Fri, 19 Apr, 2024

What True Motivation Is

By Amun Kharel

Photo Courtesy: DWIT News

When you are down and out in your life and feel that you have nothing to live for, someone with a smile comes along and gives you a lecture on how you can turn your back on negativity. I would seriously punch such people in the face at that very moment. Nobody knows what the other person has been through in their life. They are just hopelessly gazing and being a smartass about it.

I hate motivation, motivational speakers, books and anything related to motivation. When people are down and out they look for substance in their life. They buy products to make themselves feel better and they do make them feel better, but for how long? A minute, an hour, a day? They go back living their same pathetic life while the motivational merchandise entrepreneurs make a business out of it. People who are genuinely trying to help those down people are doing it all wrong. No life experiences are similar. Happy people sharing their life experiences might make the down people feel better for a while, but it has no permanent effect.

Some friend who cares about you will visit and will “be there for you.” What do we actually mean when we say that we are there for someone?

Is it hugging them when they start crying, remembering their entire past incidents and saying “Don’t cry? Time will heal everything.” Here we go; we have another motivational bumper sticker. The only person who can help is someone who has had a similar past experience, which is very unlikely to be found in some merchandise, a motivational speaker, or a friend who wants to “be there for you.”

The odds of that person getting back to normalcy without carrying the trauma of the past with them are very unlikely. They are surrounded by darkness. People after two to three months at maximum will think, “He got over it and ‘time healed everything'.” People will stop caring about that person after a while, but the person will still be struggling to cope with the trauma. The people around him will be drawn and manipulated by the darkness. Some people will jump right into the ditch with the traumatized person and the rest of the people will start hating the guy.

It is not going to stop until the person is brought back from the darkness to reality. Motivation will do no good in this situation. It is wrong to jump into the ditch with the traumatized person and it also wrong to make judgments and start hating the guy. The only thing that can bring that person back from the darkness of the ditch is experiencing every moment of it.

Experiencing every moment of darkness and releasing it physically will only help the person to get out of the ditch. The person should come face to face with all the nasty and visceral aspects of darkness. Those feelings are ought to be realized through physical expressions, through anger and burning red-hot rage towards life. You find sugar sweet only when you have had tasted some bitter food. That’s how it works.

Judgments of positivity and negativity from motivational speakers, books or merchandise will only make things worse at that moment. Those motivations don’t allow you to be yourself or release your deep rooted darkness. You don’t need people who will jump into the ditch with you or people who judge your physical expressions during your darkest hours. You need to be surrounded by people who will be your up-lifters by not judging your deep-rooted anger and rage. The person who thinks every human emotion is a beautiful expression can help you get past that moment.

Silence is healing. After you get out of that ditch, silence is like a cool breeze giving chills through your body. It frees you from darkness. You will grow stronger than ever before.

Approaching life by doing what others did to achieve success is just a shame. It is just what society filled in your head. It is prejudices. Motivation is business. It’s making people hear what they want to hear. It will please your ear for some time then life will suck the same again. Motivation is within you. Silence is motivation. All the human emotions and fight for existence every single day is motivation. The god speaking through us is motivation. Not hearing people’s opinion is motivation.

The best motivation is when we take quiet time to hear the cobwebs within us. Doing what our heart tells us to do is motivation.