A good question to ask when contemplating hard work is: 'Why? Why bother waking up for a train before dawn? Why bother doing two or three jobs at once while attending night school simultaneously? In order to pour every spare cent into your company, why bother scrimping and saving and forgoing earthly pleasures? The reply: inspiration.
What sets hard work in motion is inspiration. In spite of the grueling grin and the tough sacrifices, motivation is what makes us active. But just as both renewable energy sources and wasteful energy sources exist, negative motivation and positive motivation exist. They'll both bring you success. But one is better than the other, clearly.
The Motivation Matrix : Positive Vs Negative
Writing for Psychology Today, Dr. Jim Taylor describes motivation as "being able to work hard in the face of obstacles, boredom, fatigue, stress, and the desire to do other things." Each person has a different motivation that drives them to achieve success. Dr. Taylor explains this with the matrix of motivation, which breaks down two aspects of motivation: external vs. internal vs. negative vs. positive. Each mixture-internal-positive, external-positive, internal-negative and external-negative-can provide enough incentive for the success of the net. But it can be very different from the experience and result of the path to success.
Writing for Psychology Today, Dr. Jim Taylor describes motivation as "being able to work hard in the face of obstacles, boredom, fatigue, stress, and the desire to do other things." Each person has a different motivation that drives them to achieve success. Dr. Taylor explains this with the matrix of motivation, which breaks down two aspects of motivation: external vs. internal vs. negative vs. positive. Each mixture-internal-positive, external-positive, internal-negative and external-negative-can provide enough incentive for the success of the net. But it can be very different from the experience and result of the path to success.
Success vs. Happiness: A Rags-to-Riches Story
Take the real life tale of Aimee Elizabeth, for instance. Aimee was broke and homeless from the age of 15, working several low-paying (but legal) jobs to avoid starving to death. She managed to get a foothold on her savings by the time she was 18, thanks to a policy type job she got at an insurance agency. However, there were a variety of improvements to the company's structure after the insurance agency shifted ownership, including a revised dress code policy.
Aimee tells Primer, "They expected me to conform." "I felt outraged. I didn't want to waste my hard-earned cash on clothes that I was never going to wear except at work. By this time, I had around $5,000 saved in the bank, but my common sense was over-ridden by my youth, and I left.
Looking back, Aimee felt motivated to leave the best paid career she had ever had, possibly for other reasons. "I realized that by working for others, I could never earn what I believed I was worth," she says.
So, she had begun her first profitable company by the time she was 20. For nine years, it has thrived. Her personal life did not, however. She had made a promise to herself never to have children when she was an abandoned, starving and homeless girl, for fear that they would end up as she was when she was 15. That decision made it difficult for her to sustain intimate relationships, along with her desire for success.
"While I was now financially stable, I was never able to conquer the visceral fear of being homeless and starving again. I've never been able to make enough money to get over the fear I had of innocent kids relying on me. So I not only missed the joys of motherhood, I missed some pretty great guys because of this choice of lifestyle," Aimee said.
So, she had begun her first profitable company by the time she was 20. For nine years, it has thrived. Her personal life did not, however. She had made a promise to herself never to have children when she was an abandoned, starving and homeless girl, for fear that they would end up as she was when she was 15. That decision made it difficult for her to sustain intimate relationships, along with her desire for success.
While I was now financially stable, I was never able to conquer the visceral fear of being homeless and starving again. I've never been able to make enough money to get over the fear I had of innocent kids relying on me. So I not only missed out on the joys of motherhood, because of this lifestyle choice, I missed out on some pretty nice guys,” Aimee says.
Aimee went on to create and sell four firms, allowing her, when she was 38 years old, to retire. She was a multi-millionaire, wealthy investor in real estate, guest speaker, business consultant and best-selling author at the age of 49. Yet she has been, and remains to this day, alone.
Aimee was motivated very much by external-negative motivation in the beginning. She was trying to escape from poverty. Ironically, even after the fear of being homeless and hungry again disappeared, the same drive continued to bring her. Her motivation transitioned from external-negative to internal-negative at that point. The fear of poverty was no longer part of her conditions, something that was profoundly rooted in her. She was unable to shake it. In spite of her performance, in order to conquer these emotions, Aimee says she regrets not going into therapy in her 20s. Sadly, she never made the change to a positive-internal reward.
I'll be the homeless and hungry fifteen-year-old girl within forever," she says." It taught me to rely only on myself to be so young on my own, and now, 30 plus years later, it's a habit I doubt I can break. I conquered my hunger and homelessness. Often, because of so many years I have spent alone, I regret my personal decisions. And now, at my age, I wonder if I'm going to be alone forever. Will I grow old on my own and die on my own, too? It seems possible. And so, instead of focusing on it, I just keep making more money, distracting myself from loneliness.
As the tale of Aimee shows, even though negative inspiration, progress can be realized. But happiness and success do not go hand-in-hand all the time.
Doing the Hard Work: The Drive
It is already quite above and above the routine to take the time to assess your motivation. But when you collect the time, concentration and bravery to do a painfully honest inventory of what's driving you, it becomes truly hard work. For extreme cases like Aimee's, in order to tease out the true essence of your drive, you can need to seek assistance from a third party. A competent therapist or a mentor or a trusted friend may be this. For the rest of us, it means taking a hard look at your life's course and questioning your assumptions about your priorities. This can be confusing. If you spent your childhood, your college years and a few years on the job market thinking that you will be a pro basketball player or a radio announcer or a brain surgeon, it can be downright difficult to consider the idea that you do not even want these stuff. You could let your parents down, or the coach or the teacher who always believed in you. Or maybe a major part of your personality has always been determined by your ambitions to be X. Whatever the case, it will only get worse if your heart isn't in it when you get further down that road.
Now, take the time. Have the hard work done. Find out what truly inspires you and make sure that it aligns with what makes you really happy.
