In contemplating the nature of motivation a bit of “big view” inspiration floated in the other day.  I think the inspiration was triggered by a conversation I had with Ellen the day before about unconditional love.  The desire for unconditional love seems to be a core motivator for lots of people.  What floated in was two other core motivators: the desire to gain willing participation and the desire to be true to ourselves.  But as I considered these perspectives I came to see that most people would not even recognize these as motivators at all because they are too pure.  What I mean by that is that most of us live in and see life from varying degrees of fear and separation.  Our relationship to these motivators will be from the fear-based versions of these motivators.  What does that mean?

Let's look first at unconditional love.  Why would we want unconditional love?  What is wrong with conditional love?  If we show up and meet the conditions, we get the love we are after.  What could be simpler?  The issue is fear.  We are afraid that we are not good enough in some way to meet the conditions and so we will not get the love we are after.  Life demands we participate in order to receive.  We are afraid our participation won't be sufficient and we will go hungry for the love we want and need.  We react to this fear by demanding a love that does not require anything from us; an unconditional love that guarantees we will get our needs met.  Now if we were fearless and had the confidence that we would not fail and that our participation would be enough, then we would not demand unconditionality.  But we are afraid.  The real problem with this situation is that we want to feel the love while still holding on to our fear.  But fear and love are opposite states of being and can not co-exist simultaneously.  Love is a state of connected oneness while fear is a state of separation.  It is like being terribly hungry and thirsty but refusing to open your mouth to let in any food or water.  You can't experience love from a state of fear.

Let's tackle the next motivator that floated in: the gaining of willing participation.  This is our drive to connect that is hardwired into our human brain.  It is this wiring that propelled us to the top of the food chain and gained us the safety to prosper in the otherwise harsh world.  Our drive to connect and form social networks enabled us to work together towards greater goals than any of us as individuals could consider.  When we were hungry and alone we survived as scavengers, eating what was leftover from the kills of better hunters.  But when we formed social groups, we could work together and take down a woolly mammoth or most any other prey we wanted for dinner.  Eventually, we created even larger group enterprises in the form of agriculture and herding.  We created cities and markets where we could trade goods.  This allowed specialization of skills and rapid skill advancement that were not possible when 90% of our days were spent foraging for food.  All of this is only possible when you gain the willing participation of others.  Willing participation is the cornerstone of belonging to family and tribe.  And this belonging is what produces safety and ease in life.  Belonging is built from the mutual exchange of willing participation with others.  It is not built from sameness, although it is served by having common basic needs.  It is built from trust in agreements of mutual participation.  Many people think that sameness is the key issue, but even a brief consideration shows this to be false.  Imagine you are a baker.  Is the willing participation of a whole tribe of only bakers useful to you?  No, it is not.  You need to exchange the products of your skills and labor with others that have different skills and efforts.  You need to trade your bread for the skills of the blacksmith and the butcher and the tailor.  We are more comfortable with a certain amount of social sameness, but history is built out of the trade between very different cultures across the world.

Now how does this willing participation look when it has been contaminated by fear?  The fear is still the same – that my participation is not good enough, not right.  So some part of us wants participation that does not require any reciprocal participation on our part.  We want attention and support simply because we exist.  To justify this unbalanced and unsustainable type of relationship we have to invent the story that we are special and are entitled to this kind of support and attention.  By being special, we don't have to care that getting without giving back depletes and harms those supporting us.  They are expendable and only we are important.  This view may sound harsh, but every one of us starts out with this viewpoint when we are infants.  Growing up is the process of dropping the false story that we are special and deserving of support simply because we exist.  Maturity is learning that mutuality is the only sustainable approach to life.  Our value to life exists in our service to life, not in our simple existence.  Unfortunately, this simple reality has not been taught to the children of the last couple of generations.  Without this understanding, these kids are left in a state of confused fear all the time because life is telling them they have to show up and demonstrate their value to get their needs met.  This does not match all the messages they got growing up that said they were special just because they existed.  This has created an entire generation of disempowered immature young adults.

Let's go for the third win – being true to ourselves.  We all know the feeling of having to do things we really don't believe in or having to behave in ways demanded by a peer group that doesn't fit with how we view life or want to behave.  It does not feel good.  It is a really big win to feel the freedom and empowerment to be and act in alignment with our inner truths.  It enables us to act with integrity, to be true to our word, and to be trustable.  Although a bit intangible on the surface, it actually carries great power and weight in the world of participation with others.  But what happens to this internal motivator when it is corrupted by fear?  The desire to be true to yourself and live your life your way turns into a demand that you get your way and everyone else does things your way.  Instead of you being you, you try to make those around you, be you.  The terror of disapproval and its resultant separation causes you to go into demanding control over others.  The fearful child becomes the bully to protect themselves from judgment.  The obvious problem is that everyone judges the bully anyway.  No one likes to be controlled so the only ones willing to participate with these fear-based controllers are people who seek to take advantage of the controller to build their own power.  Unfortunately, this is the world of politics and corporate life.  Integrity, honesty, and trustworthiness are nowhere to be found.  It is all about power.

The paradox of power is that those who seek power become disempowered.  Power over others is attained at the cost of power over yourself.  You seek power so you can always be right, which is a fool's path.  Without the constant feedback from life to let you know when you have strayed out of balance with life, you can't possibly gain the confidence of knowing how to produce win-win sustainable relationships with others and life.  It is precisely these kinds of relationships that give us functional permission to be our true selves in the world.  This is called mutual respect.  You have to respect others before they can possibly respect you.

The three wins form a mutually supporting trinity, one that builds confidence and a sense of peace and centeredness.  All of them relate to different aspects of how we participate in life.  They provide us with love, support, and respect.  Isn't this what we really want from life?  There is no such thing as unconditional love here on Earth, nor is there entitled specialness without participation or any chance that others can possibly be our way.  These just don't exist.  All life involves risk.  Our attempts to make life look like these really only screw us up and perpetuate our fear.

The three wins are very real and achievable.  Love, willing participation, and self-manifestation can be yours if you learn the skills to make them happen.

Take care,

David                  

     


We have received the second batch of 20 copies of my book The Balanced Life.  For those of you that signed up for the book last year, we have set your copies aside.  They are available in the office for $17.99, and they are also available on Amazon.com


New service in Office - free mask sterilization
I was getting creative the other day and decided to create a mask sterilizer for the office.  Using a small UVC sterilizing light I mounted into a file box does the job perfectly.  Hang the mask from the hook inside the lid and close the lid.  Push the timer button one time for 5 minutes of sterilizing light.  Be sure the lid is closed as UVC light will damage your eyes and skin.  Five minutes will kill any viruses or bacteria that has collected on your mask.  Directions for making your own sterilizer here.


Ellen update:    

I have a relationship with life that enjoys taking on the challenge of what life presents me.  On this occasion we were getting really low on groceries and it was dinner time.  The only thing I had in the fridge was a bucket of fresh pickles, a quarter can of coconut milk, and some zero carb konjac noodles.  On the counter I had the remains of a bag of prunes.  Ellen figured I would have to go to the store, but no, I decided I could make do with what I had.  So I chopped up some pickles, the remaining prunes, and combined the noodles and coconut milk along with a couple spices and dinner was served!  Yes, we had prune - pickle noodles for dinner!