Motivation: What drives you now?

[shadow]

I was never "in". I married someone with family and friends that were in.

The best motivation comes from within. THe desire to do the best you can with what you have. That is just my way of doing things and it works for me (but not everyone). Pick some easy to attain goals, make a plan to get there, and do it. Set higher goals and keep going. Eventually it becomes habit and ingrained. Just do not get discouraged if you fall short once in a while, especially with very ambitious goals.

I have a family member that only gets motivation from trying to be the person he thinks others want him to be. This worked for short periods, but always required others around him to keep him 'in line'. People got tired of this responsibility and when they left, he just fell into the worst he could be. He still has no motivation and does absolutely nothing to put his life together or mend relationships with the family he drove away. He is the way on the far end of the lack of motivation spectrum.

[scooter]

After getting out of the cult, I felt this huge loss of motivation. A lot of my goals were for scn, so when that ended, out went my drive.

I am curious if others felt this and what you did to remedy it.

Like Feral, I found bringing the cult to justice was a substitute for the pursuing the cult goals. Then I read a book called "Working with Passion (I think)" and then slowly I began to rediscover former passions I had pre-cult. And I began to pursue them as well.

Right now I'm pretty much just working and earning more money than I've ever done. My kids are getting a good education and have great friends, my wife is doing a masters degree and loving it, and I'm keeping the bills at bay while getting in a little "me" time here and there for my own passions.

I'm pretty much done with the need to hound the cult but I still help out on that when someone wants me too. I no longer pursue it like I did even a year ago. But being a cult-buster was very therapeutic for me as it made the cult insignificant in the end. Just a few thousand brain-wiped culties trying to lie their way to Total Freedom, whatever that is.

Now I have those goals I had back when I was at school - before the decisions I made (or had made for me) that took me away from my real passions and into drugs, dead-end jobs and ultimately the cult. And I have plans as to how I can achieve those passions of mine. And I'm making progress with those plans.

It's nothing that makes me feel as important or vital to the Universe or one of the Few like the cult did. But that was a delusional self-importance and now I'm a lot more real in what I aim for. And I achieve it. Without battleplans or time machines or programs.

Life is good.

Hope this helps.

[renegade]

I recently started reading the book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, to get back into my art. Turns out, this book is really helping me a lot! Not only to get back into my art, but as a by product has gotten me more motivated overall.

She talks about how your creativity left to stagnate can affect your life, and how your dreams not pursued will affect you.

Small steps like writing 3 pages of longhand journaling of whatever comes to mind every morning can make a difference.

[Ogsonofgroo]

I recently started reading the book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, to get back into my art. Turns out, this book is really helping me a lot! Not only to get back into my art, but as a by product has gotten me more motivated overall.

She talks about how your creativity left to stagnate can affect your life, and how your dreams not pursued will affect you.

Small steps like writing 3 pages of longhand journaling of whatever comes to mind every morning can make a difference.

As an artist I too understand this. I've put my work aside for over three years now, skills I was not so bad at, but I am finding I am develop a minor blarge in my mind now for not carrying on, yehm , its all good, life gets in the way but then again it will also open new paths.



(though I write a helluvalot, hm, it ain't the same as getting my hands right into it)

[Petey C]

I joined Scientology to get myself out of a spiritual jam, then decided my life's mission was to help people. Turns out what I ended up doing was helping corporate Scientology and its masters. So I left and started helping myself by getting myself right with the world I live in. In doing this I stumbled into higher education -- for myself first, then for others -- and found what I thought was a worthy goal to contribute to. Then -- guess what -- I found myself increasingly working for the goals of corporate higher education and ultimately and inadvertently advancing the self-interest of my masters. So I quit and went back to helping myself again, this time realising some artistic and creative ambitions I had. That all went fine for a time but became a little, how you say, disappearing up my own asshole. Fun but ultimately pointless.

I now think if I can find the balance between pursuing and satisfying my need for creative expression and somehow helping others do the same, that would be sufficient motivation for me. All ships rise with the tide.

But I have to tell you, I have a "button" on "help". When I say or write it, I have this feeling of a meek little nursie assisting people. ("Oh little nursie, where's my bedpan?") What I really mean by help is, I think, sharing (resources, ideas, space) and something else that lies somewhere in the realm of encouraging/ facilitating/enabling (even though these are also corporate weasel words).

[palehorse]

..

....we interrupt the regularly scheduled programming to bring you this special message, dedicated to those moments when you don't have any motivation and don't care.

If you let the motivation-free impulse take roots and blossom you can achieve the state of mind known as "so-whatness".

Two of my favorite musicians! Thanks for sharing.

[palehorse]

I was burning to DO all the things I was trying to mock up while supposedly rehabilitating my purposes, but I simply had no time because I was always working at the org, studying on course, or auditing on the Bridge. I was getting all these false wins about what an able musician I was due to Scn, but never getting the chance to try it out. My escape was subtle, even to me. Whenever the reg would call I would tell her all these great things I was doing as a result of all my wins in Scn; I needed to complete these cycles of action so I could move up the Bridge.

I went back to school to get my bachelors and masters degrees. It took about 7 years since I was a high school drop-out and had to re-establish a credible academic record in order to be taken seriously. During that time Scn was always in the back of my mind, although I was freeing myself from their grip, step-by-step, in small ways. I even went to a psychologist to sort through my baggage with child sexual abuse that never worked its way to the surface in auditing. Why not? Oh yeah, it was all about MY overts. (What overts does an infant have???) Anyway, I digress.

Once I had completed KTL, LOC and the Ls, I really felt unstoppable. However, all these Bridge actions were what was stopping me. Once I re-entered the real world I found I was just like anyone else with dreams: determined to succeed. I found there were plenty of "wogs" who knew a helluva lot more than I did, even though the Ls were supposed to make me THE MOST AMAZING BEING IN THE UNIVERSE!!!!

I was fortunate in that my passion for music enabled me to leave Scn. The "save the planet" goal never truly over-powered my passion for music. I enjoyed a moderately successful career as a performing musician and have transitioned into a career as a music educator, allowing me to relocate from the city life necessary for professional performers to a secluded, rural life in the Rocky Mountains that is more suited to my loner temperment.Of course, that transition was never quite as simple as one can state in these few paragraphs.

[Ho Tai]

I sort of fell into what drives me. After I got out I wanted to do something to really help people. Not on any grand scale, but something. I live in a community that is primarily retired people, and many of these people need help in many ways. Having something interesting to do. Having someone make decisions about the community they live in because they are too timid to speak on their behalf. I am amazed at how much volunteer work is done to keep a place like this working. So I use the abilities I have to make life easier in some ways for others. Not on any grand scale, but every little thing I do makes me feel good, makes others feel good, and makes me a real part of the community I live in. The knowledge that I can get such a reward drives me to do more.

[renegade]

I noticed that scn took advantage of the people who liked to help others, and channeled that motivation to forward their own selfish goals at the expense of peoples dreams, hopes and desires. It is really good to hear that the individuals dreams/motivation did not die and are still there to be achieved. No matter the abuse, lies, false goals, force and the effort used by scn, to kill your passion, I hope your dreams never die and can have a chance of being realized now that you are free from their abusive, selfish motives.