{"id":2702,"date":"2012-12-21T09:16:11","date_gmt":"2012-12-21T14:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/?p=2702"},"modified":"2012-12-21T09:16:11","modified_gmt":"2012-12-21T14:16:11","slug":"motivation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/?p=2702","title":{"rendered":"Motivation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not too long ago I was involved in a discussion about what motivates us. General answers were given such as wanting to help others, desires to be a good person, a sense of responsibility. I think all of these are good answers, but as I thought about it, I don’t think one of our primary motivations for doing things were mentioned: avoiding guilt.<\/p>\n

I’ll admit that there was a time when my primary motivation for doing certain things was to avoid feeling guilt, or I was already feeling guilty and wanted to get rid of it. In a lot of ways, our culture supports this method of motivation. How many times have we found ourselves saying, “I better do __________ or else __________.”? Now, I’m not saying that everything we do is based on guilt, but for you, what percentage of what you do is?<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a>

Image by vancity197<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

In my journey, I’ve reached a point where enough is enough. I’ve made a decision that when I do something, I want it based out of love–either for another person or for the action itself. For some of the things that I do, I’ve really had to search down deep and redefine ideas, beliefs, and philosophies. When I do this, sometimes I can find motivation based on love. If I just can’t, I’ll admit that sometimes I do default to doing it out of guilt, but sometimes I find myself not doing it, guilt-free.\u00a0I work because I love my family and what I do. I help a friend move because I love them and want to serve them. I go and visit someone because I care about them and want to make sure they are doing well.<\/p>\n

All of that being said, it’s important to point out that I don’t necessarily wait around for a strong feeling of love to do things. It’s beyond the scope of this post to define love, but part of it is certainly a commitment. If I have that commitment to someone or something, then my motivation is already there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not too long ago I was involved in a discussion about what motivates us. General answers were given such as wanting to help others, desires to be a good person, a sense of responsibility. I think all of these are good answers, but as I thought about it, I don’t think one of our primary motivations for doing things were Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":2704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,62],"tags":[65,28,23,75,52,29,101,79,70],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-emotions-2","category-human-2","tag-connection","tag-emotions","tag-empathy","tag-happiness","tag-human","tag-journey","tag-life","tag-perspective","tag-self-growth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/carrot.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2702"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2710,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2702\/revisions\/2710"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2702"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=2702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}