A Horse to Water

Have you ever tried “pushing a rope?” It’s different than pushing, say, a boulder.

A boulder is heavy; it resists being moved. It’s stubborn. A piece of rope isn’t like that. You can push all you want and you’ll meet no resistance at all – but still, the rope won’t go anywhere.

Some people are stubborn, too. I can often respect those people; certainly I can respect them much more than the people who are just pieces of rope, or puddles of water, or whatever other metaphor you want to use for a horse that eagerly lets you lead them to water, but just never seems to drink.

Motivation, the real stuff, it has to come from within. You can’t spoon-feed it to anyone. If they don’t want to be there, you can’t make them. What you can do is ask them where they want to be, and lead them there. That horse will drink, because it asked. It invested.

So there’s the two-part formula. You need a horse that wants to drink, and you need a river that you want to go to. If you have both halves, you get the team. But trying to force one or the other when it isn’t there is… well, it’s pushing rope.