Atomic Motivation

Motivation is the magic sauce to every swimmer’s breakfast, lunch, and triple dinner. It’s the essential ingredient for waking up to swim at five in the morning, persevering when the going gets tough, and returning to the pool season after season.

Motivation can be defined as the force within you that drives you to act on your goals, even in the face of obstacles.

Friendly encouragement and Instagram posts can only bring you so far. Your motivational drive towards your goals must be deeper than the various life hacks out there that serve as momentary band-aids to the obstacles you face.

Understanding your motivation and how you think about obstacles could mean the difference between that PB and a plateau.

Take a look at two types of goal-motivation from a recent study:

Want-to motivation: doing something because we genuinely want to–it fits our interests and is personally important to us. Research has shown that want-to-ers:

🏊 Experience better goal-attainment

🏊 Experience and expect fewer and weaker obstacles

🏊 Experience fewer temptations

🏊 Consciously remove themselves from environments with obstacles

Read those results again. Now compare with

Have-to motivation: doing something because we feel we have to (from internal or external pressure)

🏊 Experience less goal-attainment

🏊 Experience and expect more obstacles

🏊 Experience more temptations

🏊 Sabotage goals by placing themselves in environments with more obstacles

Do any of these resonate with you? Let’s dive deeper into how we can set ourselves up for success. No swimmer has time for “less goal attainment”.

We won’t love everything we’re asked to do in swimming but if we want the improvement we seek, we will have to do some of these things. Morning practices and beastly IM sets are a couple of examples.

We all know the swimmer who wants to do fly instead of free…or who never misses a morning workout because they want to be there. They’re the ones going to that big meet or getting recruited by their top school.

They are the Ledeckys and the Dressels. These powerhouse swimmers have figured out a better way to tackle the have-tos.

They’ve figured out that by using a growth mindset they can unleash atomic motivation from their own identity deep within their amphibious soul.

When you align who you are with your desired outcome, your brain (and body) will do anything to uphold that identity. You transform have-to into want-to into will-to.

Here’s an example of this transformation. Notice how the identity of the swimmer changes with the increasing growth mindset.

Have-to: “Why do we have to do butterfly? I hate butterfly. I suck at it”

Want-to: “I may not want to train fly but I know I will get better by practicing it.”

Will-to: “I will never miss a fly workout because I seek challenges that help me learn and bring me closer to my goals.”

To embody a Want-to and Will-to identity, focus on what you can control:

🏊 Intention & goal setting (I want to…)

🏊 Attitude & mindset (reframe your thoughts to embody a growth mindset)

🏊 Actions (your effort, behavior, and your words)

By focusing on what you can control, soon you will see a wonderful cycle take on a life of its own. This is especially true for the swimmer struggling to find joy in swimming again or the swimmer who feels stuck.

If you grow your mindset, you will grow your identity. And if you grow your identity, you will grow your swimbilities. And this will unleash greater confidence and motivation–every swimmer’s secret sauce.

Now go swim your way to Future You.