Accessing Genuine Motivation
We all want to be motivated. However, to access genuine motivation, we must recognize that motivation is not the first step toward achieving our goals - it is the result of taking action.
Sometimes, we can become confused by how to achieve a goal. For example, we can think that in order to start on something, we must first experience motivation. We think that it is the motivation that will drive us to get out of bed early and go to the gym, or start writing that book, or to write that business plan.
But in fact, motivation is not Step 1. Motivation is not even a step. Motivation is the reward. It’s the gold within us. We get the rewarding feeling of motivation once we have mined ourselves through revulsion, renunciation, decisiveness, and discipline.
These steps: revulsion, renunciation, decisiveness and discipline - are the necessary mining, refining and nurturing we must do in order to access the golden fruit of true motivation within us. We don’t need to feel motivated in order to act. In fact, we’re almost guaranteed to be a let-down if we rely on feeling motivated before acting. Instead, if we go through the refining process of revulsion, renunciation, decisiveness and discipline, we can experience the rewarding fuel of motivation. Then we are unstoppable in achieving our aim.
First, what is motivation? Motivation and inspiration have a lot in common. Motivation pushes us toward our goal with focus and flow. Motivation is like a pure fuel. In order to access that pure fuel, we need to clarify and refine the impure fuel.
What is the impure fuel that needs refining? Our present situation. That’s not meant to make us depressed, but it’s important that we not fool ourselves. If we want to make a change in our lives it’s because there is something that needs changing - our present situation. If we want to achieve a goal, it’s because there is something that we are currently not experiencing that we want to experience.
In the vain of hopeful self-acceptance I sometimes find it hard to admit to myself that my goals are based on things I want to change. But it turns out it’s a crucial step to admit that I want something to be different than how it is. That is called renunciation.
It’s kinda dramatic, but in the Buddhist tradition that I practice, it’s sometimes referred to as “renunciation” and sometimes as “revulsion.” The first step toward experiencing true motivation is this felt sense of revulsion for the present situation. It doesn’t have to be some big, blown out disgust, but it does have to come from a genuine desire for things to be different than how they are.
Right now, I’m writing a novel. My goal is to have 200 good pages of the novel completed by Bicycle Day in April. This is a fun goal, but it didn’t really have any gravitas until I really tuned in to the revulsion behind it. For me, I had to really allow myself to experience the revulsion of what was my current state at the time - the feeling of having not produced a challenging creative work, not for a client in a very long time. I used to record and release music albums. I used to produce my own events. For the last few years, I’ve been lucky enough to be very creatively engaged in work with my clients - particularly with Electric Forest and Lost Lands - but unlike the albums and events I used to produce, the festival work is for someone else. It’s very rewarding work, so my tendency is to tell myself to be grateful and enjoy the opportunity. But the truth is that there was still something missing: achieving a challenging creative goal not for someone else, but just because I can. Creativity for its own sake.
When I reflected on the last time I had accomplished a creative achievement for its own sake - for the sheer sake of unleashing and focusing creativity - it had been a long time. Over the last decade, my creative pursuits got merged with the currencies of hype, money making, business and social positioning. It’s not a particularly depressing state, in fact, it’s been a quite exhilarating journey. But in that exhilaration, I found myself contextualizing the creative energy that animates me in the context of the value of what I was creating to a client or an audience - a kind of transactionalization of the creative energy. It’s made me good money, and though I feel a sense of pride about the accomplishments I’ve had in monetizing my creative energy, the truth is that allowing these currencies to monopolize my creative pursuits has left this little ember inside of me - the ember of unhinged creativity for its own sake - unnourished.
I could experience a good life and be decently happy if I don’t nourish that ember. But when I am 80 years old and thinking back on the life I led, and where I put my effort, and what chances I took, will I be fulfilled and genuinely tickled if I don’t nourish this ember? The answer is: No.
That “No” is revulsion. It’s super easy to get distracted by little pleasures and lose our connection to that “No.” But that “No” is so essential. “No, I will not be truly satisfied if I don’t do this. No, I will not be truly fulfilled if I don’t do this. No, I will not grin with mischevious delight when I look back on my life if I don’t do this.”
From that revulsion, we renounce that life that does not achieve the true satisfaction and fulfillment of our purpose. For me, it wasn’t like I had to identify my one true purpose, but it was A purpose. It is my purpose to create and produce creative works, simply because I can. Because to do so harnesses my strengths, focuses me, and puts me into flow state. And in that state, I am connected with something - like some kind of life force, or nature, or the cosmos or something - and things flow. When I look back on my life, I want it to memories of me being in that flow, where I’m communing with Nature, Life Force, the Cosmos, God and letting it flow through me. To not do that seems disrespectful of the very life force animating me and giving me the opportunity to have this succession of one vivid experience after another. Knowing that I need this, and then not doing it because I’ve become distracted by comforts - what a shame! I have spent a lot of time in my life muting that light and that flow by choosing comfort over grasping that responsibilty to the Divine - the comfort of alcohol, weed, money, social positioning, power over the responsibility of being a vessel or a tube through which Divine Life Force can flow. Realizing that - REVULSION. Knowing that there is another way - Renunciation.
Decisiveness.
Make a decision. Name it. Name the action to take. Then do it. Just take the leap and make one simple action in the direction of your decision.
For me, I need to allow myself to win with a single action. Every day I need to win, but I don’t need to win completely at my goal - I just need a win. One little win every day. Let those wins stack up. Incremental stacking wins. That is discipline.
When discipline is composed on incremental stacking wins, the experience of discipline becomes splendor. I fucking love that word “splendor.” I experience it when I am out on a long run, coming down the mountain after a hard push up. Or when I’m surfing, I experience splendor - especially if it was a hard push against white water and crashing waves to get out to where the cool undulating water where the waves are forming - then the right wave appears, I paddle hard and when I stand up on my board, I taste the fruit of hard work and communion with Nature as splendor.
Then, having gone through this process, and having experienced the splendor of discipline, this other thing emerges. This pure fuel. Motivation. That’s when I wake up thinking about how far I might be able to run that day, or how intense and rewarding the waves might be. Or even, lately, after some time working and working, putting in the hours and the attention, I now find myself motivated to write this novel. Harnessing that pure fuel of motivation is insanely rewarding, but it can only be accessed in the final stages of the process of transformation.
It’s through revulsion, renunciation, decisiveness and discipline that I get the opportunity to experience the rare fuel of motivation.
I hope that you’re able to experience that rare, pure fuel of motivation in your life. Let’s explore how to access that together.
-Cam
