The Source of Your Superpower

Steven Bartlett sits across from some of the most successful leaders in the world and says most of them aren't driven.

They're being dragged.

By insecurity. By a need for validation. By something they've never quite named but have never quite outrun.

By his definition, I was dragged too.

But I've always considered myself as driven. There's something I didn't know before that I know now: driven and dragged can feel exactly the same on the inside. 

The difference is the source.

There was a night I ended up on my kitchen floor. Wailing. Like a banshee. In that moment the thing I'd been trying to fix fell apart. 

Completely.

So I gave up.

You see, I have a superpower. And I never once questioned its source.

A coaching client put it this way: "My biggest challenge was my belief that letting go of perfectionism would mean letting go of excellence."

Yes.

Because from the inside, the pressure is familiar. And striving to make things perfect and excellence seem like the same thing. 

Our superpower.

It took the kitchen floor to show me they weren't.

I used to feel a black hole sucked away what I did almost as fast as I did it. 

The hole is gone. 

And my sense of accomplishment lasts.

The drive stayed when the source changed. 

Bartlett says: "When you realise that you are in fact enough, you start pursuing things for your own reasons, irrespective of public applause. That's real ambition."

I live it.

My drive? Totally intact. But now my superpower comes from a different source. Passion. Impact. 

Sometimes when I'm writing I lose track of time entirely. Because I'm in bliss. These are moments when it seems champagne bubbles float through my body.

The joy of creating for the love of it.

Bartlett asks: are you driven or are you dragged?

I ask: what's your source?