Your Core Motivation

The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this:
Decide what you want.

 – Ben Stein

You are unique. No external agent can show you the way to good long-term outcome, or even tell you what good long-term outcome means in your particular case. To act in accord with your interests and principles, you have to know what they are. What are your interests and principles? If you do not know the answer to the question, you will have to create it or discover it. Only you can define your interests and principles.

What Do You Really Want?

Some people dedicate themselves to developing a financial pyramid scheme based on selling cleaning products and cosmetics to their friends and relatives. The success of a sports team or political party is vitally important to some individuals; for others it is a particular religious or philosophical perspective that gives meaning to life, and some just want to get laid.

How do you evaluate these motivations? Do some seem more foolish or more base than others? Not everyone would agree on which are the foolish ones. You were impressionable as a child, and the conditioning that you received when “the cement was wet” may have produced perspectives that are no longer valid, yet continue to influence your beliefs and motivations. Now that you are an adult and want to change your course, what criteria will you use to determine which is your path of greatest advantage?

There are many world views, some with enthusiastic advocates who work hard to convert others to their value system. Since the goal of this kit is self-direction, the only values of importance are yours. What is important to you? How do you appraise the alternatives available to you?

Thought Experiment: The Basis of Your Appraisals

Consider how you evaluate other people’s motivations. For example, Ms. X evaluates people on the basis of how beautiful they are; Mr. Y evaluates people on the basis of their income and social status; and Ms. Z evaluates people on the basis of how judgmental they are. How does this information influence your appraisal of each?

There are many dimensions that you can use to appraise people, biographies, and the choices available to you. Some are trivial, some are important. Think about your evaluation of X Y and Z. According to what criteria were you appraising their evaluative bias?

The goal of this exercise is to get an appreciation of your evaluative bias and move toward identifying your core motivation.

Appreciating your core motivation enables you to honestly appraise the choices available to you so that you can go for what you really want, rather than rebelling against, or slavishly complying with, the "shoulds" you have been conditioned to accept. There may be people who think they know what you should do—for your own good. But they have their own biases, and they don’t know all there is to know about you. The important question is: How do you select among the paths available to you? What do you really want? What are you willing to sacrifice to get it?

If you are not conscious of your core motivation, then your behavior will be not be motivated by your interests and principles, but by:

  • Conformity - Doing what other people are doing.
  • Obedience - Doing what you are told.
  • Pleasure Seeking - Doing what produces immediate gratification.

It is not free from what, it is free for what

The purpose of you life is not: to control your relationship with this incentive. That is just a sub goal in the quest to get what you really want while you still have the opportunity to get. No excuses; no regrets. The mission of our collaboration is to make sure you get what you want most. So an important responsibility of your part of our collaboration is specifying your core motivation.

The first task is to identify what you want most, and make a draft of possible candidates for your core motivation Needless to say, it is your life and you are free to change it whenever you want to. Feel free to specify it as provisional. The requirement for making a hard copy of your core motivation is to freeze the conclusions you come to when you apply your best cognitive resources to discovering or creating meaning. As circumstances or your philosophy changes you can change your specification. However, to protect against impulsive changes (or gradual drifting of intention) due to changes in local conditions, I recommend that you go through the formal process of rewriting your specification before you let it drive your actions.

Who Am I? Where Am I Going?

In preparation for specifying your core motivation, please turn your attention inward and dedicate your best cognitive resources to contemplating what is meaningful to you and what you want to do with this life of yours.

The next page will offer some strategies ranging from the mundane to the weird to help you identify your core motivation. To get yourself in a contemplative state of mind, just close your eyes and ask yourself: "Who am I and where am I going?" Allow the mind to ponder this question for a little while and see what happens. If you mind wonders, bring it back to the question you posed. After spending as much or as little time as you want with that question, make notes of your reactions, thoughts, images. You may then attend to the question: "What do I really want?" Then "What am I willing to sacrifice to get it?" Compose other questions that pertain to your core motivation and pose them to yourself. Make notes, discuss your observations with me via email or with family or friends. The goal of this and the other personal research in this section is to specify your core motivation so that you are motivated to do what it takes to achieve what you want.

Core Motivation Specification Form

^ Back to Top

Contemplation > >