Redefining Effort – Exploring The Nuances Of Motivation, Hard Work And Success
- Apr 22, 2024
- 4 min read
As an Executive Leadership & Performance Strategist, Traci Philips supports visionary business owners and corporate executives to learn and practice better communication, resolution strategies, decision-making, and leading during times of change and when the stakes are high.
This is a well-known quote by Thomas Edison. Edison lived a long time ago, and yet we still seem to hold this belief to be self-evident.
“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
During much of human history, we have been told in order to get anywhere in life, we must toil, struggle, sacrifice, suffer and have grit. And for most of our time, on this planet as humans, this has, indeed, been our experience.
Yet as all things evolve over time, we also have as a human species. I believe the era and paradigm of laborious effort and a need to control to “make” things happen is shifting considerably.
In leadership, we see a movement from authority-based models to leading others through service and collaborative-led approaches. A focus from “I’m in charge” to “together, we are better.”
Today, we speak more about the impact of heart-centered leaders, and how applied autocratic methodologies are the kiss of death for those in charge and their organizations.
We are arriving at a time where many manners and methods will be called into question.
Around this, we are becoming much more aware. We are being challenged to consider our various inner and outer control mechanisms, in order to see how disoriented and ineffectual they are in helping us manifest what we truly want at this current time.
We are being invited to examine and experience how it is to approach what we do, instead, from a position of inspired action. In other words, we are awakening to how we can create, produce and achieve through inspiration and being “moved” and “called” to do so, rather than through control, strategy and manipulation.
There is a powerful movement towards increasing our focus and energy, and channeling it into where we can create change, momentum and manifestation through intrinsically motivated choice and action.
Instead of simply working “harder” and requiring others to do so, we are having the conversations to uncover where we can produce desired results in a way that is more aligned with our natural flow, rhythm, inclinations and innate genius.
The script is being flipped to what, I believe, is the true definition of genius. After all, genius is as genius does … inherently.
So, here it is.
“Genius is 99% inspiration and 1% perspiration.”
Genius is innate. It’s our natural way and our greatest gift and value to the world. It takes zero perspiration to be who we were born to be. Unless, we work against our own nature.
When we are filled with such inspiration and clarity of vision that we cannot see anything other than what we know we are and can create, it is the slightest bit of applied effort that will produce what we hold in our mind’s eye. The forces of nature will open doors and join us to create the necessary support for this to happen.
As members of the living world, first and foremost, we are inspired beings. It is important that we don’t lose sight of this truth.
Everything begins with an inspired thought. From this seed sprouts physical form. The action and effort involved in creating this form has a natural intelligence and flow, like when a child is conceived and the mother’s body innately knows what to do to grow that child. We don’t have to think about it, it simply happens. There are things we can do to support the process, but the more we try to control it, often the more we tend to get in the way of this essential course of development and growth.
So, I ask you…
Where might your own addiction to efforting and control be getting in the way of you creating and experiencing what you truly want?
Where can you begin to identify and focus on what inspires and motivates you to discover where you are meant to apply inspired action?
Let’s make this next chapter about filling our cup of inspiration. Let’s allow the efforts we do entertain to feel energized, galvanized and aligned with what genuinely matters to us, who we want to be and what we wish to create.
To an inspired, motivated and intentionally manifestational time ahead!
Traci Philips, Executive Leadership & Performance Coach As an Executive Leadership & Performance Strategist, Traci Philips supports visionary business owners and corporate executives to learn and practice better communication, resolution strategies, decision-making, and leading during times of change and when the stakes are high. A three-year stint co-facilitating a men's transformational program for industry leaders incarcerated in Federal Prison taught Traci more than she could ever have learned elsewhere about high-stakes leadership and the cost of bad decision-making. This experience fueled a passion in her to help top leaders learn what they needed to know so they wouldn't end up losing what matters most. Her ultimate goal is to support her clients to live authentically and lead powerfully by creating more awareness about who they are, how they want to be seen, and what legacy they want to leave behind. Traci is the co-host of Eavesdrop in the Moment, a bi-weekly podcast that discusses current trends and leadership. Her book, Looking In: Discover, Define and Align the True Value of Your Life, Leadership and Legacy is helping leaders around the globe increase their confidence and self-identity to meet leadership demands and their personal performance potential.
