The lessons and discussions in church this morning got me thinking. And this post will be putting those thoughts to paper.
If you are reading this, whether you are religious or not, I how you stick with me. This post is about mankind, not religion or God.
We were taking about prayer, specifically about praying for our Heavenly Father to place specific opportunities in our lives. And it occured to me: what we are really praying for is to be compelledinto those opportunities.
For example, when we prayfor help being more humble, what we are really asking is for Him to make us humble. I think it is human nature to look fire someone to do the hard part for us. In some ways I think atheists have an advantage in this regard. They believe that there is no one there to help them, and so they are more motivated to act.
Now, I do believe in God. So, I do find myself sitting around waiting for asked-for blessings to start raining in on me.
But, this is wrong. Religious our not, atheist or Muslim, Jew, or Christian, you have to work on yourself. And for yourself.
Ok, now I want to leave theology behind and talk solely about people. I hope you're all still with me (is it funny that I pretend to have readers, our just sad?).
So, how do we, as the post title suggest, self-coerce? Or self-motivate? How do we move ourselves forward in lieu of waiting for others to do out for us?
I think that self-improvement is important to just about everyone. But I think our own motivations often slide around, between self-gratification, self-improvement, and sometimes even self-destruction. Actual selfless-ness is pretty rare, if not completely foreign, for most of us.
I'm rambling. Sorry.
Let's get back on track with an example. I want to learn to play the guitar. I've even made some really good starts in teaching myself. But, after years of owning a guitar, and all of the materials that I need to learn, why can I still not play guitar? Truthfully? I think it's because it takes actual effort on my part and no amount of waiting for someone to do that work for me if going to work. I can't just pray for it and suddenly rival Slash.
So what other personal improvements am I waiting for someone to do for me? I have no job. Maybe someone is going to just approach me and offer to hire me to do my dream job for an absurd amount of money. Yeah, I'm sure that's how it will happen. Or, maybe, if I go out there and do some searching along with my praying, I'll find something, an opportunity of some kind, to support my family financially.
I guess I don't really know what my point was in all this rambling nonsense. Maybe just that we need to stop waiting and start doing. Maybe this has just ben a whole lot of chewing myself out. I know I needed it.
Let's go get you a job....or you go get you a job cause when I suggest this or that I get my head bitten off!
ReplyDeleteI think the key to self motivation is explicit, approachable structure. For years, I thought, "I want to write a novel," but it wasn't until I explicitly turned it into, "I want to write 1000 words a day every day until I have a novel finished" and created a chart to keep myself responsible that it worked. Writing a novel is a huge, impossible task, but writing 1000 words is definitely doable. I think this can be translated to just about everything.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, you still have to have the self discipline to follow through. I'm currently struggling with that with my french/arabic study, but I really think half the battle is explicitly dividing your goal into shortly accomplishable steps.
I also think you're right about the prayer thing. If I were a praying person, I'd probably approach as a "give my efforts extra impetus" kind of thing. It's like luck: making it big as a writer takes lots of luck, but instead of sitting around waiting for luck you've got to do the work and put yourself out there so that when luck finally strikes you're available to harness it. That's why even insanely lucky people deserve credit for their accomplishments.
Anyway, long comment to a good post. Keep at it man, try to find those divided chunks that work for you, and attack them with tenacity. Once you find the steps that give you satisfaction, you'll find your groove.