Is life precious enough?
Many times in my career I have worked with clients who struggle with motivation. They struggled to commit to the qualities, tasks and lifestyle that they think are important to achieve their vision of success. You might be surprised to hear that these clients are no ordinary humans - these humans include world champion athletes, internationally renowned business professionals, entrepreneurs, medical doctors, surgeons, the list goes on, and at some point(s) in their career they become unmotivated. There are hundreds of excellent techniques from mental strategies through to nutritional adjustments that can help reignite the eager fire and relentless commitment to action that we coin motivation. But what is the best strategy? If I had a single attempt to motivate any single human on this planet, my choice of strategy would be the following process…
Let’s first begin with a question:
“When was the last time that your life felt so precious that you were as equally as excited beyond description as you were afraid of losing it all?”
In my experience, we are often told to ensure our basic needs are met and from there we will achieve our potential. This model of performance is referred to as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs - see below.
According to the model we must first ensure we have food, water, warmth and rest, security and safety before we are able to truly focus on our psychological needs. Then, after achieving both basic and psychological needs then we are able to achieve our potential. But, I would like to challenge this model as this in my experience and practice is not always how we should approach the achievement of high performance, and especially not when we are struggling with motivation.
One of the most powerful and compelling tools we can use to motivate ourself is to strategically deprive ourself of our needs. Now, before sounding like a masochist, here me out... While I’m not saying you should go starve yourself in order to become motivated, I am certainly familiar with clients who end up perpetuating there state of low motivation by over indulging in enjoyable foods whenever they feel they are lacking enthusiasm to commit to an action that’s important to achieving their vision. That often looks like this, “this task is overwhelming… I think I’m hungry… I’m feeling a bit unmotivated and down… I’ll eat something nice to pep myself up… that was tasty… I’ll work a little…. I’m still not feeling motivated… this task is overwhelming… I think I’m hungry… (repeat).” Now, while becoming more conscious about our desire to eat and even being slightly hungry at times can be a very powerful tool to motivate us, I want to get back to the main strategy I intended on sharing with you originally.
Safety is a double edged dagger
The certainty that in any given moment we’ll be safe, secure, alive, injury free and have good health, is fundamental to quality of life. However, if we are to never feel uncertain about our sense of safety, I’d like to propose that life can begin to feel predictable, un-exhilarating and unfulfilling, no matter what we may do or achieve. Even for the most extreme athletes surfing a 30 ft wave can become monotonous. So, I’d like to propose that sometimes, in order to reignite our motivational fire we need to deprive ourselves of the certainty of being safe, secure, alive, injury free and having good health. That’s right, we often speak of discomfort leading to growth, but less often do we consider creating a deep sense of discomfort that challenges our ability to meet our basic needs. And yet, doing so can bring so much more appreciation for what we have achieved that we are confronted by the desire to protect or build upon what we have. Depriving ourselves of safety can rekindle the fire of motivation to do any task or series of tasks that matter to us. So, here’s a couple thoughts on how we might go about practically doing this…
Ask yourself a very difficult question
Questions drive decisions. Every decision we make bottles down to answering a question. So ask yourself this… “Are you content enough by what you have achieved in your life thus far, so much so that ceasing to exist as of midnight tonight would be ok?” In other words, if you were faced with the chance of dying tonight would you put up a fight to live another day? Fighting on for another day means that something you possess or want to possess is precious. Precious in that having or experiencing it is worth an enormous amount of effort, discipline, dedication, commitment and perseverance. But it is only precious if you have absolutely every chance of losing it forever. What is it that is deeply precious to you? In this exercise you are allow one thing, because you cannot defend it all. Try to make a connection between what is precious to you and what you are struggling to feel motivated about doing. For example, is there any sort of connection between completing the tasks you are struggling to find motivation for and the having the one thing you find most precious in your life? If not, then make a connection! If I have little motivation to get out of bed early, what if I made a connection between getting out of bed early and obtaining financial freedom. Is that too far fetched to believe? And there is the most important part of this exercise. You must truly believe in the connection you make between the things you are struggling to find motivation to do and the most precious things you could have in your life. Without convincing yourself that getting out of bed early matters you have little chance in following through.
Do something scary
Do something that challenges the certainty you feel about being alive tomorrow, especially in the moments where you have lost motivation. Now, there is an art to this. Using fear as a tool to build motivation by way of increasing the gratitude you have towards life is a skill in itself. I suggest starting simple and safely. Here are a few ideas…
Vicarious experiences: watch someone you care about doing something that you think is dangerous or hugely inspiring. This could be going to see a favorite athlete do a radical stunt, reading a book about survival against all odds, or even watching a movie of someone doing something that is beyond what you believe is humanly possible to achieve without risking personal safety, security, life, being injury free or having good health. Ingest this experience as if it was you and contemplate your life more after this.
Do an activity that contains a high amount of perceived risk but low amount of actual risk. We can typically achieve this by doing something with an expert who can help keep you safe but at the same time allow you to explore new boundaries. This could be an activity like climbing, slack lining, sky diving, kayaking, paddleboarding, swimming far out in the ocean - whatever is genuinely scary to you, and I do recommend there is an element of risk more than emotional or mental.
Be alone in nature: The purpose here is to explore your emotional reactions when at or near your limits of what you would consider safe. A great coach and friend, Nik Hawks, taught me that creating fear can be as simple as removing the ability to see. Creating fear in this way can be achieved quite easily. I recommend going to a familiar field, forest or hiking spot in the mountains… find a spot you are somewhat familiar with and slip on a blindfold. Sit down, listen to all that you hear… and begin to use your imagination to elevate and reduce your sense of fear. This is an extremely powerful exercise when taken seriously. Go make it your own.
My final recommendation in this article is a meditation that was created by Sam Harris. I listened to this meditation on Sam’s app which I absolutely love. I was so blown away by his words that I wrote it down and adapted it slight. I hope you enjoy.
Death Meditation
How we think about death changes depending on whether we think about dying ourselves or losing people we love. Whichever side of the coin we choose here, death is the present reality for us. So whether we think about it or not, death is always announcing itself to us; in the news, in the stories we hear about others, in concerns about health, in the attention we spend crossing the street. Take a moment and observe yourself -see that you spend a fair amount of energy trying not to die.
Death makes a mockery of almost everything we spend our lives doing. Take a moment to reflect on how you have spent your day… the kinds of things that captured your attention… the things you have been generally worried about… think about the last argument you had with your spouse; think of the last hour you spent on social media or doing a particular project. What is it that really concerns you? What's the one thing at this time that brings order to the chaos of your life? This could be something so very simple… perhaps finishing a drawing, or a letter, or a small piece of work - something that has consumed the majority of your attention for today, or the past week, or even the past year.
Now, I'm not saying that everything we do must be profound in every moment of our life, but contemplating the brevity of life brings some perspective about how we use our attention. It's not so much what we pay attention to but more so the quality of attention, and how we feel while doing it. If you need to spend the next hour doing online grocery shopping then you may as well enjoy it.
The truth is that we don’t know how much time we have in this life. And taking that fact to heart brings a kind of moral and emotional clarity and energy to the present…. (or at least it can). Take a moment, maybe even a deep exhale and feel sit on this thought. Now, does this bring any resolve to something in your life that matters? It might bring us resolve to not suffer over stupid things. For example, consider… road rage - the quintessential example of misspent energy. Your behind the wheel of your car and someone does something erratic or they are just driving slower than you'd prefer. You find yourself getting angry. Now, I would submit to you that this sort of mindset is impossible if you are being mindful of the shortness of life. If you are aware that you are going to die and that the other person is going to die, and you are both going to lose everyone that you love and you don’t know when, you've got this moment in life; this beautiful moment - this moment where your consciousness is bright; where it's not dimmed by morphine in the hospital on your last day among the living, and the sun is out, or its raining, both are beautiful. And your spouse or partner is alive… and your children or friends are alive. And you're driving. And you're not in some failed state where the civilians are being rounding up and murdered by the thousands…. You're just running an errand, and that person in front of you (in the car) who you will never meet, and who you know nothing about, but which if you could know them you might recognize a life impressively similar to your own, is just driving slow.
Don’t suffer. This is your life, the only one you’ve got. You will never get this moment back again. And you don’t know how many more moments you have. No matter how many times you do something there will come a day when you do it for the last time. You’ve had a thousand chances to tell people close to you that you love them in a way that they feel it. In a way that you feel it. And, you have missed most of them, and you don’t know how many more you are going to get.
You’ve got this next interaction with another human being to make the world a marginally better place. You’ve got this one opportunity to fall in love with existence. So why not relax and enjoy your life. Really relax! Even in the midst of struggle. Even while doing hard work. Even under uncertainty. You are in a game right now, and you can't see the clock so you don’t know how much time you have left. Yet, you are free to make the game as interesting as possible. You can even change the rules. You can discover new games that no one has thought of yet. You can make games that used to be impossible, suddenly possible. And get others to play them with you. You can literally build a rocket to go to mars so that you can start a colony there. There are actually people who will spend some part of today doing that.
Whatever you do,
however seemingly ordinary,
can you feel the preciousness of life?
An awareness of death is the doorway into that way of being in the world.
After reading this article and/or meditation I hope you that begin to explore more about how you can truly motivate yourself. I certainly hope that you find time in the next couple weeks to do something in your life that helps you to find that sense of preciousness. :)
Please feel free to leave any comments below.
See differently, feel deeply, act courageously, achieve more.
Dan
