“Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
Hey steemit! Let's have a conversation.
What motivates you?
I know I have asked myself the same question often. By far the most frequent answer my mind would respond with was "I don't know dude, go to sleep".
It's not an easy question, I know. We live in a world where following your passion is an exception. Living your dream gets a secondary treatment. We either don't have time or will to make a drastic change, we are used to live in our comfort zone. Yes, I'm talking about every 9 to 5 job you ever had, the ones you had just to earn some money.
It is really hard to determine the real reason why we strive for something more, it's far easier to find reasons why we tend to give up on anything extraordinary. In essence, we just want to live, because that's the thing each and every one of us is used to. The things we are not used to scare us. Risk is a way to measure how used we are to something.
“If you start by promising what you don't even have yet, you'll lose your desire to work towards getting it.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
So by definition, motivation is not something regular or expected. It's more like an unknown, unwilling to show itself. How can you find it then?
Don't ask yourself what motivates you. Ask yourself what keeps you up at night.
This world is hungry for dreamers
Think about it, when every person tends to stay in the comfort zone, how do we grow as a species?
To grow means to take risks, and maybe even more importantly, to make mistakes. We could look at our universe and blame it for every single inconsistency it gives us in every moment. It could appear to us it's something bad.
But the truth is, it makes us lucky. Because everything changes, therefore, everything gives us opportunities to make mistakes and learn from them. Without mistakes there would be no need for learning, there would be no need for growing, in the end, there would be no need for us.
I'm sure you've already heard about Nassim Taleb's black swan. He did a great job to show how important chaos is. We might get used to anything, but it won't last forever. Every day will bring a new problem for us to solve.
“It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I dare you not to be a follower. Make your own decisions. Go read that book you keep for later. Go finish that project you've always wanted to do. Test your ideas, fail at them miserably if needed, but learn from everything that comes from it. World is changing too fast for us to be comfortable, you have only one chance to be alive so better make it count.
The only truth is, to live is to create.