What Motivates You?

Love

What motivates me is respect and the factors affected mainly is relationship, constant learning and sharing. I learned the concept of the drive for constant learning and sharing from my dad who passed away from Alzheimer's disease at 60. Amazingly, reads the same newspaper everyday and thinks its brand new information. What stuck to me at a young age that I now appreciate, is education. He said "education is constant, and the only treasure that cannot be stolen from you. It does not recognize age, time or place and sticks to you like a glue." If that is the case, I'm doomed because I hate school - so I thought when I was a kid. My interests as a kid was not academic at all.

As time progress I found out that all the things I gradually learned from my father have different purpose but the remaining factor was and is people. He also said that I need to learn all sorts of things and don't have to be an expert on it but 1. Hmmm, it did not made sense at the time. Gradually, I learned numerous "how to/s" of life with constant reiterations from parents. With the pressure coming from parents and expectations from families, I became sporty  during the elementary years; a basketball player at school, a chess champion in the intramural event in grade school, a kickball varsity player in high school, a choral singer, an active contributor of literary writings in college, religious and political organization leader, an activist, a cook, a ballroom dancer, a designer, sketch artist, a music player, a community health program and Philippine Consulate volunteer in Tacoma, a multi-linguist and constantly hungry for more learning. I guess, it paved way to  discovering that my adaptability and quick learning abilities will be my constant denominator in life. I also learned that being wise is not conditional and expecting, that sharing can be joyous and rewarding. Most people is motivated with financial gain. So they only focus on one aspect of ability, hone it, and sell their knowledge to the highest bidder. Some form of motivations are seeking some form of reward such as affirmation, recognition and compensation. There is nothing wrong with how you get motivated. The problem lies when motivation is used to control people and caters in finding out what other people want, provide it in exchange of something profitable for self. These develops a mind set that its OK to use one another if it benefit us. What happens to the true passion for learning, the ability to care and trust, or true loyalty? Are we forgetting that there are more to learning and sharing than personal gain?

Motivations are important in good leadership which, for some reason, have been convoluted with different kinds of myths on both areas. Motivation myths are notions like "I'm poor, that's why I'm motivated to work, otherwise, I won't eat." Is it really because we are poor that we are motivated? Technically speaking, we really do not own anything no matter how much we have acquired I our lifetime. We are all going to die in the same context - naked and nothing of material we can bring in our grave. Does this mean that if we become rich, we no longer get motivated to work? In leadership myths you will hear plenty of these kinds of notions too. Things like "Its hard to influenced anybody if you're not in authority to do so!" This sounds like autocratic style of leadership if this line of thinking is actually in power. We'll talk more about these myths and styles of leadership in my next blog.

Finding the emotional stimulus that makes a person act constantly in good faith, is in one of the learnings that will be acquired from the start of  environmental influence. Good behavior is driven by the vastness of abundant knowledge of principles that are basic in human nature and the identification of wants versus needs. Most people in the society today are driven on what they think they need but are actually justified wants due to fear of exclusion. Let's take for example the phone technology, most people equated it as the need for efficiency which took out family time and availability. Now we are expected to be available and in disposal of the employer's need. We conditioned ourselves that convenience is important rather than the true reason of personal time off. Phone lines are still available but we prefer not to for giving a whole new definition of what is important to us.

It is sad what we become and how we conceptualize our motivations, how we equate the significance of our needs, and how we organize our priorities. If we could not dissect the processes of achieving the right stimulations to support what our needs and priorities, it is so easy to just become a part of the statistics.