Because you hated yourself.
You succeeded because you had great faith. Diligence. Persistence. Grit. Intelligence. Effort. Consistency. You had all of these things to fight through your self doubt and criticism and solve the problem in front of you. What would happen if you removed all the self doubt and turned that energy to attack only the problems outside of you, rather than both within and without of yourself?
You can’t until you love yourself. Accept yourself. And are kind to yourself. You. You there.
You can accomplish great things without self love. But you won’t enjoy them. Happiness will be fleeting.
Love yourself, and your motivations change.
