Rediscovered and rediscovered

Above the entrance to the house in the beams of old half-timbered houses, an inscription occasionally reminds us of a context that is somewhat removed from general thinking: "Without diligence from morning till night, nothing will be given to you. Envy sees only the flower bed, but

Effortaccept

not the spade." Hans Eberspächer, professor emeritus of sports psychology at the University of Heidelberg and a proven specialist in self-management and performance optimisation, likes to refer to this sentence. For him, it makes clear a self-evident fact that seems to have disappeared from many people's minds with the necessary clarity and consistency in our society of demands and expectations: success does not depend on slackening commitment.

Unlovable virtues

"Or," asks Eberspächer, "in our society infiltrated by social envy, have you recently heard an unchallenged plea in any discussion for the qualities of willingness to make an effort and perseverance that are increasingly missed by employers?" Discipline, diligence, the will to overcome resistance and to make an effort as a matter of course - anyone who advocates these qualities today risks being contradicted to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the audience. In any case, however, displeasure wrinkles on the forehead of the auditorium. "The acceptance of effort as a self-evident prerequisite for achieving something aspired to or desired, which is usually associated with renunciation," says Eberspächer, "could certainly be in a better state.

Today there is so much talk about happiness, pleasure and an apparently self-fulfilling life, says Eberspächer. And everyone makes the claim that one can only shake one's head at such alienation from life and the world. When, he muses, will it finally be recognized what kind of social and personal misorientation is being conjured up by this claptrap? And this in a world that is making ever greater professional demands?

Against the prevailing zeitgeist

The reality, he said, has always been, and still is, that those who want a happy, fulfilled life, however defined, are not entitled to it, but have an obligation to act in accordance with that desire. "If I strive for, want or desire something, then I have to become the engine that drives me towards what I actually want, then I have to put my mind to it and persevere!" And that, says Eberspächer, "presupposes and demands that I steer myself with a clear head and in full awareness of the actual contexts in the direction of what I am striving for and not let myself be guided, led by the nose and ultimately misled by some convoluted zeitgeist ideas."

"I am very critical of the prevailing zeitgeist," admits Eberspächer frankly. "With the irresponsibly cultivated entitlement and 'stand by me' mentality, we are undermining the ability to live in a highly dangerous way," he warns. "In the globalized economy that is heading towards a new industrial revolution and is reorganizing itself from the ground up - just one keyword: Industry 4.0, production with self-organizing processes -

Become an engine yourself

personal competitive conditions are also changing. The working population is growing worldwide. At the same time, the number of jobs available is tending to decline due to technological progress. The result: competition for a job must inevitably become tougher. Commitment and perseverance without fluff in the head on the basis of considered self-direction become decisive components in the interpersonal competition for jobs."

Controlling oneself

Translated into personal terms, this means for Eberspächer: "Being able to hold your own reins and give yourself the lead, and not being led astray by daydreams, in short, being able to really steer yourself, is becoming increasingly clear and indispensable as a prerequisite for professional success alongside specialist knowledge and skills.

InterpersonalCompetition

nents. "Eberspächer defines this knowledge and ability more broadly than in the conventional sense. In view of the future intensity of stress, it is essential to be able to combine tension and relaxation as equivalent components of performance, i.e. to be able to switch back and forth between acceleration and deceleration modes at a moment's notice. This requires the most routine mastery possible of one or more relaxation strategies. "Those who have mastered these, because they have consciously trained them, achieve a very decisive advantage over the course of the day: by interrupting emotional build-up effects such as anger or excitement, the day can be survived at a significantly higher level of regeneration than in the case of someone who is untrained," says Eberspächer.

The ability to be able to control oneself in this way is something fundamentally different and, in the knowledge of the qualification characteristics that will be decisive in the future, something much more important than many of the motivational gimmicks that are the subject of such a cult today. A person can only really motivate himself. Motivation, it is often wrongly assumed, is reactive and not self-initiating. It is believed that one can motivate others. But strictly speaking, this is not possible. "You can only motivate others to motivate themselves. Motivation always presupposes the commitment, the own effort of the person to be motivated."

Work as a core value

For Eberspächer, the consequence of this is: "We have to get back down to earth and accept work as the central value of life and thus also the effort character of work again. And we must also rediscover the enormous satisfaction and contentment that results in a very personal sense from successful effort, from recognizing one's own capabilities. And the performance boost that in turn results from that." "The suggested illusion of work as a funky paid activity," says Eberspächer, "completely fails to recognize the fulfilling character of work, from which, not insignificantly, the power to make new effort arises. Those who do not free themselves from this illusion do themselves harm, unnecessary harm, in my opinion. When it comes down to it, and in the global competition for ideas and displacement, it will inevitably come down to it more and more in companies, those will be ahead who are able to see the fulfilling in the effort and who can set to work with joy, goal-oriented and distraction-proof, but at the same time flexible and thinking in alternatives!"

In the face of growing general uncertainty of action, but at the same time an onslaught of demands on the one hand and choices and options on the other, the ability to take pleasure in taking responsibility for oneself and to steer oneself is something like the personal Archimedean point of resilient ability to act. From a qualification point of view, "this ability will increasingly develop into a basic professional requirement in order to remain on a path to task fulfilment, however defined, or to work it out from various variants under conditions of uncertainty".