Motivation Part 2

“It always seems impossible, until it’s done.” Nelson Mandela

In the last post we went through a couple of common perspectives, or perspective-shapers that can hamper motivation. Ways that we can get in the way of ourselves and the free flow of life through us. Thomas Moore defined neurosis in just that way: anything that gets in the way, or hampers the free flow of life. So in a sense, we tackled some common neurotic tendencies.

Feeling as though we HAVE to do a thing, or that thing we are unmotivated to do possibly not aligning with our deepest values - these are roadblocks. Roadblocks that can be removed of course, but all the same - something is blocking the way forward. Or the path itself is not ours to tread and recognizing that, we can move to a better path and stop wasting our energies on the one we are currently struggling along.

"If I can't succeed, I won't try."

Last on this list, and the subject of this post is an insidious one. A very common issue when it comes to motivation is simply believing you can’t do it or that you can’t do it well.

So, chances are that if what you are thinking of doing is new to you, you will not do it well. And you may not do it well for a while. Maybe you’ll never really do it well. And learning new things, while exciting on one hand, can also be taxing and embarrassing on the other. It’s totally natural to resist doing a thing because you may suck at it.

And despite our best efforts, there may be some things that we can never do. And that's okay. We don't need to do everything. But of course there is only one way to find out if we can or can't: by trying to do it. Hard and consistently.

Spiritual principles in action.

Here’s the thing: and this is where some deep-ass spiritual work comes in. It’s easy to just say I can’t or it’s too hard and just choose to sit it out. It is. Especially these days with so much phones and TV’s, the numbing options are endless. We can always distract ourselves with something that contents us in the moment while slowly eroding the fabric of our heart.

And no one can really hold you accountable for what your heart longs for and what you choose to ignore except you. Your life will ultimately be a reflection in part of how much of your heart you chose to put into it. Take the bench if it suits you.

I think we get really caught up in ideas of success and obsess over outcomes when ultimately it’s about process. This is hardly a new thought but none of us seem to be doing it so maybe we need to think about it some more. What if we didn’t focus on the outcome? What if we found a process that, in and of itself, was meaningful?

And enough. This is some bona fide high spiritual work. And it's not so much a doing as an accepting. Accepting what is in fact out of our hands. Results are often not in our power to control. Factors that lead to certain results we have some say in but ultimately, a great truth of life is that we do not control outcomes.

“Follow your bliss”.

Wayne Muller once said "we're only given the right to do the right thing, not make the right thing happen." The right thing in this case is following the path that spreads out before us when we call to mind what we feel devotion towards. Our job is to follow that path. Period.

Joseph Campbell, who spent his life devoted to the study of myth, believed that this was one of the highest spiritual teachings that he found all across the globe, throughout all of history. “Follow your bliss” was how he phrased it. And he found the idea everywhere.

Will we be successful at it? Arguably we are successful as soon as we take our first step. And on every subsequent step. That is success. In a world that would bully you out of every dream you may have while grinding you to dust on the wheel of late stage capitalism, success is seeing that luminous path in front of you, having the courage and wherewithal to step onto it and continuing one step in front of the other.

We don’t have to be successful. Success in this day in age, in this part of the world is measured in the most banal and narrow terms. Fuck it. We don’t have to participate in that. But to miss out on the bliss. That is a shame worthy of being named a cardinal sin.

We just have to try. That’s it. It’s all we can really do. Focus on the process almost exclusively and just try.