Consciencebound

What is the Best Motivation?

Tonight was the Socrates Cafe’ group that I go to and the topic of discussion was “what is the best motivation?”. Very interesting discussion to be sure. We examined the various ways that human beings are motivated and I found it really interesting to consider what it is that motivates my to do different things. Of course, I have known myself for the last 36 years and I in part KNOW what motivates me to do the various things that I do. I also know however, that there are a lot of things that I would like to do but am prevented from doing due to my utter lack of motivation. This can be one of the most frustrating things in the world to deal with on a daily basis. From the items on my to-do list that are every day “stuff” that just needs to be done, to how I would like to better myself intellectually, spiritually or physically to how I treat the people that I love and care about the most. I have this driving force within me that does not want to do that which I would like to do or know that I “ought” to do.

So the key is, what is the best form of motivation. Tonight, we discussed Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs , William James’ ideas on motivation and psychology, the influence of stress or perceived potential pain, the drive for happiness, pleasure-pain dichotomy and a few others that I am not remembering right now. The discussion was two hours long and could have easily gone another few hours in my opinion but I still think that we accomplished a lot in this short time period.

Here are a couple of highlights that I found very interesting:

- One woman mentioned that she had a friend or coworker who would always dominate the meetings that there were in together. One day before a meeting she had spent some time with this person and really let this person talk and vent her feelings out and when they were in the meeting later on that day, this woman noticed that this person who usually dominated the meetings was much more willing to let other people talk and did not dominate the meeting that day. Her interpretation of this was that his person had emotional needs to be heard and to talk and when those needs were met (by the conversation earlier that day), she did not seek to meet that need in the meeting environment. Although ultimately you could use this sort of information to manipulate another person, it was interesting to consider how motivation applied to that particular situation. By becoming aware of what motivates us, we can learn to “properly manipulate” ourselves into doing certain behavior.

- Someone else mentioned how they had had a very difficult bout with depression some years ago where they spent most of their time at home and did almost nothing for a long period of time as a result of some unfortunate circumstances that they had experienced. Some friends of his finally came together and paid for him to go to a psychologist. The psychologist asked him whether he thought that the feelings to do something preceded or followed the actual doing of a certain thing. What he pointed out to him was that although feelings can preceded the actual doing of something, they also will follow the doing if you just do it. Once you get in the mode of doing it for about 15 minutes, you start to “feel” more like doing what you are doing as your mind and body get engaged in whatever it is that you are doing. This proved to be insightful to this person and it was one of the things that helped him to pull himself our of the depression that he was experiencing.

- Another person talked about how the memory of a previously happy state can often motivate you to attain that happy state again and to do whatever is necessary to bring your self to that happy state. These are all very general and can be applied to many different belief systems and many different situations. For instance, a person may realize that they are happiest when they are obeying what they perceive to be God’s commandments and so they structure their life around that focus so that they can be happy in that way. Another pay find that sex is what will make them most happy and so they might do what it takes to make the prospect of sexual activity a greater probability.

For me, I find that often I am not motivated to do many things until I absolutely have to. Procrastination. When something becomes a fire that needs to be put out, then I act and do what needs to be done. Sometimes it is then too late to do something about it or at least too late to do something about it that can be done well since I am scrambling. This may be partly because of my personality type that is often very distracted and thinking about may different things, and I think that it is also because I have worked in many environments where my job primarily entailed putting out fires and so I conditioned myself to do well in those situations. I also find myself constantly trying to read different books that will help me to be motivated about the things that are what I “ought” to be motivated about. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey and Getting Things Done by David Allen are two that have been a help to me.

My general conclusion of the discussion tonight was that what we have is essentially a tool box of things that we can use to motivate ourselves. Oftentimes we have no choice and we are simply motivated to do certain thing based on the situation that we are in or based on something that is happening to us or to someone around us. Other times we can choose to put ourselves in situations that we know will be more motivating in a certain direction. Choosing to go to this Socrates Cafe’ group for instance motivates me to think deeply about subjects that I am not always prone to think about. I know that discussing things like this in a group setting with others who are thinking people and who do not judge my thinking but are interested in hearing different perspectives voiced and discussed, will motivate me to excercise my mind. I am forced to consider positions that I never would have thought about before and I like that kind of excercise.

Jeff

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