Motivation is a funny old thing.
Nike once said “Just Do It”.
And that is basically all there is to motivation, right?
Just get down and do it.
Yet it never happens that simply.
I can say this with confidence because even though I consider myself rather motivated in some areas of my life, it doesn’t extend to all of them.
You see - I have a looming issue that my lack of motivation is, given the nature of time, causing to loom larger.
We’re shifting house early next year and it would behove me to get organised early so it’s not a last minute scramble to get out.
“Organised early” would mean practical steps to sort through my “stuff”.
(Stuff? Code for junk and other such items that “may come in handy” that gets built up over the years of living in one place. You know it.)
I can’t just light a match to the contents of the spare room, unfortunately.
I would like to, but it may just damage the house.
But I’m feeling kinda smug because Sumati - my lovely wife - is much much worse.
And I’m no where near as bad as my father, who is a hoarder of extreme proportions.
So in the light of these two people I feel justified in doing nothing.
Even though it’ll bite me soon.
First lesson about motivation I’ve learned:
You can’t use someone else as a measure for why you don’t need to.
Don’t compare - my own bad habits are my own and not relative to anyone else.
Second lesson:
I am like all humans.
We, faced with a motivational challenge will wait until the pain of doing nothing exceeds the pain of change.
Motivation is based on moving towards pleasure, but probably more often - to avoid pain.
You see -
When I became self-employed my motivation was to give more to the world and support myself and my family at the same time.
Approaching pleasure.
But if I’m honest one of the biggest motivators was to never go back to a monotonous no future office job.
Even bigger than that was the voice of one of my co-workers as we went out for last day drinks.
For a while there - maybe a year after I left - I could still recall his voice.
He said, loud enough to hear as I waved goodnight to head home:
“He’ll be back”.
I have to be honest - that was the biggest motivator of all of them.
To make sure I never went back.
To avoid proving him right.
That more than anything motivated me in the beginning - to avoid having to get my old job back and see his face and him be right.
Interesting huh?
So in terms of motivation my advice is to work out what you really want from doing something.
The first answers will be pleasure oriented - because you want more of something.
But if you dig deeper you may find the most powerful reasons to keep in mind is avoiding the pain of something that is happening now or that might happen in a possible future.
Some I heard this weekend at the Ishayas’ Ascension meditation course we did?
To make sure you do all that you can to avoid the dementia that runs in the family.
To stop being paralysed by panic and anxiety attacks.
To make sure you don’t get to the end of your life and wonder what was the point.
To find away to move on from the ongoing suffering after a difficult breakup, and to prevent future suffering happening.
That’s some serious motivation to do the simple practice that they learnt right there.
How about it?
Take it easy Arjuna
PS -
CHOICE the movie is going ahead!
Nice one - if you’ve already got a ticket thanks for helping out.
If you haven’t and you want a ticket for what could be the only big screen showing in the North East, head here:
https://tickets.demand.film/event/1214
I can’t recommend anything more strongly for motivation to live a better, fuller life, and avoid the suffering of staying the same: