Are you mission-driven? Or relationship-driven?
Know the difference and invest your energy accordingly
A few years ago, when my daughter was procrastinating about completing her short film, we had a conversation that led to an important realization.
My daughter is a relationship-driven person.
I had been thinking about why people procrastinate. The usual accusations of laziness or distractability didn’t seem to add up for her.
I know my daughter isn’t lazy.
So I thought instead, “What if working on her short film isn’t solving her real problem?”
I reasoned that if there is some more important, albeit unconscious, psychological problem going on with her, then she won’t have the creative energy to do anything else until that unconscious problem is resolved.
My daughter was certainly anxious, lonely, and upset. Her Mother and I had recently separated. Her oldest brother had moved out of town to attend graduate school, and her closest brother became so absorbed in his new girlfriend that he was no longer paying much attention to my daughter.
In fact, her short film was something of a biographical story of working through grief and seeking a new community of friends that might mitigate the sense of loss she felt upon the disintegration of our family.
When I become anxious, lonely, or upset, I pour myself into my creative work. I write, draw, build, and teach.
That’s when I realized that I am a mission-driven person, and that my daughter and I are different in this respect.
Mission-driven people organize their relationships around their mission.
Relationship-driven people organize their mission around their relationships.
That’s the most fundamental difference between me and my daughter, and it meant that until she could figure out a way for her film project to strengthen her relationships, she would keep procrastinating on her film.
We talked it through on a ride home from the airport.
I advised her to enlist her friends and favorite people in her film project, because when she feels that the short film is a way to strengthen her relationships, her energy will go way up, and her motivation will return.
That made sense to her.
So she started calling friends in the film and digital culture program at her university, asking them to play a role in production of her short. Of course, many of them said they would love to.
And she enlisted the help of her new friends at the Krav Maga Studio where she had been training. It turned out they liked movies, too.
The result is below.
It’s a story of a young girl in the throes of malaise, who had lost the motivation to take care of herself. But when she is offered an easy excuse to quit, she finds the energy to keep going, and is better off for it.
My favorite part are the end credits, in which you can see the names of the many people who became closer friends as a result of making the film.
Knowing whether you are a relationship-driven person, or a mission-driven person, will help you recognize the unconscious obstacles that are holding you back, and where your best creative energy must be directed.