Jason Murphy

Motivating Your Motivation

Aug 13, 2007 Help Yourself

I value my readers. I truly do. But as much as I appreciate you stopping by and reading my blog, I must insist that you leave long enough to read Steve Pavlina’s post: Achieving Peak Motivation. Go ahead and read it now. My blog will wait for your return.

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Did you read it? Hopefully you did. Otherwise the rest of what I write about probably won’t make sense.A lot Steve’s writings can feel like its “new age”, while a lot of what he writes is down-right and basic common sense. Sometimes his posts are both.Achieving Peak Motivation is definitely one of Steve’s better posts, and it walks a very thin line of logic and belief. It made a lot of sense to me and struck a very deep chord.Many people know I struggle with motivation. In fact, I’m a sufferer of chronic demotivation. I’m not saying this as a victim, but rather as a realization. I need any assistance I can get to motivate myself to be motivated!

The Flow, The Zone, The Moment.

Just the title alone, Achieving Peak Motivation, was enough for me to click through and read what was written. I have had my moments of “peak” motivation and would love to operate at peak levels of motivation more frequently than I currently do. Even a daily spurt of a few minutes would be more than I currently achieve. Programmers and athletes call it “being in the zone”, others describe it as “living in the moment” or “flow”. Whatever “peak motivation” means to you, you’ve probably experienced it and recognized it at least once in your life.

“But Carrots Are Good For You!”

Steve talks about how common and perhaps misguided approach to motivation through reward and punishment, using the carrot and the stick anology, and that one eventually reaches a point of complacency and must find a new carrot to chase. I’ll add that one can eventually choose to give up and not chase the carrot any more. I know that’s still technically a level of complacency, but is anyone complacent about lost dreams and “the one that got away?” No, they live in a horrid and nagging feed of memories and meloncholy projected like a looped-film in their brain for the remainder of their lives. That doesn’t really sound complacent to me.

Well, he says it better than I ever could:

The pleasure/pain model will only get you so far in life because eventually you hit a plateau of complacency. When your survival is at stake, pleasure and pain will be strong motivators. But what if you’re doing just fine and aren’t particularly threatened? Some say you must adapt the carrot/stick model to motivate yourself further — create bigger carrots and bigger sticks. Reward yourself more and whip yourself harder. But I think there’s a better approach than trying to motivate yourself with the human equivalent of canine obedience training.

A Better Method…

So if reward/punishment is so fundamentally flawed, what is a better methodology to improve motivation? Steve suggests a love and fear model. That to truly achieve maximum motivation, once must go through a polarization and align all their efforts and strengths towards one or the other. To love is to provide an outward flow of energy to others. To fear is to recieve energy from others.

He does spend a good deal of time explaining the difference between “love polarization” and sacraficing below your means. He also explains how “fear polarization” isn’t necessarily about greed and hurting others. To simplify it, fear is to focus on what you get, while love is to focus on what you give (or what you can offer). It’s also important to realize that you can’t vacate your own needs to fulfil the needs of others. You can help a lot more people if your own needs are met first. Likewise, you can also create a larger energy of fear by securing your own needs first.

His theory is that 99% of people are not activily polarized in one direction or the other. Naturally many people seem “mostly” polarized to one side or the other, but very few reach have “peak” motivation for either.

How It Can Apply To Me

I’m going to enjoy studying this subject. I’m not sure exactly how I feel about it, but I do want to achieve more in my life and feel that in order to do so I need to increase my motivational flow.

But I already know one hiccup that I must really take a look at. Growing up I have been instinctly raised to give my energies and service to others, so you could say I’m more naturally inclined to lean towards a “love polarity”. I’d agree. My wife on the other hand seems to always have a fear based belief system built into her. I’m not sure what the source is, but have two opposites in the same house often means that we disagree on a lot of common items. If we have guests in our house, I feel grateful that I could be assisting them with a place to stay or even just to enjoy the company of friends and family. My house is your house mentality. Make yourself at home. Now, my wife on the other hand is complete opposite and very teritorial. House guests not only are inconvenient, they are an invasion of privacy. Did they help themselves to cereal in the morning? Are they going to pay for it or replace it? How long are they going to stay so I know when to plan to get on with my life?

How did two opposites fall in love and get married? I scratch my head asking the same thing sometimes. As a couple, it would be so much easier if our energies were in synch. Don’t get me wrong, she’s very sweet and loving when she’s in her environment and comfort zone. But break her security blanket and watch out. She’s a nervous chihuahua where I’m more of a labrador retriever.

Guess I have my work cut out for me in order to achieve “peak motivation”.

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• Today is Day 5 out of 30 for My Own Thirty Day Challenge.