ANGER AS MOTIVATION

My brother Todd told me about a recent Celtics' game where the Celtics were playing without any ambition, drive, focus or determination and they were losing by a lot!! The Celtics had just played a full game the previous day, they were on the road and that may have contributed to their apathetic performance. Apparently Kevin Garnett (who was in serious foul trouble) started to get very ANGRY with his teammates and started yelling at them! Kevin played extremely hard and racked up another foul or two in the process yet his anger towards his teammates never subsided. His anger worked! His team rallied around and ended up winning the game by 9 points! That's AWESOME!

Chad mentions that whatever your motivation is...anger, depression, sorrow...use it to motivate yourself in achieving your goals.

I think anger has been a HUGE motivator for me...ever since I was really little! In fact, I can remember the very first time I used anger to get results! When I was 3 or 4 years old, my oldest brother Jeff was being teased by a neighborhood boy - I think his name was Stevie? Jeff came home crying and I was so angry that I marched over to the boy's house with my Fisher Price lawnmower and I clocked him one right on the head with it! That's motivation spurred on by anger! (below is a picture of Stevie, Jeff and me on our Big Wheels)

In high school I would also use anger as a motivation during my basketball games. If an opponent pissed me off it would only make me perform better and give 110% of myself in the game.

In fact, during my workout last night, I think I was able to use my anger towards Chad as a motivation to perform better with our exercises! (Sorry Chad...but it worked!)

What is YOUR motivation? What emotion drives you to perform better? How can other people encourage you to perform your best?