I was doing an exercise recently, in fact I’m still working on it, about motivation.  The exercise was to determine what motivates me.  I wracked my brain.  I asked myself deep, searching questions.  The only thing I could come up with was - that when my family is in a crisis of any sort, small or large, I am motivated like never before.  My focus becomes clear.  My focus is razor sharp.  My senses are like that of an animal hunting, or being hunted.  Everything to left and right fades away and only my path becomes clear, focused and definite.

 

 

But the exercise required me to mention 5 ways/things that motivate me.  I could not think of any others.  I did the exercise with a colleague.  Still nothing.  I was beginning to feel that it was odd that only a negative thing would motivate me so energetically.  So I e-mailed a couple of people to ask them what questions I could ask myself to elicit the answers.  They both replied in much the same way.  They pointed out that I was motivated every day, I just didn’t think about it.  Why would I get out of bed in the morning if I wasn’t motivated?  Why would I have tried to do the exercise in the first place, if I wasn’t motivated?  Why would I eat, read, learn, feed my family & care for them, drive my kids to their classes etc. if I wasn’t motivated?

 

So I began to see that I was looking for a huge motivating factor.  I was looking for what motivates me to make big decisions, or big changes, or take big chances.  But, while these occasions for the BIG motivator and BIG response do exist, they are not the nuts and bolts of my everyday living.  My ordinary (if any motivator is truly ordinary) motivations are the same as the big one I identified - I love my family.  I want to be loved, needed, appreciated, listened to.  I want to feel good.  That motivates me to do the things that will lead to me feeling good.  End of story.