Comparing Indirect to Direct Motivation
Earlier today as I was hurrying to my office, I was thinking: “Now I really must sit down and write this website page about Direct Motivation. Otherwise another day will go by and it won’t be done. Oh dear, oh dear!”
I was getting stressed about being unable to find the Goodwill store to leave the household items rattling around in my car. Why the stress? Because I was already late to get to my office. Then, of course, the traffic lights were all against me!
Does that sound like being a little stressed? As I became aware of my stress, I pondered: “Maybe there’s a reason I’ve just become aware of all this stress,” I thought. “Maybe I have to learn something here.”
Here I am writing about Motivation, and I even developed this technique of doing a Motivation Check, yet I so often forget to do the Motivation check on myself. So now I will. So I had to ask myself: “Why am I so stressed about writing this website page? Part of me knows the truth that tomorrow is another day – or not!”
I decided to thoroughly dig out the mixed messages I was feeling from within, the urgency and non-urgency, and take to advantage of my hard-won personal knowledge about Motivation from a quarter-century of inner research on it! So I focused on the question: “What is really at stake for me at this moment?” I spent some time looking deeper inside myself. I didn’t just find out something, I had a life-changing breakthrough!
OK, I know I have this need to ‘feel-good-about-Self’ through being productive (maybe even workaholic?) and instead of working and being productive, I went for a massage and now I’m doing this Goodwill errand. Must be my addiction to get afgaSas aSSoSby the end of the day kick in. I know it is so strong that it is almost impossible to resist, unless you know what is going on! And I do! Maybe I have to take it easy instead. If I end up not writing this article about Direct Motivation today, there are no dead bodies!
If I don’t write it today, then I will not have that ‘feel-good-about-myself’ that I experience physically as some sort of nicely exalted sensation of a slightly raised tension in my body. That means at his moment, while in the car, I won’t be able to get that feeling that anticipates an act or behavior that is meant to produce this sensation of ‘feel-good-about-myself’, a feeling of usefulness preparing (‘anticipation’) for the ‘scoring-to-come’ and that is almost as strong as the real SSoS-oriented activity.
And then Grace hit me: “So what?” I thought. “I can still breathe. I am still alive. I can just go on breathing.”
That was a totally new experience to me! I never before had considered going ‘without’ that feeling, let alone envisioning I could ‘go on living’ when in a state of ‘thwarted’ initiative of working toward achieving a feel-good-about-Self.’
In this HolisPsych theory, ‘feel-good-about-Self’ is much more than just a Quality-of-Life–level matter such as feeling satisfied with certain results of your day. No, it functions as a Substitute Sense of Self, which is experienced as a matter of life or death. (Annihilation) That explains the tremendous pull to ADDICTION/COMPULSION of it, a pull I had just broken fully free from, for the first time in my life!
I used to live totally under the trance/spell of my Substitute-Sense-of-Self–oriented psycho-emotional System. After much study of myself, I reached the point of understanding its meaning for my life, understanding where it came from and how it worked.
I knew that this need to ‘feel-good-about-myself’ had seemed, to me as a child, the only or best way to deal with the lack of personal acknowledgment I was experiencing. That lack had turned into a lack of a healthy Sense of Self. Going for ‘the feel-good-about-myself’ (= Substitute Sense of Self) was a useful way to fill the intolerably aching void of that lack.
Now, for the first time, I experienced more clearly than ever before that in my present life, time, and circumstances, this Substitute Sense of Self was no more than a fiction! A story I no longer was compelled to believe or act out! That I could survive without needing to achieve anything! (Ego-References)
Today, in that moment, I was finally able to fully recognize that my compulsion of having to have a ‘good-feeling-about-myself’ each day – over and over again – was a ‘story,’ a ‘fiction’ that I could live outside of. I was for the first time able to ‘breathe through it.’ I was finally able to put it aside in a deeply thorough way.
So now I am sitting here writing for you about Direct Motivation. After my Motivation Check and the breakthrough I just described which just happened earlier today, I became much more relaxed. I got through a few more ‘hindrances’ which showed up on my path on the way here. Truth commands me to say that the stress tried to return a couple of times, but I was able to send it away successfully, by breathing through it.
Now I am sitting here writing with a quiet mind, glad to have yet another story I can share with you, to help you understand what Direct Motivation is. So I am sitting here now writing and my motives are: 1) I have a deadline and it needs to be met. 2) I truly want to convey this message to whoever may need it. For that purpose, I indeed must sit down and write it.
That is what Direct Motivation is, Dear Reader: the actual goal of the action is in a healthy, open, direct relationship with the action itself. The actual intent is directly related to the action or activity. There is no other (Hidden) Agenda(Hidden) Agenda. The action, activity or behavior is truly “about” what it looks like it is about. No stress, no fear, no compulsiveness. Plain, simple, and ordinary.
