Updated: Mar 26, 2022
Learn how to develop motivation and find purpose in life. How to look for it and where to find it.
A person who has the right motivation and purpose in life wakes up with energy looking forward to everything they must do that day.
The sun shines from within their eyes and they are excited to get out of bed each day.
In this article, David Samuel dives straight into the causes of lack of motivation.
Contents
1. How To Know When It’s Lack of Motivation And Not Depression
2. Your Mind Plays The Pivotal Role In Finding Motivation And Purpose
3. Change The Goal To: Perfect The Mind
1. How To Know When It’s Lack of Motivation And Not Depression
Do you feel something is missing in your life, and you cannot find a spark of excitement or something that motivates you?
Do you wake up with a sort of dullness each day thinking, “Oh, another day to deal with…”?
If you can relate to these two questions then you are probably suffering from a lack of motivation or purpose in your life.
Not only that, you are probably looking in the wrong place to find motivation.
When we feel an emptiness or something is wrong, we generally look at whatever we think is the problem.
If our back hurts, we look at our back. But, it could be a problem in our foot that makes us walk off balance. And that makes our hips uneven which twists our spine and causes pain in our back.
So the pain is in our back, but the problem is in our foot.
The solution is always in the problem. You are looking for an answer, but you are not looking in the right place where the problem really is.
The same ‘wrong location’ applies to those of us who lack motivation. We look to our careers, relationships and daily activities for inspiration instead of ourselves. It’s as if you’re looking for something in your house that you lost at work.
When nothing inspires you, and you look for something that will motivate and excite you, you are looking in the wrong place.
2. Your Mind Plays The Pivotal Role In Finding Motivation And Purpose
What is the cause of all your thoughts, emotions and feelings about your life?
Your mind.
When you see something, you assume your eyes are what sees, but that is not true.
Yes, your eyes have received the image of the thing they are pointed towards, but it is your brain, your mind, that sees and tells you (the conscious being reading this article) what your eyes are looking at.
We all know that our eyes can deceive us and see things that are not actually as they are. But did you know that your mind can also fool you?
Our mind plays tricks on us and sells us on its own interpretation of events.
The cloud that was as dense as a rock
I fly a small plane. When I flew through a cloud for the first time, my eyes saw the cloud, but my mind interpreted it as a solid object. My body was in such a panic. It thought that I was about to fly into a solid object at 5,000 feet above the ground and crash and die.
I felt that panic, my heart was racing, but I used my knowledge of clouds to overcome my fear that my mind created by how it interpreted what my eyes saw.
So it’s our knowledge of ourselves and how our mind works that helps keep us calm and guide us to real solutions.
Our mind is what sees everything and mistakenly thinks it understands. This ‘certainty of understanding’ is something we are very good at. Even without logical reasoning or proof, we will make up our own ‘mind’ about a topic or person that often simply isn’t true.
The concept of self-lying
We know about lying and the trouble it can get us into. But do you know about self-lying?
Self-lying is when we tell ourselves ‘little lies’ about ourselves or others. Lies, because we have not accurately reported the whole story to ourselves.
If we were to examine the data objectively then it would be clear to you and I that we are not telling the full story, but we hide from the data and hide behind pretty lies instead.
Why do we hide? It’s not that we are bad people; it’s just human nature to ignore our problems and opt for a comfortable position.
Seeing the truth about ourselves can be a shocking experience. To see our wrong behaviour or lack of integrity means we are forced to admit that we are not as good as we think.
We may even have to admit that to others and correct our mistakes which can dent our ego and feelings of ‘confidence’.
Self-lying is the actual cause of most of our mistakes.
The point I am making is that we are looking for something to do to increase our motivation. As if our lack of spark for life is due to not having something exciting to do. On the contrary, the only solution is to look at the thing that does the ‘doing’, our mind.
Instead of improving our finances, business or skills, we must work towards improving our mind and personality, which is what is doing whatever we want to do.
That is the part of us that sees, or more importantly, does not see, opportunities and the essential things in life, including what really matters most and what will make us happy.
3. Change The Goal To: Perfect The Mind
Our goal must change from perfecting or improving the things we do to improving our mind. Then automatically, the things we do will benefit significantly from this mindset change.
That is why my workshops on various topics: Reaching the pinnacle of your career, Ending frustration, Getting a lasting and loving relationship, and most profoundly, Unravel confusion with All is Mind, are all ultimately about the mechanics of how your mind works.
We must fix the distortions in our minds, and every other aspect of our life will improve. Why will it improve? Because you will find what matters and not be sold into chasing the things that others tell you matter.
In this short but hopefully valuable article, you have learned the most important lesson: how the mind can trick you and why it must become the focus of your desire for true motivation.
While this should be enough to get you started on your journey to living a life of purpose and motivation, we invite you to read more, contact David or attend a workshop. The practical guidance of a mentor who understands the path can save a great deal of time. And time is our most valuable resource.
Read more about our workshop: How to Develop True Motivation.
