Did you know that motivation has become part of a very popular culture? Now all brooding you might question, what popular culture? Well, the most singular psychological culture. To put it in a layman’s language, it’s like a train that takes us to main stations like ‘Where We’ve Been’, ‘Where We Are’ and finally takes a halt at ‘Where We Need to Go’.
Now some of you might feel a little insulted after all you have earned great Degrees, made tremendous contributions, worked hard and even achieved your share of success. It is difficult to take a tour ride to such stations of your life which, according to you, you have mastered and especially with a man whose bag of achievements might not be as heavy as yours.
I am not writing all this to make peace with your past or to temper with those old crucial decisions that might have diverge your lifeboat. Neither do I provide a life-manual nor a bible hugging god’s preacher who will guide your life. In Fact i would like to think myself as a catalyst, who aims at increasing the motivation rate of your chemical reaction called ‘life’, without undergoing any permanent change.
‘Life is difficult, before it becomes easy’.
So, the question arises is life easy or difficult? The answer lies in a question, how often can you motivate yourself? Each and every person shares a kinship with their life. That kinship is ‘motivation’. Hence, through motivation you can form an alliance with life, that will help you win greatest of battles in the hardest of times, but if you turn your back, you will keep on struggling every second.
It’s scary isn’t? To look back at time that’s no longer yours, after all we are control freaks in different ways. To be straight motivation has little to do with ‘Where We’ve Been’. Your past can do two things for you, it can destroy you if it lingers for long or it can motivate you. No matter how heinous your past is, you got to own it after all it’s leeched to ‘you’.
According to Theodore Roosevelt, ‘The more you know about past the better prepared you are for the future’.
So, the main idea is not to take our history as burden of memories but an enlightenment of the soul. Motivation to accept your past builds a confidence, which cannot be broken down easily at the wake of any trouble. Past is past, it doesn’t come in any size, colour, shape or time. It just arrives with an emotional baggage or unsealed issues and the next thing you know it’s holding you by neck. Stress, anxiety, depression, fear, anger are some of the freebies it starts distributing out of the goodness of its heart. So, now do you understand why it’s so important to have the motivation to know your previous self? Because no one will ever understand the dilemma you faced when you made those mistakes, failed your relationships, got addiction issues, the violent outbursts and even the worst decisions that you made with right intentions.
The longest stoppage the motivation train takes is at ‘Where We Are’ station. We all have the tendency of wearing masks, the masks that hide our vulnerability. Most of us put on a show each day for an audience that actually don’t care, a show in which we are the invincible hero. But deep down we are afraid of every little thing that might go wrong. But one day abruptly the show ends and we become sitting ducks and thus comes the time when all those hows, whens, whats, whos start vibrating in our minds. Generally,it is given term such as ‘mid-life crisis’ but I would take the liberty of naming it as ‘chickens are coming to roost crisis’.
This is the time when motivation comes handy; you have to stop looking over your shoulder and start running ahead. Because if you don’t, you will get stuck in the quicksand and it will slowly pull you by suffocating your dreams with fear. Don’t get scared after all, fear is just an illusion of our minds. Motivate yourself to look past all your flaws, work on your shortcomings and keep on visualizing that perfect fantasy until to make it your reality. It’s not an easy road but it’s worth driving on. Self-doubt id obvious, but quitting is a crime. There’s only one ‘Bhramastra’ for this ‘Kurukshetra’ that is ‘believing in yourself’. Motivate yourself until you achieve that ‘uncompromising faith’.
Our final destination is ‘Where We Need to Go’. This is the most complex of all stations. Why? Because there are lots of sub-trains leaving this station and when life presents you with numerous opportunities, things start getting overwhelming. That is the beauty of human nature. This is where your knowledge of your past and your present determined faith will work for you. A motivated individual who knows his roots and has untameable trust in his abilities and capabilities, always knows where he belongs. The motivation he has been carrying from the last two stops will guide him here. He will never look at the train’s info manual to buy that sub-ticket, you know why? Because he had already bought that ticket earlier on ‘Where We Are’.
‘Motivation is what gets you started; habit is what keeps you going’.
Penned By
Ashi Singh
Desperate Minds 