Is Your Motivation Born of Inspiration or Desperation?

Now, before we move on to dissecting motivation, let’s recount my prior blog post contained the two questions that were the keys to uncovering vision and motivation:

1. Where do you ultimately want to go, and

2. What’s the underlying reason you want to be there?

Now that you’ve evaluated your vision and motivation, it’s time to understand whether your mission is born of inspiration or desperation. Knowing this is important. You’ll see why in a minute.

With an engineering and finance background, I have a natural affinity toward formulas. Right-brained readers stay with me! This simple formula from The Art of Abundance by Dennis Merrit Jones means a lot to me…

(Reason + Passion) x Commitment = Success

When you look at it closely, this formula actually has two components: "Commitment x Reason", and "Commitment x Passion." With me so far? Breaking it down this way shows the probability of "success" is severely diminished without commitment to your passion. In short, passion is critical.

Now, here’s where all this comes together.

Motivation built on Inspiration is also often described as "passion." To have passion, you have to have inspired motivation.

Inspiration-based motivation stems from positive energy. It’s aspirational, lofty and often comes from a place of dreams. And that’s good - only a fraction of true success is realized if you apply your commitment to something that seems reasonable or safe to do. So dream big! Inspirational motivation urges you to push beyond your comfort zone because you believe the outcome will be worth the sweat-equity. In fact, I contend that you won't be able to truly sustain full commitment to reasonable choices without passion. With that thought I'll get to working on a formula that has commitment approaching zero over time when passion is waning or non-existent. Calling all mathematicians: feel free to send me a representative formula for this point.

Motivation out of Desperation is different. But it’s not always a negative thing. Many times, nothing holds our attention better than the feeling of pain or lack. So, for some, our drive doesn't wane when we are in desperation mode.

But sometimes it does.

Be careful when motivation is fueled by desperately wanting to get out of a situation causing you pain. Why? Because lurking in the brush is the potential to just give up or become numb to it. And turning numb and biding your time to the end doesn’t produce success that’s truly fulfilling. Personally, the idea of turning numb or giving up has just about as much of a negative connotation as the thought of someone else "using" me to achieve their goals. To me, I would have wasted my talent and potential in both scenarios and sacrificed the abundant happiness and success I deserve.

So, in short. We’ve talked about two sources of motivation – inspiration is the essence of positive energy, while desperation comes from a negative energy source. If your current motivation is desperation, then keep plugging away. However, I urge you to get to a place where your motivation is based on passionate inspiration.

If you want to really check in on your deepest passions, then I would recommend taking an assessment of your core values. I enjoyed Brene Brown’s core values exercise in her book "Dare to Lead" (search for the assessment online). I'd love to hear if your values line up in any way with what you say you are passionate about.

#DaretoLead