Anything I do - that’s for me. Solely.
We, people, are “designed” to function mostly in groups. We used to simply agree with these statement. Many experiments, plenty of books and own experience - every aspect of modern life suggest we have to be a part of a group. Effective, spreading the happiness, highly valuable group member. Yet every coin has two sides.
Shared values are not absolute values.
Let us leave society alone for a while. The very first moment we are born we start sacrificing our freedoms. First years we spend exclusively on bi-directional adoption: world adopts and teaches us how to iterate with it. We adopt this world though: go and ask your parents how the life changed for them.
What are we trading freedom for? Common good. You know what else was common? There were a “common country”, the one where common flats were invented. What was the problem of common or shared goods? It belongs to everyone and belongs to nobody. Both at the same time. People are often struggling to share. At least many of us do, while some special people has sharing in their’s nature.
Keeping the profile low
I am sure you could name at least 5 talented people of the past. These were artists, engineers, creators who made scientific break-through, important discoveries and inventions. Nevertheless their names are rarely mentioned, sometimes used as a names of a niche products. What I am trying to say here is that these names are getting forgotten in a day to day vanity. Even a few centuries ago lack of proper marketing, inability to gain access to the masses or insufficient support was a dead-end. What is wrong with people, why to give up the fame, wealth and ”success”?
Motivation is the question „why”
Depending on how long you are on the self-improvement path your perception and understanding of the motivation may differ. You should be good with a simple knowledge about the feeling when you want to do anything and the other day you don’t.
It is worth to mention the fact motivation is pretty complex topic. For today it is enough to distinct 2 types of motivation: internal and external.
External motivation example
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In this example I reverted the action-to-money conversion to explicitly show external motivation is not always about the money. It is about something that has a value for us and we are ok to trade it for something we got here and now.
External motivation example
I could spend this time writing some code, probably getting paid for it (external motivation), yet despite it goes pretty tough I am working on this post. There is only one reason for me to do so: I want to write this post.
„I’ll give you X for you Y„ is an example of external motivation. While „I am doing X ‘cause I want to do X” is an example of internal motivation.
Please don’t get it wrong. Internal motivation does not necessarily means it is always act of altruism. It is the act, when reward is not the main goal.
Motivation to share
Now it is the time to bring the bricks together. There are people, who are sharing (and helping) because they are motivated to do so. Sometimes they really do.
Years and years of evolution, education and social iterations made people think it is impossible to live outside the social group. In XXI century, with existing and constantly growing amount of automation it is not a fiction anymore to become a one-man-army. Delivering the results of a complex processes can be automated to a degree it is enough with a single human being to supervise it.
Despite these facts it is stil a common approach for yet too many people to force themselves to serve other people, putting someone’s values and interests over their own. The point is it is wrong pattern. The true act of „sacrifice” comes from inside, from the inner motivation, of achieving level of empathy, understanding etc. Under these circumstances it might be an act of love. Otherwise this is an act of manipulation and toxicity.
Toxic self-deception
Fear is the most powerful emotion. At some point it saves us from acting against our best interest. I used to know that mechanism as the instinct of self-preservation. We should be aware it might keep us from doing actually good or even great things for us.
Under specific conditions people become feared of expressing true wishes and act accordingly to their inner motivation. This is the point a path to extreme altruism starts. Forgetting about own needs and wishes makes the person truly unhappy in a long term. The wishes and goals are hidden deeply. To be on the safe side it is better to be aligned and serve other people’s goals. The fear becomes the motivation.
Shared values are not shared
The very next moment comes the pain. Feeling bad merged with the feeling of being used. Feeling miserable caused by an emptiness. Feeling lonely because there is no more energy to take care about yourself and nobody wishes to reciprocate for your time. There are less common topics, less reasons to smile and less reasons to meet. Exhausted. Abandoned. Apathy.
Pull in case of emergency
It’s time to break the lies: it is not possible to give the last drop of you to somebody else if there is real inner motivation behind that. Inner motivation has very important part: you re-gain an energy when you do what you want.
When squeezing the last drops of you you’re probably:
- missing the boundaries and/or are afraid of executing them
- manipulative behavior is the preferred way of interacting
- being afraid of getting expelled from the group
The end
There are a lot of great people out there, who authentically wishes to lend a hand. I know you are among them and together we make this world a better place. However, there is always someone who’d like to abuse this help and someone else who mimics being helpful. This is what it is, it definitely should not stop us from doing good.
My life is about me
I faced my fears only at the point where I hit the point I knew I am not the bad guy, but I was acting incorrectly. And I could not act at the specific point of time differently, therefore there is no reason to feel guilty. I think this might be a part of self-preservation mechanism, to prevent destruction of the personality.
We, people, make mistakes. It is important to get up and fix them each and every time. After I found out I might be afraid to say no - I force myself to do so when I feel I want to say no. And pretty soon I found out there are cases when I really want to help. And it makes my life more better.
I wish I am not lending helpful hand because of the fear never again. I want my motivation to be sourced from love. And I wish you the same. „Live your life, love to live”