Drive is best described as the determination to achieve your goals. However, dynamic drive is more than that. It’s a constant, purpose-driven commitment to being better. When the excitement of achieving success fades away, and you've collected enough trophies and proven to yourself and the world what you are made of, it's easy to slip into complacency. External success and rewards only get you so far. Only the best in the world are able to push beyond this threshold. They dig deeper and turn success into a game of "can I be better than yesterday." By competing with themselves and using internal criteria to measure success, the best of the best are able to tap into high performance long after the glamor of success has faded.
Many people chase goals that do not align with their values. Just making more money, achieving more success, or having more trophies won’t make you happy. We run away from pain or chase goals we think will make us happy. But we rarely ask ourselves: What is my purpose in all this? What do I want my legacy to be? Dynamic drive isn’t about chasing more. It’s about aligning your goals with your purpose.
Many people value things like spending time with their children or being in nature, but they live in complete opposition to these values. For example, if you rate being a father a 10 out of 10 but only dedicate 2 out of 10 of your time to your children, there is a significant disconnect between your values and actions. In most people’s lives, there is a considerable gap between what matters to them and how they live. Living out of alignment with what’s important to you will lead to unhappiness and anxiety.
Having a goal, like entering a hall of fame or making a certain amount of money, can be motivating for a while. But once you get there, success alone isn’t enough to keep you going. The best athletes in the world aren’t driven by accomplishments or trophies. Rather than pursuing external rewards, they find joy in the process itself. They love the game. They enjoy making progress. And all that matters to them is whether they are better today than they were yesterday.
Dynamic drive involves committing to being a little better each day. It’s completely different from goal-oriented drive. Traditional drive relies on external rewards. Dynamic drive ignores external rewards. Rather than competing against an opponent or measuring your success based on achievements, you should measure your progress internally. You’re only competing with yourself, so what others think doesn’t matter. Your latest success is just that. It’s in the past. Relying on these external factors as your drive is dangerous and only lasts so long. But when you compete against yourself and focus on getting better every day, you can tap into sustainable motivation and achieve high performance.
Mindset is the first key to mastering dynamic drive. There are two types of mindset: a limiting mindset and a limitless mindset. People with a limiting mindset see obstacles instead of opportunities everywhere they look. They also lack a growth mindset. Rather than focusing on learning, they view their intelligence, talents, and skills as fixed. To unlock high performance, you must be willing to take on challenges and have faith that good things will result from it. Having a limitless mindset means seeing only opportunities, no obstacles, and being in control of your internal dialogue. Mindset isn’t something that is given; it’s something you have to actively cultivate. The great news is that your mindset is completely within your control. Choosing between a limiting or limitless mindset is ultimately your decision.
After mindset, the second step in cultivating dynamic drive is effective energy management. Most of us focus too much on time management and not enough on energy management. However, even if you had more time in the day, you wouldn’t necessarily be more productive. The best athletes in the world are extremely protective of their energy. Just showing up isn’t enough. You need to show up prepared and energized to perform at your best. Take athletes, for example: everyone is competing for their time and attention. An interview here, a talk in front of a college class, constant back-to-back travel, and meetings. If you don’t take control of your energy, the people around you will dictate your life. A simple strategy to improve your energy management is to perform an energy audit. Ask yourself which activities drain your energy, which ones energize you, and which ones are neutral. Then, minimize the things that drain your energy and maximize those that energize you.
To learn more about energy management, consider The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. In the book, they make a compelling case for why energy management is more important than time management.
Discipline is the third key to dynamic drive. To cultivate lasting discipline, you need a deeper purpose. External goals can give you discipline for a while, but they’re not a reliable source. Discipline needs to be fuelled by your purpose. In addition to this, discipline is about taking full ownership. You can’t blame others or make excuses. To rise above complacency, you need to hold yourself accountable in an extreme way.
If you want to push beyond what is thought is possible, you need to be curious. Some of the best athletes in the world have an insatiable thirst to learn more, explore new opportunities, innovate, and try new things. How else can you achieve something nobody else has ever done? If you aren’t curious, your ability to progress is severely limited. Progress involves innovation. This is why curiosity is the fourth key to developing dynamic drive. Feed your curiosity by asking open-ended questions, surrounding yourself with curious people, and always striving to learn from others.
The fifth key to dynamic drive is resilience. Athletes often increase their resilience by visualizing challenges and how they’ll deal with them before they ever face them. At its core, resilience is not just about coming back. You have to come back stronger. Another strategy that can help with resilience is focusing on what’s in front of you rather than what happened. But despite these strategies, there is no substitute for developing resilience. It’s built through action and the ability to adapt to tough situations in a flexible way. This involves viewing the difficulties you face as challenges, not defeats. Embrace pressure rather than being afraid of it.
The final two keys to developing dynamic drive are connection and confidence: Relationships can amplify or slow down your success. To maximize your performance, you must learn to set boundaries, have tough conversations with people if necessary, and become someone who adds value. You also have to manage your confidence. This involves keeping your ego in check and not becoming overconfident. You should also avoid things that negatively influence your confidence, such as comparing yourself to others, or getting weighed down by past failures. True confidence comes from taking action and not basing your sense of self-worth on external things that are out of your control.
Create a list of everything you value in your life in one column. In a second column, rate how much you value each item on a scale of 1 to 10. In a third column, evaluate how much time and energy you dedicate to each item on a scale of 1 to 10. In the final column, subtract the second number from the first number and record the difference. This will indicate how misaligned your actions are with your values.
Create a list of everything that energizes you, followed by a list of things that drain your energy. Lastly, compile a list of neutral items that neither energize nor drain you. Make these lists for both your personal and professional life. Based on your energy audit, reduce what drains your energy and increase what energizes you.
Dynamic Drive starts off as a seemingly boring book. At first sight, it appears like any other book on mindset, motivation, or high performance. But after the first few chapters, it becomes clear that this book has a lot to offer. Molly Fletcher shares countless stories of athletes, how they operate, and why they often seem superhuman. It’s not because they were born differently. Talent only gets you so far. What the most successful athletes have in common is a deep purpose, a source of motivation that is intrinsic and fuels their discipline.
What makes this book worth your time is Molly Fletcher’s background. As a former sports agent, she has worked closely with some of the most celebrated athletes in the world. This gives her insights few other people have. In Dynamic Drive, she essentially dissects the inner workings and mindset of top-performing athletes and shows you how to get a piece of it.
The book is well structured. It contains graphics, highlights, and key takeaways at the end of each chapter. This makes it easy to read and grasp the concepts without feeling like you’re drowning in a sea of information.
We recommend Dynamic Drive to athletes of any kind. Due to Molly Fletcher’s background as a sports agent, many of the examples in the book are about athletes. This will be inspiring and relatable if you’re an athlete yourself. However, you’ll also benefit from the book if you’re struggling with staying motivated. Goals won’t drive you deeply enough to overcome big obstacles on the journey to excellence. But purpose will.
If you lack purpose and want to discover how some of the world’s top athletes tap into high performance on a consistent basis, you should definitely read this book. This summary of Dynamic Drive leaves out all the examples and stories of athletes and why some failed and succeeded. In addition to this, the book contains many awesome graphics, exercises, and templates. For example, Molly Fletcher provides a template for performing an energy audit.
Note: In Mindset, Carol Dweck contrasts a fixed mindset with a growth mindset. People with a fixed mindset believe their intelligence, talents, and abilities are set in stone. Those with a growth mindset focus on learning. They also realize that continuous effort is more important than talent.