Duty, love, and attitude

[Crazy Eddie]

Time to step back from my particulars for a little while and take a look at the big picture. Thinly veiled allusions included at no charge.

Now people motivated by the chance to enrich themselves or better themselves outproduce the hell out of people motivated by the desire to avoid punishment. If you don't believe me, take a map that includes the mid-Atlantic states, find the Potomac River, and note the complete absence of an international border anywhere in the vicinity. Or read de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, in which he points out the differences in wealth and level of productive activity between the two sides of the Ohio River, one of which was a free state and one of which was a slave state. Read the whole thing, while you're at it... this guy got a better understanding of the United States in two years than many people manage to acquire in a lifetime of living here.

It applies to individuals as well. Fear is a great motivation not to do something, but that doesn't help much if you want to get someone (including yourself) to do something and do it well. Saying to yourself "I will eventually get fired if I don't do my job" may work for the short term, but it's exhausting and paralyzing if you rely on that motivation too long, and you end up doing just enough to get the job "done" to relieve the pressure rather than doing all you can to do it well and make your efforts profitable for yourself and your employer/customer. Saying to yourself "I will eventually get a promotion and/or a better job if I do this job well" works much better in the short and the long term, when you mean it and believe it. Saying to yourself "my spouse will be hurt and eventually dump me if I don't put out" isn't going to get you very far... you can't do that well if you're afraid of anything at the time or if your very motivation is fear. Better to say, embrace, and believe "my spouse will feel loved and cherished and go around with a nice glowing smile if I make love enthusiastically and often" is much better. Saying "I'd better tear myself away from my favorite activities and spend some quality time with the family" is a good way to throw a wet blanket over them... you need to go with "time to have some fun with the family and enjoy life with them".

This doesn't mean you banish fear from your life. But its function is to push you away from pitfalls, not to lead you toward your goal. Pushing away from something works well... pushing toward something doesn't, since the person being pushed can go any number of directions other than the goal. Try it with a couple of magnets... see how much easier it is to pull a magnet to a particular spot with opposite-polarity attractive forces than it is to push it there with same-polarity repulsive forces.