Thursday, August 12, 2010

Motivation and Duty

I started off yesterday entitling my entry "Motivation". The direction that I took with that post wasn't what I originally intended, so today I will begin to present my thoughts on motivation.

What motivates me to get out of bed in the morning?

I have never been a person that struggles with depression. Certainly there have been times I would consider my state of mind to have been depressed, but I have never encountered a time in which I would consider my state of being to have been depressed.

In general I am an optimist, I try to be in the words of the apostle, content in all things.

Notwithstanding something motivates me to face the day.

There are the obvious external motivators. The paycheck at the end of the week being a big one. Another being the chorus of little girls asking "is it wake-up time?"

As strong as these and other external pressures are they not the source of my contentment however. For the source I need to examine what internally motivates me.

Today I will examine one of them.

Duty ... an old-fashioned word, one rarely used today outside of the military, yet in all truth still an abiding principle that is one of my sources of motivation. I have a duty to my family, I have a duty to my employer, I have a duty to my Lord.

The world constantly downplays duty. It is assumed that to be more genuine an action has to be done though a motivation based on an emotional tug at the heart stings.

I find this logic baffling. Show me a person who behaves benevolently out of a sense of duty and I know something about their character. Show me a person who behaves benevolently out of an emotional tug at the heart and I know nothing about their character.

Obviously it is best to have the benevolent emotions to go along with the sense of duty, but when it come to getting out of bed in the morning, duty has proven to be a welcome motivator that is a very real source of contentment.

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