On motivation and some truth
So I had a bit of an epiphany the other day. One of my goals for the year is to learn about NLP, if you haven’t seen it yet you can find the full list of goals here at simonlawry.com. They were talking about motivation, and there are typical two types of motivation. They are toward motivation and away from motivation. Toward motivation is where you move towards something because you want that on the things that it will bring. For example, starting your own business so you can be more flexible with your time. Or saving mountain gorillas. etc. Away from motivation is fear based. It is ‘I’m gonna work really hard at this now cos the consequences of me not doing are scary as hell’. It is plodding along and only sitting up and putting in the hard yards when you actually have to do something. Not working hard at something because you want to do it.
They say that neither of them is better than the other, pretty much. Both are very useful and especially if you know how to use your typical motivation style well. I’ve realised that I have been using an away from motivation for pretty much my whole life. And apparently that’s cool. Except, I don’t think it is, and let me explain why.
I think that my away from motivation is generally a bad thing because I have never really known what I want. I think the only time I actually knew what I wanted to do was when I decided to go to on exchange. I didn’t really mind where, although I had my criteria. I knew I wanted to go, and I worked my arse of for about 18 months so that I could actually go. Since then though, I haven’t ever really done anything that I REALLY wanted to do. I went through the motions. And I went through the motions well. I got my undergrad degree, with first degree honours. I’m doing my PhD now, and I chose to do it because nothing else had really presented itself, and it was the best of what was available. As Guy Sengstock says, I got lost into the content of my life. I got caught in the grind. I wasn’t aware that there was another way. I wasn’t aware that there are a million other way. I didn’t know that my life is not dictated by the things that happen around me. I didn’t know that I create my own life every day.
While I wanted to do these things, there was something missing. The way that it is referred to among some of the people that I hang with is as ‘The burn’. I had the burn to go on exchange. It was something that I would have done what ever it took to do it. I had the burn, the fire in the belly. But it is something that has been lacking since. I’ve only felt the burn since I have begun to actually to work on myself, and to grow.
My journey, over the next year, is to really find what my new passion is. To rekindle the fire in the belly. To get that burn back. I have some idea’s about what it is, and I am taking some pretty radical steps, and making some big commitments to the direction I feel I want to move in. I want to equip myself so I can finish my Phd, and go and chase my dream. The journey is gaining absolute clarity on what that dream is.
