On Fear vs Love: Choose your motivations wisely
In the martial arts world:
I generally see people moving in one of two directions. They’re either moving toward something they want – or away from something they want to avoid. You could say they’re either motivated by fear or desire, depending on which direction they’re moving. Another word for desire – a stronger word that puts the motivation on a higher emotional plane – is love.
I’m not talking about base level motivation; that natural or automatic driver of behavior. I’m saying we have the ability to choose our motivations and decide for ourselves which to pay attention to. Fear is the easy one. Desire is also pretty easy and automatic. But to choose a course of action out of love will require you to look more closely at what’s really driving your behavior.
Are you training (in martial arts) to avoid getting beaten in some scenario (neighborhood/community/competition, etc.)? That’s training driven by fear, which is a perfectly fine motivator, but it won’t take you as far as you can possibly go. Why not? Because eventually you’re going to figure out that your self-defense needs have been met or that you’re done with competition or that you’ve moved to a better neighborhood and the active threat is gone. Then what? Training loses its appeal and you’re done. Then you stagnate. Then you atrophy. Then you slide backwards into old age and decline. Eventually, you wish you would have kept training, but you know how hard that road is and you probably won’t pick it back up again…
Are you training because you want to be stronger? That’s desire. That might work for a good long time. The desire to be stronger can work as a vacuum to pull you forward into your training for a good long time. Until you age beyond the time when your body is willing to add muscle tissue and in fact starts to lose muscle mass no matter how hard you train or how much protein you consume. Eventually, age gets us all and we go into some level of lesser overall strength. Your original desire won’t carry you through your training forever.
Now, to elevate this to the level of being motivated by love, you need to look at WHY you want to be stronger. Maybe it was that you value health and longevity and that high value can be channeled into loving yourself. Maybe you value health and longevity (and you do need to survive in order to have both of those) IN ORDER TO be present for and with your family for as long as possible. Ah… That’s love. Maybe you have such affection and compassion for other people that you want to be able to step in to defend others should the need arise. That’s love. Maintaining your training and your skillsets can do those things for you – for a lifetime. And it is very hard to do this functionally out of any other motivation other than love of something or someone. It might be love of yourself and that’s highly functional and valid. It might also be love of something or someone outside of you.
In the business world:
Now, to apply this idea to other pursuits, like career or business activities outside of the training hall, we need to, again, give thought to our motivations.
Are you pursuing career or business growth simply to avoid having to live under a bridge someday? That’s fear. And, it may come as a surprise, but a very high percentage of successful people are driven by this very specific fear. That fear does drive them to become materially and financially successful, but at what cost? What relationships do they lose sight of along the way? What higher values do they forget about to avoid living under that bridge? Only they can know…
What about pursuing financial growth and gains in order to be able to buy nice things; the house, the car, maybe horses (horses are expensive in more ways than one.) That’s desire. And that might take you pretty far… Until you realize that having all the pretty things hasn’t bought you a LIFE. This is a fairly common starting point. But it’s not a motivation that leads to a fulfilled life or a real sense of enjoyment.
To take it a step further into being motivated by love, consider having a look at WHY you wanted to be able to afford the nice things in the first place. Was it because you just like nice things? OK, maybe you could focus that appreciation into a sense of gratitude for excellent design and become a patron of the arts. That’s love. Was it because you think nice things will attract a certain kind of mate? Maybe you could focus on having clarity about the kind of person you would prefer to be spending your life with – and what kind of person you need to be in order to attract your perfect mate. That’s love. And once you do that, you’ll still be able to fulfill on your intention of strong financial growth while also recognizing that the money isn’t the most important thing to you. You may see that your love is actually not the money and that the money is just a tool that can be used to support someone or something else that you actually do love.
Give thought to what’s driving your behavior. Fear is effective in the short term and it can get you started. Desire will take you pretty far as well, but will eventually fade. Love, on the other hand, turns out to be more powerful and longer lasting. It’s much more constructive and truly sustainable in the long run. This is worth as much meditation and focus as it takes to find a loving motivation for whatever you’re doing, and it’s a strong personal choice to decide to stop running away from things in life and discover for yourself who and what you love and choose those sources to inspire your decisions.
I consider this a step in the direction of sustainable growth and working with all the tools available to us as human beings.