Dr Robert Anthony believes that it is important for you to have a clear understanding of what motivation is. “Motivation describes your attitude when you would rather do one thing more than another at a particular time.”
Everyone is always motivated. Whether you are actively seeking success in a certain field or are just plain lazy and prefer to sit in a chair – you are motivated. If you did not want to sit around and do nothing, you would do something else, and that would become your motivation. The fact is that you cannot start the slightest activity without first being motivated. What you must recognise is the difference between positive and negative motivation: the motivation to do something worthwhile and constructive and the motivation to do something, which is destructive to your well-being.
In essence, no one can BE motivated. Everyone is self-motivated. “You will always do what you would rather do than not do.” This generates your particular motivation.
Every action you take is a response to a personal need or desire that is determined by your present level of Awareness. Normally, your basic motivation is to “feel good” – mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. If your needs in any one of these areas are unfulfilled, they will create a sense of frustration and anxiety and you will do whatever you feel necessary to make yourself comfortable, even if that action is harmful to yourself.
Motivating yourself positively
If you want to have a more positive life experience, you must be convinced that any change you make will bring about the gratification of a particular need or desire. Positive self-motivation begins with changing your Awareness. To make a constructive change in your life, you must evaluate the potential benefits for any given action. Then you must convince yourself that the benefits will justify or outweigh the price you have to pay for them.
Others may inspire or even threaten you to make a change, but it is YOU who must motivate yourself by means of “profit and loss” comparison. To some degree, you have been doing this all your life, only now you can make certain that the process will work FOR instead of AGAINST you.
Dr Anthony advises that we will find it most helpful to cultivate the use of two familiar but often neglected words: “wise” and “unwise.” “All your actions and the actions of others should be viewed as either wise or unwise. Nothing should be judged as “good” or “bad,” “fair” or “unfair,” “right” or “wrong”. These are only moral judgments based on your present Awareness or the collective Awareness of society.”
He says that the terms “wise” and “unwise” do not impose value judgments. They allow you to observe your actions or the actions of another and, on the basis of Awareness, decide if they are “wise” or “unwise.” “It is important to understand that your ACTIONS may be “bad”, but YOU are never “bad.” This same understanding must, in turn, be extended by you to everyone else.”
It is impossible to “motivate” people to change by telling them what they “must,” “should” or “ought” to do. They can only change through their own conscious decisions. You may inspire, frighten or threaten them, but the motivation generated will only be temporary to fulfill their dominant need which, for that moment, is to get rid of you. They will not change their habits permanently until they are convinced that the change will be beneficial to them in relation to the price they have to pay. More importantly, they will not change until their Awareness is changed.
You have the right and option to choose anything you want to do – anything at all. The Creator has given you free will to do anything you wish within the limits of your intellectual and physical capabilities. The Divine gift of free will is always yours. Free will certainly does not imply that you must make the “right” choice all the time. Your choice is only as “right” as your present level of Awareness. However, you are responsible for consequences of all your choices.
When you make any decision, it is based on a level of Awareness, which is at a fixed point for that moment. You can do one thing and only one thing based on your current Awareness. Thus you are always doing the best you can under the present circumstance. You must give yourself the right to make mistakes because it is through mistakes that your Awareness is expanded.
You will never be free until you learn to be true to yourself and accept full responsibility for your own life and the fulfillment of your needs. But, in doing so, you must also accept full responsibility for every thought, word, deed and decision for, inevitably, you will have to pay the price for each. “You will learn and grow according to the nature and consequences of your actions.”
Nothing you do is “right” or “wrong,” “good” or “bad.” It is only WISE and UNWISE. The person to whom you are accountable for all your actions is YOU. The logic of this is quite evident when you consider that it is you who will reap the reward or suffer the consequences.
THE hold of habit
Habits make you the person you are. It is impossible to make a major change in your life without destroying the compulsive hold they have upon you. The sages believe that unless you are happy, healthy, calm, peaceful, self-reliant and successful in every area of your life, changing self-defeating habits must take priority in your life.
Most of us have no idea how much our lives are built around so-called “bad habits.” We have programmed the wrong responses into our subconscious minds and central nervous system. This causes us to respond the way we have conditioned ourselves to feel and act, no matter how negative, false, distorted, or destructive this might be. Consequently, we must go through a period of unlearning or deprogramming in order to change our negative, self-defeating habit patterns.
No amount of will power is of any use unless we really want to give up old habits. Most of the time we want to get rid of their painful effects but are not willing to give up the habits themselves.
The reason most diets fail after a short time is that the dieter starts feeling deprived. He has the desire to lose weight; to look and feel better, but he has no desire to give up overeating. The end result is that his mind is constantly filled with thoughts of food. The more he thinks about food, the more conscious he becomes of it until the desire to eat overtakes his will power. We should not deceive ourselves that we can change our lives by self-discipline alone; by hoping that we can force ourselves to make a change.
Before you can change any habit, you must fully recognize and accept that you have one. “The fact that you cannot accept your faults is the reason why you cannot overcome them.” Verbally condemning your bad habits and yourself for having them only tightens their hold, thereby defeating all efforts to suppress them. Feeling guilty just makes the hold stronger. Alfred Adler put it this way. “Either do wrong OR feel guilty, but do not do BOTH. It’s too much work.”
We must create new, more positive habits by eliminating our negative habits through substitution, by providing worthy, positive thoughts and actions to replace them. If your parents took something away from you as a child, they usually offered you something else in return. This kept your mind off what they had taken from you.
As a new habit becomes stronger we are less and less tempted by the old one. We must always be aware of our thoughts and actions and keep our dominant thoughts focused on what we want instead of what we do not want.
BY CAPT SAM ADDIAH (RTD)