Last week I had to drag myself down to Abu Dhabi Courts to sign a form. I dreaded going there as I was sure it would be noisy and crowded, and I would probably waste my morning just waiting for the process to be completed. Nonetheless, it was one of those things I could not escape.
I picked up a ticket, and the paper read 324. The number above on the screen was 320. Oh joy, I had to wait. So I took out my iPad from my handbag and thought I could reply to some emails and make use of my wait.
A few minutes later an Indian man sat next to me with a pile of papers under his arms. Unlike most people in the room who were eyeing their watches, and checking their phone screens, he did not seem annoyed by the long wait. In fact he looked like he was happy to be there.
I continued working on my iPad when he interrupted me by asking if I was there to register a business.
"No", I replied. He then said that he was a public relations officer and he has been doing that for as long as he remembered.
"God help you," I said, thinking that it must be terrible to go to crowded places such as the court, and deal with the crowd and the wait.
He looked at me strangely and said: "Why? I am passionate about my job and that is why I'm successful. I have so many clients now."
He had spilt out the magical formula for success: passion with a sip of motivation. What made that man successful was the same thing that makes any person successful: he loves what he is doing, and he wants it so bad.
The link between passion, motivation and success is no secret, as stated by many successful people. "If you don't love it, you're going to fail," Steve Jobs once said.
I have witnessed numerous small businesses fail because their owners were not passionate about their business - they did not lay awake at nights some times thinking how to make it work and were not motivated enough to keep it going.
Which brings us to motivation, the number one key to success before passion. Though brains are needed to make scientific analysis of a situation, evaluate risks, and run your business, you need to have a driver behind that, and that driver - motivation - stems from the heart.
However, many tend to overlook this teeny but important fact because our end of year appraisal at work does not necessarily reward us for being motivated, but instead looks at facts and numbers such as how many clients we have brought in, how much profit we have made, etc.
Your job will not help you find what motivates you. You may be lucky to have a manager who does, but most of the times this is not the case. Mostly, you are on your own.
It may be hard at first, but over the years I have developed certain tactics that kept me going. Now, you will not witness an overnight result. It may take a while but it is worth it, and it is also an opportunity to discover oneself and one's potential along the way. So what do you have to do?
You need to have a strong motivator that would remind you why you want to do what you do. If the reason is personal, it is even better. Saying you want to do it because you want to be rich fast - a very common motivation - is not enough. Perhaps you could say, I want to be rich so that I could secure a bright future for my children. Now that is more personal.
Hang with the right crowd. If you hang out around motivated and aspiring people, you will be driven to excel as well. Avoid discussing your dreams and plans with negative people who will put you down.
Last but not least, as cheesy as this may seem, write your future or goal on a post-it and stick it on your bathroom mirror or on your door. The key is to have it in your face until your are driven to achieve it.
What motivates you could be a total opposite of what motivates me, but it is important to always remember that success always follows it.
Manar Al Hinai is an award-winning Emirati writer and fashion designer based in Abu Dhabi
