2008-08-21

Healthy motivation

Yesterday I had a discussion with a friend about my last post "There are no problems".

He mentioned that expectations are a motivation to continue taking action, work and trying to overcome obstacles.

I agree with him that expectations can be a motivation although I do not think it's the best choice to have expectations as a main motivation. Anyway in that posts I was only talking about expectations being too high when you experience problems.

And he also stated that there are serious problems where he cannot just screw down his expectations. Sample: Your baby is very ill. If you don't make a problem of it and just do not expect any more survival then this is not a healthy and good mentality.

Let's imagine I would be able to drop all expectations in an instant: I wouldn't let someone die only because I don't have any expectation! Either without any strong desire (greed) I wouldn't let somebody die!

I will help because of love, compassion and the intention to do healthy things (for me, for you and for everybody).

I do think that my friend would bring his baby to hospital more because of love than because of expectations!

I want to quote from an earlier post ("Expectation dropping"):
when you do something you do it out of the current necessity or benefit without having to fear investment loss (because you simple do not invest - at least long term),
Maybe the only expectation I want to keep is that world can be improved. But this is more a believe than an expectation (see also "Being positive").

Related posts: There are no problems, Expectation dropping, Being positive, The power of intention, Ethic economy.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi, I am the friend you had the discussion with.

Yes expectations are motivators and I think they are not so bad motivators.

I also think that it is a good thing to have expectations and our expectations should not always be at a low level. Yes of course if you have high expectations you may be more frustrated if they are not fulfilled. But if your expectations are realistic you wont be so often frustrated.

And even if I drop all expectations, there are problems. Maybe not so a big problem for you but for the others.

I think the point is, have realistic expectations.