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When Jamie Heaslip heard he’d made the team for the Lions Tour in Australia, the current Irish captain took to Twitter to announce: “dreams do come true.”

But the road to realising his dreams has not been a straightforward or easy one for the rugby star and after being dropped from the third Test lineup last July, Jamie knows you have to take the rough with the smooth.

Far from hailing himself as a natural sporting hero he sees motivation as the key to achieving his goals.

Newstalk’s Oisin Langan caught up with Jamie to find out how he has reached his level of success.

You came up through the ranks and won things with Leinster and Ireland. What’s your motivation and has it changed over the years?

I think different things motivate different people.  But I think the core of motivation is that Rocky Balboa term: getting knocked down and getting back up and going again is a little bit harder. A lot of people think I have had a very easy, clear path to where I am now. But I’ve had a lot of knockdowns in my rugby career.

I remember being told that I wouldn’t make it in rugby professionally. Then at U20s I was told I wasn’t good enough. I came back the following year and I got nominated for World Player of the Year. I didn’t initially start at Leinster either and had to fight my way onto the team and all these little setbacks.

And in the run up to the 2007 World Cup I was told that I wasn’t up to the standard or big enough to play international rugby or go to the World Cup.

All these little setbacks drove me at the time and made me set my goals. It always seemed a little out of reach but you just push yourself further and further the more successful you are.

Did those knockbacks motivate you more in a way or did you have to recover from them and keep doing what you were doing?

I suppose it drove me. You have that inner belief of what you think you are capable of. Getting the setbacks you reassess and see what you can do to be better and you go again. You can’t be afraid of making mistakes. That’s what motivates me. I also have a high desire to win because I am very competitive. That’s down to the fact that I never won anything until I turned 18 when I won an All Ireland medal with Trinity at rugby.

I built up my desire to win and I realized how hard it is to win and be successful. All the setbacks feed into something that is positive and powerful.

Is motivation a purely individual thing or can it be tied between individual and team?

People in team environments are the type of people who really want to be in a team environment. You can’t be an individual especially in rugby. It’s one of the last few team sports where an individual can’t win you a game. You can’t have success with just one good individual.

The collective is way more powerful than the individual in rugby. To get there, obviously you have to be up to a good standard individually and set your goals based on training regimes, diet, little extras, prehab and rehab, recovery, analysis of your game plus analysis of the opposition and then feed into what your job is in within the team.

If you know your job and your team-mate knows his inside-out, the whole machine will move a lot better and a lot more efficiently.

You have also ventured into the restaurant business in recent years. Is there a crossover between a sportsperson’s motivation and that of a business person?

In rugby, people probably see the challenges as much more tangible because there is a cup at the end of it and a physical game to win. That can crossover into the business world where people do not necessarily see the outcome as clearly as you do in rugby. But for an organisation, you need everyone running, in their team and working together. Each department of an organisation has to click together, like each part of a rugby team.

You need to know your part and constantly review and challenge yourself. It’s not always going to go your way, but that’s what really tests your character. That’s how you test out that team and see how they are able to bounce back.
I cannot be there sometimes and I might turn up once a month. I have to have faith in the teamwork of the others and help them out.

I was very lucky to have a good team that have been successful with three other restaurants. They had a system in place and very much like the Leinster team it is in a family way, really pushing each other and expecting high standards.

Have the challenges you have faced made your motivation stronger and even bigger?

It definitely helped along the way as it helped me focus on what I had to get better at. You also come across individuals that help you out like Isa Nacew and Brad Thorn. These are the kind of players that come from outside your environment. You can never think you are the complete team, organisation or business. You can’t have that ego. When you get an ego that’s when you get stale.

What’s your advice to people who face similar challenges?

There are two great phrases that I always abide by. One comes from my father: “Talent is nothing without discipline.”

You don’t need to be smart, you don’t need skill. But hard work would beat everything. You put the work in and you’ll get rewards. Team that up with discipline and you’ll go a long, long way.

Secondly, I think the whole talent thing is a bit of a myth. You’ve got to put the effort and work in. You won’t achieve longevity or reach your full potential if you rely on talent alone. 

This article has been edited slightly from its original format and featured in the Newstalk Magazine for iPad last July. To see more go here.