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<\/a>\nThis photo shows Jazz, aged 4, barrelling up the track from Burning Palms in the Royal National Park, south of Sydney.
\nIt was a warm day and the track is a steep climb up an escarpment, maybe 200-300 meters high.
\n\u201cDad. I\u2019m tired. Will you carry me?\u201d in a theatrically wan voice, from a child weighing 18 kilos, is the last thing a father wants to hear at the bottom of a steep climb.
\nSo, I said: \u201cDo you know there\u2019s a treat for the first person to get to the top of the hill?\u201d
\nJazz: \u201cWhat is it?\u201d
\nDad: \u201cI can\u2019t tell you. It\u2019s a secret.\u201d
\nJazz: \u201cIs it Lamingtons?\u201d
\nDad: \u201cIt\u2019s a secret. But the winner gets it.\u201d
\nBlimey that kid got a second wind and stormed up the track, beating my mate Ian in a hotly contested scramble at the finishing line.
\nI\u2019ve never really paid much attention to the motivating power of competition before. Probably didn\u2019t play enough competitive sport at school. But this has changed my views.
\nCompetitions are about goals, rewards and egos \u2013 obviously a potent dopamine-pumping formula that can transform human beings from passive veges to human dynamos. I\u2019m going to treat the idea with a lot more respect in future.
\nSee also:
\nHow toddlers invented culture<\/a> (Chapter 1 of how watching toddlers explains everything)
\nThe sweet taste of autonomy <\/a>(Chapter 2 of how watching toddlers explains everything #2)<\/p>\n
This photo shows Jazz, aged 4, barrelling up the track from Burning Palms in the Royal National Park, south of Sydney. It was a warm day and the track is a steep climb up an escarpment, maybe 200-300 meters high. \u201cDad. I\u2019m tired. Will you carry me?\u201d in a theatrically wan voice, from a child […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-children","category-motivation-2","has-post-thumbnail","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pac6ss-9o","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}