While painting furniture this week, I listened to Sam Presti’s yearly meeting with the media. Presti is the Oklahoma City Thunder’s general manager. Ever since ’08—the Thunder’s arrival from Seattle—he’s served in that role, and I’ve always appreciated these sessions, listening every year. Not for an idea of the team’s direction, no, but for myself. It’s free life coaching. (Here’s a podcast link.)
This year, one verb was repeated to describe the players he likes, traits he admires most, or capabilities he seeks to develop within himself: to activate.
The great players are self-activators. They don’t need to be told to arrive early. They don’t need a new contract to give good effort. They get to the gym and shoot whether or not a coach is present. Self-activated. Self-motivated. Self-possessed.
The concept reminds of a crossroads in depression treatment. Every therapist has heard one statement a thousand times: “I just don’t feel like it; I don’t have the motivation.” Every therapist knows this, if navigated, is the way out.
The way out is an understanding, both simple and arduous: motivation is earned through action.
Depression is an inert, heavy-ass ball, rutted deep in the mud. Only through activation, does inertia shift and momentum generate. Action precipitates motivation, not vice versa. And it has to happen from within. Not from the coach. Not from the therapist.
During cognitive behavioral therapy sessions, I gave that spiel many times. I believed in it, sure; how could I not as I watched my patients courageously get better? But to live from that ethos? I had to give up on the idea that someone was coming to save me. To give me the way forward. To dig me out of the hole I was in.
That will never happen. For any of us. And thanks to Presti, I received a much need reminder this week. Go Thunder.
To living a self-activated life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
(P.S. The season takes the shape of who you are, then. This week I told the tale of the same autumn, through two different windows, seven years apart, in this essay.)
