I was chatting to a friend of mine some time ago, when we got onto the subject of DRIVE. Drive to take action, to follow a certain path. I guess you could refer to drive as motivation.
Anyway we got to chatting about drive coming from the need to escape something, in the sense of keeping busy to keep the mind occupied, so as not to dwell on unpleasant memories.
I remember watching a Tony Robbins video where he was having a conversation about his fear of not taking action being so great, that it overcame any fear he had about taking action. The fear of taking action is often what prevent people pursuing their dreams and chasing their goals down. They fear failure, so don’t even try.
Having thought about this some more, I came to the realisation that we can be driven towards something, like a dream or a goal, or we can be driven to escape or avoid something from our past or in our present situation. There is a third option which is to not do anything because we are indifferent about or content with the status quo or we fear change, but we’ll just keep this post about the first two with regards to drive.
I questioned myself as to what the pros and cons of each of these drives were, and decided that if it helped someone achieve a desired course of action, then either is valid. However there are wider implications with regards to dealing with the issues that a person is running away from, because if they aren’t dealt with sooner or later, they are likely to be running forever. Running might originate from the fight or flight response, but prolonged flight is not particularly healthy in the long term.
It’s much healthier to be driven towards something or be driven by doing something. If you’ve a passion for doing something, than that seems like the ideal situation to aim for.
After all life is lived in the present moment, so it makes sense to enjoy the present moment by doing something you love. Anything else is a mind created construct, both past a future. The past has been spent, the future is not promised.