I have a simple question for you: What drives you?

That’s not a new question, right? You hear it asked often but have you ever taken time to actually analyze where your drive comes from and why. Sure, you may be doing the advanced work, but there are always underlying factors that drive us. It could be achieving success, not wanting to disappoint our family, competitiveness, a need to provide for someone else, or a number of other factors. You may jump in now and say that it’s a combination of all of those factors. That’s ok, as long as you have taken the time to truly understand if those are the factors that drive you.

For me, my drive comes from a few different areas however the main source is the need to ensure that I never disappoint my parents.  As I have discussed before, when I lost both of my parents 5 months from one another, I used that as a motivator. While the passing of my dad was a shock, we had been dealing with my mother’s illness for most of my life. It wasn’t a terminal diagnosis but she had an extreme and aggressive form of Lupus that had beaten her up over several years.  

My mom had always told me that no matter what happened in life, she would always look over my shoulder. After my mom passed away I got a tattoo of a blue rose (her favorite flower) with angel wings and her death date on my upper back/shoulder area to ensure that she would always be looking over my shoulder.

Having both of my parents pass away before graduating high school instilled a great fear of disappointing them and it caused me to make a pact with myself that I would never stop. Never stop what, you might ask?  

Never stop anything that I put my mind to no matter how far out of reach it may appear. Never stop pursuing my goals. Never stop until I could provide the life for my future family that my parents never could due to the environment that we lived in.

Couple this pact that I made along with an unnatural level of competitiveness and being a perfectionist, you’ll start to get a glimpse into what drives me.  It’s not as simple as wanting to be the best or being rich. A perfect storm of life experiences collided at a young age for me that forced me to take a different perspective on the world in front of me and how I’m going to conquer it.

So, I return to the question I asked at the start of this post: What drives you?