What the instructor is doing works because he knows what “buttons” to push and in this case I see two: high ego and even higher motivation. When someone has a high ego and someone else talks sh*t about him, he/she will do whatever it takes to prove the second one that he/she wrong. The key here is that the topic must be important for the person with a high ego, otherwise it won’t work. The motivation is important because if that proving requires too much effort, the one with the high ego won’t start the proving process.
Of course, the young drummer really wants to be big, but the extra push from the instructor is what really makes him go all the way. It’s a great example of what success requires: it requires lots of motivation, lots of pain, lots of perseverance and a great amount of passion without which the effort cannot be justified.
Just think about how you do things when you have to do them compared to when you want to do them. When the motivation is external, it will go away much much faster compared to the situation when the motivation is internal. That’s why every successful person tells that we must be passionate about what we want to do, otherwise we’ll fail. When we don’t love what we’re doing, we won’t be that motivated whenever we encounter obstacles and every rock looks like a mountain. But when we love what we’re doing, every mountain looks like a rock.
Think about reading a book… when you love it, you’ll finish it in no time, you’ll be spending your nights reading it, you’ll be sad when it’s over and you’ll start looking for others that can give you the same feeling, but when the book is bad, you’ll stop reading it because it doesn’t worth your time. That’s what is happening in our lives. When we love what we’re doing, we’ll do it day and night almost effortless because the process gives us energy instead of drawing it, but when we don’t love it, we’ll feel powerless very quick.
Have you found the process you love in this life? If so, what is it?