What's wrong with being motivated?

Ten foot tall and bulletproof. You got a problem wi' dat?!

There isn't anything at all wrong with ordinary motivation. It's what gets us up in the morning, makes us go to work to earn money to buy food, and gets us to wash our stinky ass so we can get laid. All good.

What is problematic is artificial motivation. You know, the kind where you spend all day listening to Professional Motivational Speakers in a stadium full of other Homers, and at the end of your caffeine-jangled, glassy-eyed day you think you're ready to kick ass and eat steel. Then by the following week you're right back to being fully focused on the Simpson account, hoping it'll earn you that meager raise, and maybe a shot at that hot chick in Mergers and Acquisitions. This week you want to save the world single-handedly; next week you just want to recarpet your bedroom.

Well, what did you expect?! This story gets replayed over and over again hundreds of thousands of times every year, by tens of thousands of needy dupes. And some of them are the same dupes, year after year. They go to seminars; they read motivational books. They score their "fix" any way they can get it, because they can't live without it, and they haven't learned any other way to get it.

So what is the "other way"? It's from within yourself. True "motivation" is just an eagerness and a belief that you can make your life better, which naturally follows with the willingness to do so (or at least try). It is hope, if you want to think of it that way.

But it will never lead to actions that will do you any good unless there is belief to back it up. I'm talking about that basic self-esteem that not only tells you that you can do things, but also that you are worthwhile, that you deserve to do as well as you are able to.

Without that, your efforts (if any) will be half-hearted, half-baked and ultimately fruitless. So before you spend your money and your time going to get all "fired up", make sure first that it's worth the effort. Because otherwise, motivation is just like crack cocaine: you get really, really high, then crash to below where you started.

And the valley is much wider than the mountaintop.

Phil