A series for a new year and a new you—if you are willing to give up what doesn’t work anymore and get to know your Real Self

Are you thinking you are ready to do great things?

And if you are thinking you are…:

Are you equipped to not only conceive of an idea that really appeals to you? BUT are you also equipped to bring it to fruition? What would first motivate you and what might stop you?

According to the SoS Method, there are two kinds of motivation: Direct Motivation and (not quite conversely) Indirect Motivation. And if you had the most empowering and helpful of the two what would it be? (And no that is not intended to be a trick question.)

Would it be considered selfish if you were forever Directly Motivated? To eat when you are hungry, to sleep when you are tired, OR  to travel to Paris after years of planning simply because you wanted to experience Paris—no matter how many friends say it is overrated and expensive? The truth for me is I want to visit Paris with my daughter as much for her as I want to go because I want to go. If I think about it, honestly I have wanted to visit Paris since I myself was a teenager. While circumstances have yet to line up just right, I know that my reason for wanting to take this journey remains Directly Motivated, “because I (my Self) want to have this experience.”

At least one other person (my French language loving daughter) benefits when we do go and that makes the idea of going even sweeter to me–her mother. I realize I am using a simple and rather concrete example of Direct Motivation, and it is my hope that it is seen for the metaphor it is, and the greater thing it symbolizes: We have a right to have what we want, because we exist and hopefully with a fully developed and healthy Sense of Self.

Sadly, I meet many people who seem to be more Indirectly Motivated to do a thing or plan a life or make a choice, because it would be pleasing (potentially) to another or a group. In our quest to be acknowledged, seen, heard, and appreciated from the time we are born, we are at risk of being conditioned to choose how we behave based on an Indirect Motivation. If the sacrifice we make gets us a little mother love or “acknowledged and approved” of by the people we look to–to be seen, we may find ourselves in choppy emotional waters at some point, feeling resentful or shamed or “like a fraud.”

The question of what motivates us or what provides us a sense of purpose or satisfaction (in our life really!) is at the very heart of this “method” of Self-Development. Whom do we live for? Whose life? And why?

Can I even develop a Sense of Self that I might do great things for myself and others, purely motivated at all times? Why is it so hard to stay Directly Motivated?

Can we interest you in learning how to become a “light unto yourself” as the Buddha would counsel.

In the coming weeks there is a new product coming to the HySoS family and we’d love to see it put to good use. For seekers open to meeting their Sense of Self, we have created the Guided Journal to work with one gentle day at a time; that teaches how to be Directly Motivated and how to identify when you’re not being so.

May 2013 be the year that you fall in love with your Real Self all over again or for the first time, because you didn’t know better.