Why are you absorbing these words?
What made you choose to do so and what's your motivation to keep going?
Just as important,
What do you think my motivation was to write these words in the first place?
And how does it serve you when you become aware of your motivations to listen to my words and my motivations to write them?
It's time to notice motivations and to gain control of your life.
So today we will discover motivations and look at why you do the things you do.
You will become more aware of the immediate and overarching objectives in your life that lead you on your unique path.
I will also challenge you to gain awareness of other people's motivations,
For example your friends,
Companies or a TV station's motivation.
Our goal is to protect you from getting fooled by truly understanding all objectives.
Rochelle E.
Goodrich said,
Far more important than what you do is the reason why you are doing it.
So let's find out your reasons today.
Now let us start with a simple question.
Why do you get out of bed in the morning?
Your answer might be immediate like you have to go to work or you are hungry or you have to pee.
It could also be overarching like you have to provide for your family or you need to develop your business.
In any case,
There will be a combination of multiple reasons why you get up in the morning.
Interesting here is that you make the decision to get out of bed subconsciously.
You're not consciously thinking of all your motivations and your objectives every single morning.
They guide you automatically.
And that is perfectly fine because you don't have the capacity to constantly rethink all of your motivations.
But I would very much like to suggest bringing them into complete consciousness on a regular basis.
So how does bringing your motivations into consciousness serve you?
Because only when motivations are conscious can you understand your objectives and actions fully.
This allows you to choose whether you want to keep or change them.
Do you have the right objectives to go on the right path?
Is it worth it to have breakfast,
Go to the toilet or go to work?
Do your actions serve your immediate and overarching motivations?
Becoming more aware will automatically make you embrace the things that serve you and eradicate things that don't serve you.
The next thing that will happen after you start to notice motivations is that fulfilling your motivations will become a lot easier.
You will develop and succeed a lot faster.
The reason for that is that you will spend time and energy on your goals without hesitation.
You will be absolutely clear on what you need to do next on your path and why you want to be on that path.
Now I want to take a moment to talk about motivations for negative or unhealthy actions.
These motivations are as important to understand as understanding positive ones.
If you overeat or get drunk regularly or chain-smoke cigarettes for years,
Then there might be a deeper motivation for doing so.
Understanding this will make you able to replace the unhealthy actions with healthy actions.
The underlying objective and motivation will stay the same,
Just the action will change.
For example,
Let's assume you overeat every night.
What could be the underlying motivation to do so?
Maybe you are so overworked that the sluggish feeling after overeating helps you to calm down.
In this case,
You would need to find another action that helps your mind to calm down.
Or you overeat because you do not get enough nutrition intake during the day.
Or you do it because you don't eat enough protein for dinner.
Or you eat too fast and your body can't tell you that you're full in time.
There are a lot of possible motivations for your unhealthy actions,
So be a detective.
Find your motivations,
Then replace or adjust your actions.
Now,
Once you start implementing your healthy actions to fulfill your motivations,
Make sure that you keep being aware of them for a while.
You can even put reminders into your calendar to check in about your upkeep and progress.
And make sure that you also keep an eye on the feelings around your actions,
Because fulfilling motivations consciously should mostly be a joyful and happy experience.
Next,
Let us talk about other people's and companies' motivations.
Everyone has objectives,
Every action is grown out of motivation.
That is neither good nor bad,
It is the way it is.
Being aware of other people's objectives will make sure that their motivations not only serve them but also,
At least to a certain extent,
Serve you.
So what exactly happens when you become aware of other people's objectives?
Firstly,
You will be more empathetic and open towards them because you see their bigger needs.
For example,
Your friend asked you to lend him some money.
If your friend just asks you for money,
You will start thinking about what he needs it for and rightfully so.
Now,
If you find out your friend's motivation to ask you for money is to pay for luxurious nonsense,
Then you might say no easily.
But if his motivation is to pay for his child's school fees,
Then you might have a completely different feeling about it.
The more you find out about other people's motivations in detail,
The better.
You can navigate your actions and relationships with them.
Secondly,
Understanding other people's motivations will make you less prone to being manipulated.
For example,
Let us say you watch a debate on television.
There are 8 people and all of them have different opinions on a subject.
Everyone's goal is of course to make you adopt their specific viewpoint.
All of them will be driven primarily by their personal objectives and understanding these will make you able to better choose who to trust.
So the first thing I would look at is who pays these individuals for their work.
It is the first indication of whether someone might at least partially care for you or just wants you to support a belief system for their personal and boss's benefits.
Of course,
There are a lot of factors and a lot of motivations involved,
But becoming aware of the biggest ones will give you a very good understanding of who might actually care for you.
Furthermore,
In our TV debate example,
What is the TV station's motivation to have the debate on their channel in the first place?
Who owns that station?
Why do they invite these specific people to debate?
Do they want to educate or entertain you?
Do they want you to watch the commercials in the breaks or shape your worldview or both?
Notice motivations and it will become very difficult for others to manipulate you.
So I would highly recommend becoming aware of what anyone tries to achieve when communicating with you.
This applies to direct private communication just as much as absorbing the news.
Often the motivations of companies actually manifest in your friend's direct communication.
For example,
An oil and gas corporation could fund an entire movement against nuclear energy to make it look more problematic and less appealing.
You then could experience friends adopting this apparently scientific opinion told by a corporation via media outlets.
You or your friends might even join a movement that is motivated by monetary success from an oil and gas corporation.
This is a made-up example and you don't need to question everything and start thinking the earth is flat.
And being aware of potential motivations will protect you from being easily influenced.
As a side note,
I truly believe that there are individual people and companies in this world whose biggest objective is to better the world.
There are more good people with great ethics than you might think.
Finding these great people and companies is a lot less of a hassle when it is second nature for you to investigate and understand everyone's motivations as much as possible.
Next,
Let us talk about implementing strategy for your long-term or overarching motivations.
These could be motivations to build a house,
Start a family,
Build a business,
Etc.
The first step for implementing strategy and actions is to try and find the most clarity around your motivations.
Be as specific as you can when analyzing objectives and make them measurable.
Clarity of motivations will allow your actions to unfold more naturally without you having to force them.
For example,
Let us say you want to build a house.
You do your investigation and you realize your three biggest motivations are to a.
Be independent,
B.
House a partner and kids,
And c.
To create a feeling of home.
I would argue that becoming totally clear on these motivations automatically makes you implement your actions a bit more.
Now another way to improve your chances of success with your overarching objectives is to make them achievable to you in a constricted amount of time.
Becoming rich or being happy are not great objectives as they are broad and open.
Saving a certain amount of money per month or experiencing a happy weekend are much better because they are clearly within your reach.
Now let's look at primary life objectives.
What are your biggest motivations and how can you achieve them in a healthy way?
The biggest motivation we all have is the need to survive.
Consciously or subconsciously,
You are constantly following that motivation.
Most likely,
Surviving is not something you need to be worried about.
But understanding what your survival instinct makes you do can be beneficial.
You might be surprised how the motivation to stay alive makes you act.
Once aware of these actions,
Ask yourself,
Do they serve me and also what parts of them serve me?
Another primary objective all of us share is the motivation for security or certainty.
We all try to create an environment where we can be certain things will happen the way we want and need them to happen.
But how does it serve you having certainty?
And what level of uncertainty might serve you?
All of us need a good mix of both in our life,
Certainty and uncertainty.
Becoming more conscious of what exact levels of certainty serve you will make it easier for you to create a stable yet exciting life.
Lastly,
For just a moment,
I want to invite you to feel your motivation for love.
Your motivation to give and receive love and to connect.
What will make you the happiest in your life is healthy and fulfilling human connections guided by the motivation to love and be loved.
I know it sounds airy-fairy,
But try and follow the motivation of love as much as you can and see if it serves you.
