Outline
- Motivation is the Cause of Movement
- Wanting a goal makes the intermediate steps take place
- All desires are for the sake of other desires.
- Happiness is our ultimate desire.
- No desire need be fulfilled for happiness.
- Motivation can be based on being happy, and becoming happier instead of being unhappy, and becoming less unhappy
Introduction
In this talk, Bruce Di Marsico first discusses motivation. Motivation can be defined as whatever causes movement. What causes our movement is wanting something to take place. We don’t need to be aware of wanting intermediate steps, because wanting a goal makes the intermediate steps take place.
Every goal is fundamentally an intermediate step to the ultimate goal of happiness, which is to feel the way we want to feel. Since no desire needs to be fulfilled for happiness, ultimately our motivations have no reasons, they just are.
Motivation can be based on being happy, and becoming happier instead of being unhappy, and becoming less unhappy.
Motivation is the cause of movement
Motivation is that which causes movement.
A baby who begins to walk does not walk because they want to walk; a baby wants to get somewhere. The baby fixes his attention on a goal, on a place, and wants to go there. That’s the wanting that’s involved. If he’s happy, he will walk if he’s able. If he’s unable to walk he may crawl if he’s able. In other words he wants to get somewhere the easiest, or perhaps the most efficient way he can. So he doesn’t decide to walk, he’s not aware of deciding, “I think I will walk.” That’s a very sophisticated concept and we have no reason to be believe that a baby is at all interested in.
You pretty much motivate yourself the same way. If you’re sitting where you’re sitting and you want to go to the toilet, I don’t even know whether you toss it over in your mind whether you’ll crawl in or hop in. Maybe you just let yourself know that you want to be in there and then everything takes over from that. Just by wanting it and wanting to be there the easiest way perhaps, or the most efficient way perhaps. You’ll just walk to be there, you’ll do what’s ever in your power to get there.
Very frequently we think that achieving things lies in wanting the intermediate steps. There are going to be very few of us who are going to want to walk for no reason at all, who are just going to want to walk for the sake of walking, which brings us into the whole concept of wanting as a motivation. The wanting of something is really the wanting of something else. Behind every want is a want for something else: I want this for that other thing that I want, and I want that for something else that I want (I’m using the word wanting and desiring synonymously.)
Happiness is our ultimate desire
All desires are to serve other desires, and ultimately the chain ends at something we call happiness. Just like the series of fears that we investigate through the Option Method (we’re unhappy that we fear this because we fear that because we fear . . .) – so things that are desired are connected the same way.
In the Option Method investigation, we investigate, “Why are you unhappy about this?” “Well because I fear that.” “Why are you unhappy about that?” “Because I fear this.” Just as that chain leads is to an underlying belief so does exploring the reasons for desire. Nothing is wanted in and of itself, or for itself. Everything is wanted for another thing that’s wanted. This very process of wanting for something else that we want is called rationality.
So motivation is the cause of movement. Desiring, wanting a goal, brings the intermediate steps into play because they’re wanted for the goal. The baby doesn’t want the walking, he wants to be somewhere, therefore he brings the walking into play. It can be said, and as he gets older he may even articulate it as wanting to walk, but that isn’t what he really wants. He wants to be somewhere.
No child will be able to walk unless he’s physically able to walk, and nor will he walk unless he has a reason to, a goal. And be very clear that a child who lives in a small area will not walk as quickly or as easily as a child who lives in a larger area. A child who can crawl to everything that he crawls to, as long as that is physically easier to do will do so. When the child wants something and wants to get it more easily, more efficiently, and the legs are able to do it, it’ll happen.
We wouldn’t think that crawling is an easier thing to do right now, but yet somehow it’s easier for a baby. We don’t even need to know or make the decision, the body does.
So desire is motivation insofar as it’s the cause of movement. And all desire is the desire for something else, and all desires for something else are the desire for something else beyond that. It’s all for something.
More Happy vs. Less Unhappy
You’re wanting money, for example, for some reasons, such as “to not work at a job everyday.” And you want it in order to be free and you want freedom because you believe that that can make you happy somehow, right?
I guess anywhere along the line we could say it’d make us happy. I want money, so we normally would say, “If I had money it’d make me happy.” What do I want it for? “Because I want to be free and I believe freedom will make me happy.” All wanting is wanting for something else so I might want money in order to have material things, I want material things in order to take care of my freedom or to take care of my health or to take care of whatever. And I want all of that so that I can do this and do that, and I want that so that I can be happy. But maybe that last jump is magical. Maybe it’s really mythical.
Why do we want any of these things in order to be happy? Why do we believe that these things will give us the happiness? But, nonetheless, that becomes what’s called rationale or rationality: wanting for a reason. We make up the final reasons as, “It’ll make me happy,” which is self-defining.
And if you notice that a lot of people are afraid to get in touch with why they want something because they sense that somehow it is magical, that there isn’t really anything there. “Why do you want that?” “What do you mean why do I want it?” You get that kind of an answer, especially if the wanting comes from fear.
Now if wanting isn’t from fear and we’re not using fear to motivate ourselves, but we’re just using strictly desire, you will still run into the ultimate point where there’s a belief involved. “I believe that after I have all of these things, after I have health and wealth, power or goods and material things, and freedom, I will then be happy.”
“If I don’t get it, then I’ll be unhappy” changes wanting into needing. And that we’re all very familiar with. Needing becomes the alternate way of motivating oneself. Needing doesn’t have to follow from not getting. Instead, what could follow not getting is “if I don’t have it, I don’t have it.”
And wouldn’t it depend on where you’re at now? If I don’t have it, I’m where I’m at now. Alright, where am I now? If I’m unhappy, if I don’t have it I’ll be unhappy; if I’m happy if I don’t have it I’ll still be happy. So it depends on where you happen to be at the moment you started wanting.
Happy Motivation
Money and love become two symbols in our culture, which stems from the belief that you can’t be happy now, that there’s something lacking, something needed. Lacking in the sense: I’d be unhappy without it, but I won’t be more happy with it. And unhappy people motivate themselves with the belief that, “I’ll be unhappy without it.”
Happy people tend to motivate themselves with the belief that I won’t be more happy unless I have it. But it’s a similar set of rules. It’s an easier game to play because – alright, I won’t be more happy if I don’t have that, but I could be more happy if I have that or that.
There are a lot more things that could make a happy person happier. Maybe it’s the whole universe, maybe the whole world of things. And maybe, if you had the indomitably happy person and he said, “I can’t be more happy unless I have that,” and you say, “You can’t have it.”, then he’d say, “Well, then this,” and you say, “You can’t have it. . ,” he might spend the rest of his life saying, “Well, then this.” And that’d be okay because he wouldn’t lose, he’d be so busy saying, “Well, then this,” because there’d always be another “this”, and it’s not too hard a game to play.
And even when it came down to the end of it, “Okay, well, then the next breath, and that’ll make me more happy”, with a happy person none of it becomes a bad place to be, ever, even though he’s believing or she’s believing that they need it to be more happy, but they don’t need it for their happiness. And if everything else goes away and you absolutely can’t have anything it would seem, you make up something. Like another moment, “If I could have another moment I’ll be happier.”
And if you say, “You can’t have another moment,” then the happy person says, “Well, then – ” and at that moment their life is over.
Intermediate Steps
So wanting a goal makes the intermediary steps take place. It actually creates them. If you want to go to New York tonight, that wanting to go to New York will make all the intermediary steps take place, whatever those steps are going to be. Needing to not be in New Jersey tonight can also make the intermediary steps take place. We know how needing is self-defeating. But wanting to go to New York can make all the intermediary steps take place, insofar as they’re within our power, insofar as they’re within our ability, insofar as they are natural to the human being that we are in the universe. Whether it means taking a bus, asking for a ride, starting our car, making sure the car is in working condition. There are countless numbers of phenomena and factors involved, all of which we’ve apparently taking care of without much thought. Your gas tanks have gas in it, your cars are in working order, you have spare tires. All of those factors have already been taken into consideration and you didn’t even run through a checklist, probably, but you want something to be, you want it to happen and all the intermediary steps will take place for you. You will make sure of them insofar as you can make sure of them.
And there’s no reason why they won’t unless you’re unhappy: if you’re unhappy you may have been neglecting your tires. If you’re unhappy you may not have filled your gas tank. If you’re unhappy you may not have taken care of yourself, you may not have arranged to ask somebody for a ride back and they may be gone before you think of asking them, things like that.
But you would then really not be in touch with your goal. So then it follows that the more a thing is wanted the more possible and the more easy is it’s eventuality. Wanting is what makes things happen, what makes us move, what changes things in our world, and the more we want, the more possible and the more easy is the eventuality. If we were always in touch with wanting there would be no unhappiness; unhappiness is what we do when we’ve doubted that we may remember our goal, and it’s the way that we remind ourselves.
Questions for Reflection
Start with something you want. Try both something trivial, and something you feel is very important to you.
Ask yourself (and answer for yourself) this question, repeatedly:
“Why do I want that?”
Ask yourself this question again of whatever your answer is.
What ultimate reasons for wanting did you arrive at?
Start with something you feel you need. Ask yourself this question:
“What would happen if I was OK with not having this, but still wanted it?
Now, ask yourself this question:
“What happens when I feel bad about not having it?”
What happens differently in the two scenarios? Does anything happen differently?
Meditation for the Week
Wanting a goal makes the intermediary steps take place.