What drives a man to follow a certain path in life
What drives a man to follow a certain path in life? What makes him do the things that he routinely does daily?
The reason for everyone’s actions, that which gives purpose and direction is called, in a general consensus, motivation.
I am a logical and intuitive thinker. I like to make analogies. And I believe that while the modern man has greately evolved in the last century, not to mention the last few hundreds of years, the evolution was mainly in our thinking, in our ‘higher and evolved’ parts of the brain, and very little development has taken place in the more primitive functions of the brain. I’m not a scientist, but I have read the results of the works of scientists that were written in articles along the years, so my assumptions are based on those.
Because of this nonuniformely evolution of the brain, today’s man still reacts to some stimuli in a similar manner to cavemen. Take fear for example. While the first homo-erectus felt fear when actually justified – his life being in danger, the modern man fears the loss of his job, expressing his opinions to a larger audience, talking to a beautiful woman or losing money at poker. But guess what?! Our body does not know the difference between fears and responds in the exact same way as it did when men went hunting and women remained in caves. It freezes, blood rushes to the vital organs, adrenaline kicks in… in other words it prepares us for the fight – or – flight response to the perceived threat.
So what motivated our primitive ancestors? I believe it’s pain. Well… not pain itself but actually it’s avoiding pain. This is a fundamental and biologically driven need that motivated him in the short term. Because he didn’t think long term. No, sir, he had no targets, no goals to pursuit. And the analogy is that so is 95% of todays population. Motivated by the short term pain avoidance (not doing homework because it HURTS), he has no long term plans, he lives for not having pain today, and gives up easily when things get difficult.
Also, the masses are primarily motivated by extrinsic motivators, such as material possessions and money. The great achievers are motivated intrinsically, by their dreams, desires and passions.
External motivation is short lived, while internal motivation is nearly impossible to exhaust until the goal is achieved.
One „secret” to motivating yourself is discovering what you will fight ofr when the going gets tough. Ask yourself the question: „Why must i suffer?” A world-class athlete, for example, will answer this question with the vision he has carefully consturcted, and he’ll keep on fighting. Since the masses lack this mental clarity and have no reason to suffer, they quit as soon as the pain kicks in.
Stay focused and have great desires!
