Lesson 4: Thinks are seldom what they seem

Submodule 4

Thinks are seldom what they seem
Your personal preferences and tastes are formed based on your Sense of Self, but a Lack of Sense of Self can lead to an addiction to approval and overshadow your true desires. When you spend your life catering to the needs and wants of others rather than your own, the motivations behind your actions and behaviors may become twisted.

To understand your motivations, you require awareness of what is happening in your subconscious mind—just beneath the surface of your conscious mind, there is always something more going on than what is visible and apparent. In this lesson, you are invited to consider which of the two main types of motivation underlies your actions and behaviors. Can you distinguish between the times when your Motivation is Direct or Indirect? Can you identify any situations where it is not quite clear?

The BENEFITS of having a Healthy Sense of Self are:

• Better aligned with your blueprint
• Less uncontrollable behaviors (e.g. temper tantrums)
• Better equipped to deal with criticism; less over-reactive

WATCH THIS VIDEO FIRST!

Click to download the video transcription.

GLOSSARY

For your convenience, here is a downloadable/printable PDF Glossary, or you may visit the Glossary on our website. (Note that the glossary on the website includes some additional terms not addressed in this course, and contains links to extended and more detailed information on each term.)

NEW SoS TERMS

• Motivation
• Direct Motivation
• Indirect Motivation

Definition: Motivation

In general, motivation is what creates an incentive or urge to do or avoid something. Motivation is the drive that determines behavior.

What is Motivation?

As the definition states: Motivation is an urge to do or avoid something generated by a need or want.

Two types of Motivation

There are two categories of motivation identified by the SoS Method: Direct Motivation and Indirect Motivation. Discerning which kind of Motivation is operating in the background of your various behaviors is the key to self-knowledge, to healing a Lack of Sense of Self, and to gaining a Restored Sense of Self.

Direct or Indirect Motivation for something you do (or don’t do) is primarily determined by the type of SoS you have: a Natural SoS or a Lack of SoS. And that is determined by the quality of Mirroring you received in early childhood.

Examples of motivation in general:

• Most parents are motivated to care for their children by the love and responsibility they feel for their offspring.
• Finding a job is generally motivated by wanting to make money so you can provide for yourself (and your family).
• A hungry person is motivated to eat.

Definition: Direct Motivation

Motivation which is ordinary, simple, and based in the present.

Direct Motivation is characteristic of people whose innate need to feel recognized as a real person was adequately met in early childhood. People with a Healthy/Natural Sense of Self have no specific unmet needs that would give rise to Indirect Motivation. They do things for the sake of the things themselves; they take action for the immediate and obvious result, or simply for the joy of the experience. Their behavior is based on who they are as a person, or on an overt and obvious goal.

Here are a few examples of Direct Motivation:

• When parents are (directly) motivated to care for their children it is because they love and value their children and genuinely want to see them thrive.
• A clown acts funny because it is his job to make people laugh.
• You get up in the morning because you are awake and want to live your day.
• I wash my car because I want it to be nice and shiny.

Definition: Indirect Motivation

The motive for doing or avoiding something is not what it appears to be; instead, the motive is to accomplish your Hidden Agenda, and ultimately your Hidden Goal, which leads to a temporary emotional state that is the substitute for a lasting sense of being a real person.

Where does Indirect Motivation come from?

You know by now that Indirect Motivation is rooted in a childhood Mirroring deficiency that leads to a Lack of Sense of Self. The Lack of Sense of Self leaves an inner void that you try to fill with (parental) approval.

What does it aim at?

You do things or behave in ways that you hope will lead to this approval, which makes you (mistakenly) feel acknowledged as a real person. As it was said earlier: a child easily mistakes approval for acknowledgment.

Most Indirect Motivation involves a need to perform something to perfection. Performing well becomes a matter of life and death because the ability to feel like a real person who is accepted by others depends on it. As such, it can become compulsive and determine the course of your life entirely. Instead of living your (own) life, you have become a performer of your life!

Nothing is what it seems to be

When your life is ruled by Indirect Motivation, it means that you have been conditioned to develop subconscious drives to be and act in ways that give you the closest approximation to acknowledgment: approval. That means there are more complex stories going on behind your actions and behaviors than might be apparent.

If our underlying drive is to satisfy the need to gain the approval of another, then that is the signal that we are operating with a Lack of Sense of Self. In later lessons, we will see how this is the root of a lot of human suffering.

However, please be informed that your suffering can be greatly reduced by learning how to shift your Motivation from Indirect to Direct.

Here are a few examples of Indirect Motivation:

• Parents, who have a need to be considered good parents by others, or to get the approval of their own parents, are Indirectly Motivated to “care” for their children.
• If you get out of your bed in the morning because your inner parent is yelling at you, or if you feel like an utter failure if your dog isn’t fed exactly on schedule, chances are that you are Indirectly Motivated.

READING

The readings are supplied online and in a downloadable PDF file. Here is the selected reading for Unit 4 of the course.

• Healthy Sense of Self, How to be true to your Self and make your world a better place!
• Also available on Amazon is the revised edition (2023) under the title: “Healthy Sense of Self, The Secret to Being Your Best Self”

ACTIVITY

Peeling back the layers of your own Motivation

In Unit One you created a list of things you do and why you think you do them. Please take out that list and review it. This current unit is entitled “Thinks” are seldom what they seem . . . which is the focal point for the following activity.

Think again about your motivation for an activity or behavior on your list from Unit One. There is what we may think our motivation is for something but is there also another motivation hidden from our conscious awareness? Remember to be absolutely honest with yourself; honesty is essential for this exercise to have an impact on what you are trying to establish: a Restored SoS.

One of the clues to whether motivation is Indirect is that when we are not accomplishing the goal, we experience intense feelings such as fear, compulsiveness, rage, frenzy, hurry, and anxiety. There could also, or instead, be sensations like butterflies in your stomach, rapid heartbeat, shallow breathing, sweating, etc. All of these can be indicators that there is more happening in you than the obvious, surface motivation.

The question you may want to ask yourself now: Is the intensity of the emotions you experience justified by the actual event?

Activity Exercise #1

Consider your motivation for being on time to a class.

Some of the possible Direct Motivations to be on time are simply:

• You feel more mentally prepared for whatever it is you want to do there.
• You want to be respectful of the teacher and other students.
• You don’t want to create a disturbance or distraction.
• You don’t want to miss the beginning of the lesson.
• You want to have fun socializing before class begins.

A few of the possible clues of Indirect Motivation for being on time are:

• You get overly bent out of shape when traffic, kids, or pets cause delays.
• You feel like there is a whole lot at stake when you are running late but you do not really know what it is.
• You panic/meltdown if you run out of gas.
• You get anxious/panic/upset when you are unable to find a parking space.
• You are constantly checking the clock while driving, or the opposite — you do not want to look at it for fear of having to conclude you are not going to make it on time and freak out.

A question to ponder for Activity Exercise #1
Think of a recent event or appointment. What layers of your motivation can you unpeel?

Activity Exercise #2

Consider your motivation for keeping your opinions to yourself.

Direct Motivations might include:

• You are talking to a policeman who is writing you a ticket.
• It doesn’t fit the social situation you are in.
• You know you want to leave in five minutes and haven’t time to deal with a complex conversation.
• You do not have any particular opinions to share.
• You know your opinion will bring about an unpleasant situation and you want to avoid that for obvious practical reasons.

Indirect Motivations might be:

• You are scared to share your thoughts/opinions because you feel anxious that someone might disagree with or disapprove of your opinion.
• You have the need to come across as smart, so you can’t afford the risk of being seen as stupid.
• You have an intense — even desperate — need to belong, so you do not want to ruin that by saying something that might alienate people.
• You want to draw attention to your choice not to share because it makes you feel that you are better than others.
• You need to protect a state of “Feeling-good-about-self”* that you have gained by pleasing someone; you are afraid to lose that state by saying something that people might respond to in a way that does not make you feel good.

*The SoS term “Feel-good-about-self” will be discussed in Unit 6. For now please check the Glossary (link to pdf here).

Questions to ponder for Activity Exercise #2:
Remember a time when you could have shared an opinion or experience with others, but you didn’t.
What feelings were involved?
What layers of motivation can you discover?

Activity Exercise #3

Consider possible motivations for someone not asking for what they want or need.

• What are at least three Direct Motivations for this not-asking that you can imagine someone might have?
• What are at least three Indirect Motivations for this not-asking that you can imagine someone might have?

Activity Exercise #4

Looking again at your list of What/Why from Unit One, answer the following questions:

• Which items have sometimes caused you to experience anxiety, panic, or frenzy?
• Which items have caused you to start sweating or notice that your heart skips a beat?
• Which items gave you the feeling of butterflies in your stomach?
• What is it you think/feel that is ultimately at stake for you in each item on your list (the underlying reason that motivates you)?

As you are reviewing your list, contemplate whether your motivation for doing an item is really as obvious as you first thought it was.

GUIDING QUESTIONS

• Identify an activity or behavior that you suspect you perform for Indirect Motivation. Monitor yourself closely over time to see if you can discover a pattern of thought or behavior that you weren’t previously (consciously) aware of.
• With this new awareness, do you think you can make a different choice based on what YOU yourself are thinking in that particular situation?
• Can you turn off your automatic pilot and implement a new decision or course of action that is more in line with who YOU are?

QUOTE FROM THE GUIDED JOURNAL

Day 60

Motivation Check
Questioning your motivation is a very
powerful tool in understanding yourself.

Understanding where you come from is
necessary to be able to change the direction
you wish to go.

RECAP

Questioning your motivation is not only powerful but also necessary for you to begin to understand whether you are living from a Lack of Sense of Self or a Healthy Sense of Self. A life lived with Direct Motivation is ideal, and knowing WHY you do WHAT you do is crucial. When you have the ability to see when you are acting out of Indirect Motivation, you can begin to recondition your Self to work from motivations you choose based on what is truly your very own desire, need, or want. That is how you begin to Restore a Healthy Sense of your Self.

LOOKING AHEAD

Even though at first glance, your motivation seems straightforward, the “thinks” you think may be rooted in and directed toward a subconscious agenda and your ultimate “WHY” of WHY you do what you do, and not so much with WHAT you are doing.

Some of the items on the list you created in Unit 1 might have become things you identify with—some may even be fully integrated into the very essence of the person you are. In the next unit, we will address why these things play such a dominant role in your life and what is behind that.

*IMPORTANT NOTE* All comments left on the course are PUBLIC to course takers and Healthy Sense of Self employees. If you would like to send a private comment please email antoinetta@healthysenseofself.com