I believe in people and that often tremendous ability slumbers deep within. Most of us have undeveloped powers and potential that we only vaguely realize might exist. For more, I refer you to Tony Robbins’ Awaken the Giant Within and Unlimited Power.
This applies to me as much as to anyone else. Starting out in life, much of our motivation comes from providing for our basic needs, the 1st few levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (see below). As time progresses and hopefully, we have achieved some level of success, what drives us can become more ephemeral, more abstract. What are our goals/reason for being? What is wisdom? How do we find/create/define our highest/best self? Is that what we want? If not that, then what?
If the wolf of need is no longer the driving force, if the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow no longer calls as strongly, if the brassy shine of ambition/promotion/achievement has dulled just a bit, then whence our reason for being? What call do we heed, what trumpet do we respond to? Or do we just coast on until the end is reached?
I’ve blown past 5 traditional retirement ages: 62, 65, 67, 70, 72 and I’m fast coming up on the next. Yes, I no longer work 60 or 70 hour weeks, more like 30 at best with another 20 or so teaching and writing.
If asked to define myself in one word, the answer was always quick and easy: DRIVEN. Truth is, these days, I’ve found I need to take a more structured approach to motivating myself; the wellspring of motivation needs a bit of priming at times. And yet I sincerely believe there is an oak or two left in this acorn, and I’m resolved to continue learning, growing, and sharing until the end of my days.
Closing Quotes:
“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” – Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Psychological Observations
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.” – Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love
“Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped; our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.” – William James, The Energies of Men (1907)
“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” – C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (1941)
“We fear our highest possibilities (as well as our lowest ones). We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our highest moments… We enjoy and even thrill to the godlike possibilities we see in ourselves, and yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness, awe, and fear before these very same possibilities.” – Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (1971)
As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier
Note: Every effort has been made to properly source any 3rd person material. I am, however, a voracious reader. If anyone finds any unattributed material, pls let me know asap and I will be delighted to give credit where credit is due.
“All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832
