What Motivates You?

What is your motivation in life?  What gives you the drive, the energy, the focus, to do what you do, to live the life that you are living? The subject of motivation and how it leads us in life to do, live or accomplish certain things could be a study in and of itself, so to get us thinking about the topic of motivation, let’s look at the 2 sources of motivation, external and internal.

External motivators are things like rules & regulations, laws, financial rewards, relationships, your company’s mission statement, sales goals, this blog etc.  I could go on and on.  External motivators are everywhere. 

As the name implies, internal motivators come from within.  Rules and laws are meaningless unless I am motivated internally by “fear” of the consequences for breaking them.  Financial rewards can either be good or bad based on whether my internal motivation is “greed”. Relationships are meaningless without the internal motivator of “commitment”.  Your company’s mission statement is just words on a piece of paper, until you are internally motivated to “follow” it.  Sales goals are meaningless without the “discipline” to reach them.  And even this blog on Ethics will just be an external motivator, until you make the decision to “apply” the principles to your own life to live a more ethically principled life.

Today, I want us to look at just one of these external and internal motivators. 

1:19, “So are the ways of everyone who is greedy for gain; it takes away the life of its owners.”

15:27, “He who is greedy for gain troubles his own house,…”

Gain, an increase in wealth, is the external stimulus or motivator.  Greed is what comes from within us.

It is a human tendency to want to look externally when we think of greed.  It’s easy to point the finger at the greed on Wall Street or the greed in corporate America.  Is it really greed coming from those places, or is it our perception of greed?  Is everyone on Wall Street greedy?  Of course not!  Neither are all corporate leaders in America just greedy either.  Some reading this may not be able to get beyond the perceived greed in those places, but I’m asking you to look internally, not externally. 

There is nothing wrong with making money, earning a healthy income, becoming rich.  Just because someone has a lot of money does not mean that they are greedy.  The problem is whether we look at wealth as a tool for good, a means to an end, or do we let the pursuit of it possess and consume us.  If it is the latter, notice the warnings in the verses above, “it takes away the life of its owners, and troubles his own house.”  You may think or have heard someone say that the Bible says that “money is the root of all evil”, but that is not true.  It does not say that.  But, it does say, “the love of money is the root of all evil”(I Timothy 6:10).  If your goal is to accumulate more and more, without any regard to your health, your family, the needs of your fellow man, then please be careful.  Your pursuit may end up taking your life and/or ruining your home.

Again, I ask, what motivates you as you rise each morning and head off to work each day?  Is it just to provide a living for you and your family?  Shouldn’t it also be about fulfilling your own life’s ambitions, in the pursuit of happiness?  How about, serving your fellow man?  Shouldn’t that also motivate us?   I was recently on the receiving end of someone who finds more motivation in life than making money.  To this individual, his motivation is about serving his fellow man.  The funny thing is, I have never personally met this person either.  Let me explain.  The person I’m referring to delivers the newspaper to our home.  We live in a rural area.  Think about how many papers he has to deliver to even make a little profit.  He would either have to have a steady job or be semi-retired, because he is not going to make a whole lot just delivering papers in a very rural area.  Anyway, back to the story.  The other morning, it was raining, and the wind was gusting pretty strongly, when I went out to get the paper.  We have one of those combination mail/newspaper tube boxes with the mailbox on top and the tube underneath.  Every morning when I go out for the paper, the paper is always in the tube.  This particular windy morning was special.  To me, it showed how dedicated the carrier was in providing outstanding customer service.   When I got to the box that particular morning, our carrier had not only double bagged our paper to protect it from the rain, but he had also put it in our mailbox with a portion of the bag hanging out, so I would see it there.  He took ownership of the situation and because of the windy conditions; he thought that the paper could easily have blown out of the tube.  He was making sure (think about the extra time he took to double bag the paper and strategically place it in the mailbox) that I received my paper the way I receive it every morning.  His motivation certainly was not about making money.  It was about serving his fellow man and treating his fellow man like he would want to be treated. 

Let’s make sure that our motivation in life is not just about making money.  There are more worthy pursuits in life that are not only more rewarding, but will also give us a lot more satisfaction.