Reply To: Exercise 13: Your Models for Leadership and Emotions
Essay 2: What are my motivations, emotions, and self-awareness?
• What is motivation?
• What are emotions?
• What is self-awareness?
• Why do they matter?
• How do they manifest in my life?
Motivation? A spritzer on the brain that makes all sections more engaged and activated; a sense from within that says “I want to do that!” Or, if the thing you “want” to do is hard, motivation is the force (still from within) that overcomes the difficulty.
Emotions? Gosh. Also internal. Senses that help us know what a thing is and how it fits into our life; ultimately, they’re some combination of pleasant, unpleasant, stimulation or calm. Everything else is a construct. (I heard that on a podcast once with Krista Tippett; her guest was a neuroscientist.)
Self-awareness? That internal ability to not identify with our thoughts and emotions, but to be the witness of those thoughts and emotions. “I feel blue today,” is the feeling. Self awareness is the next voice. “Hmm, okay, feeling blue, got it. Now what do we want to do with that?”
Why do they matter?
Motivation matters because it’s the source of everything we do. At the end of the day, we always do what we want. (Though humans love playing this game of feeling like we are blameless/ helpless. Like “I had to go to work, obviously!” But you didn’t have to. You chose to because earning the money you earn from work gets you what you perceive to be important/ necessary. And that might be the case! You might be compelled to pay rent or mortgage, and the only way to do so is accept this job you don’t love. Okay, fine. Even so, you’re choosing to work at a job you hate because you prefer it to the alternative: homelessness. Or, if you’re independently wealthy and don’t need the paycheck but you still go to work, you definitely wanted to go to work.)
Emotions are important because they’re the root of motivation: x feels pleasant, so I’m motivated to do more x. Y feels unpleasant, so I’m motivated to do less y. Some difficult things are pleasant (e.g. training for a marathon; enforcing a no-individual-screens rule for the weekend with your kids) and some easy things are/ become unpleasant (e.g. eating doughnuts from the store that was going out of business; driving to work).
Self-awareness matters because without it we’d just have a bunch of tantrumming toddlers running the world. (Insert political jokes here.)
How do emotions, motivations and self-awareness manifest in my life? Hold on a sec, lemme write a 300-page book real quick.
TL;DR: since watching my friend Marshall die in 2016, I have been motivated to reduce worldwide unnecessary suffering as much as I am able; I am willing to experience whatever uncomfortable emotions might come from this journey (e.g. perceived incompetence, insecurity, feeling misunderstood, etc.) because I am self-aware enough to recognize that the underlying intention is pure. I know I’m in the “right” place (to get where I want to go) when my underlying emotions confirm it. In my leadership and sustainability work, for example, I feel both driven and at peace. I feel inspired and inspiring. And when I feel dejected (which happens sometimes), I know I am surrounded by authentic community who can catch me as I fall. Which means I never fall too far before I get back up and carry on the path. How’s THAT for motivation?