What drives your life?
Everyone's life is driven by something. Most dictionaries define the word drive as "to guide, to control or to direct". Whether you're driving a car, a nail or golf ball, you're guiding, controlling and directing at that moment.
What is the driving force in you?
Right now you may be driven by a problem, a pressure, or a deadline. You may be driven by a painful memory, a haunting fear, or an unconscious belief. There are hundreds of circumstances, values, and emotions that can drive your life.
Many people are driven by guilt
They spend their entire lives running from regrets and hiding their shame. Guilt-driven people are manipulated by memories. They allow their past to control their future. They oftenly unconsciously punish themselves by sabotaging their own success. We are product of our past, but we are not prisoners of it.
Many people are driven by resentment and anger.
They hold on to hurts and never get over them. Instead of releasing their pain through forgiveness, they rehearse it over and over in their minds. Some resentment people _clam up_ and internalize their anger while others blow up and explode it onto others. Both responses are unhelpful and unhealthy. Resentment always hurt you more than the person you resent. While your offenders have probably forgotten the offence and gone on with life, you continue to stew in your pain, perpetuating the past.
Those who hurt you in the past cannot continue to hurt you now unless you hold on to the paid through resentment. Your past is past! Nothing will change it. Your are only hurting yourself with bitterness. For your own sake, learn from it and let it go.
Many people are driven by fear
Their fear may be a result of traumatic experience, unrealistic expectations, growing up in a high control home, or even generic predisposition. Regardless of the cause, fear driven people often miss great opportunities because they are afraid to venture out. Instead they play it safe, avoiding risks and trying to maintain the status quo.
Fear is a self-imposed prison that will keep you
from becoming what God intends for you to be. You must move against it with the weapon of faith and love
Many people are driven by Materialism
Their desire to acquire become the whole goal of their life. This drive to always want more is based on the misconception that having more will make me more happy, more important, and more secure, but all the three ideas are untrue. Possessions only provide temporary happiness, because things do not change, we eventually become bored with them and then want newer, bigger, better version.
It's also a myth that if I get more, I will become more important, self worth and net worth are not the same. Your value is not the same as your valuable. The most valuable things in life are not _things_.
The most common myth about money is that having more will make me more secure. It won't. Wealth can be lost instantly through a variety of uncontrollable factors.
Many people are driven by need for approval.
They allow the expectations of parents or spouse or children or teacher or friends to control their lives. Many adults are still trying to earn the approval of unpleasable parents. Others are driven by peer pressure, always worried about what others might think. Unfortunately, those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it. One key to failure is to try to please other people. Being controlled by the opinion of other is a guarantee way to miss your purpose.
There are other forces that can drive your life, but all leads to the same dead end: unused potential, unnecessary stress, and an unfulfilled life.