I recently watched the movie “100 meters”. Its central question, “what motivates you [to do the sport]?” felt like something I wanted to answer for myself.
For the unaware, I play Ultimate Frisbee and have been trying to become a competitive club player. But as I reach the point of diminishing returns in my training, I’ve been waffling back and forth about whether all the time it will take to get to the next level would be better spent on other things (e.g. spending time with friends/family, or career development).
Yet every time I get on the field and play a game, my motivation to improve is refreshed. At first, I thought this meant my motivation was self-improvement. And to some degree, it is. But I think there’s more to it than that. After all, when I’m on the field, I frequently forget to practice new skills I’m trying to learn as I get lost in the flow of the game. I don’t care about being the best player in the world. I don’t even necessarily care about winning.
What I do care about is playing to the best of my ability. It’s more satisfying to me to play a challenging game where both teams play well, than a silly game where no one cares about how they play. It would be very easy for me to play Ultimate with improving, staying comfortably casual. But if I never tried to get better, I wouldn’t be doing my best.
At the risk of having been influenced by the characters from “100 meters”, my current answer to “what motivates me” is very similar to theirs: I keep playing Ultimate and going to tryouts because I want to do my best, and playing my best is exhilarating.