#30 Ego Versus Obligation

This is post #30 of my #365 day series.

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I was chatting with Sean Greaney about football, so naturally we ventured over to the discussion of Tom Brady since there were unconfirmed reports of his retirement. I’m a big fan of Brady for all the reasons he has such a huge fanbase, his unrelenting competitive attitude and underdog story. Brady was the 199th pick in the sixth round of the NFL draft. You don’t need to be a football or sports aficionado to understand that’s a bad thing. You also don’t need to be a sports or a Brady fan to understand how remarkable that stat is. He went from “you barely skated by the NFL draft” to a multiple superbowl winning champion that any coach would kill to have on their team. Another notable feature of Brady is that even though he was the 199th pick, he had the mindset of a champion. He’s frequently been quoted as saying that many teams and people underestimated his competitive spirit.

Competitive spirit matters, but I think there’s just a bit more under the hood there than he lets on. When asked about which superbowl ring was most memorable to him, Brady responded with “the next one.” There’s a few things underlying this: (1) fear, (2) competitiveness, and (3) ego / obligation. What a lot of high performers don’t admit to, but generally share, is the ongoing ping of fear at the back of the minds at all times. When someone like Brady sets unrealistic goals for himself and is always aiming for the next milestone, it creates a public commitment to achieve some goal that continues to drive them. Some may say it’s unhealthy to set unrealistic goals for yourself, but we’re not discussing whether high performers live a healthy lifestyle, we’re talking about what underlies their performance.

When it comes to competitiveness, I think there are a lot of people who fail to measure what people are capable of when they set their minds to a goal. I think a part of the underestimation of competitiveness comes from the lack of awareness around what drives them — the fear and the ego/obligation. This also becomes somewhat of a self fulfilling prophecy, because the competitive nature of the person drives them to compete even harder when they are underestimated.

Now for the ego versus obligation. I argue that it’s not just ego that causes people like Brady to compete at the highest levels. It’s actually quite the opposite. When you’re picked 199th, it can’t be ego, otherwise you’d crumble.

For Brady, it wasn’t just ego that pushed him to perform, it’s an obligation to prove something. “Well Tony, isn’t that just playing into competitiveness and having a huge ego?” I don’t think so, since the obligation to prove people wrong reveals a certain level of self doubt about the person. To feel the obligation to prove people wrong means there’s an element that they don’t believe themselves, and the fear that they are lesser than what they’ve built themselves out to be drives them to compete.