Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Challenge, Mastery and Purpose

Quite a bit has been written about the trifecta of motivation that involves allowing autonomy, encouraging mastery and giving purpose. I subscribe to a slightly different perspective. I believe that motivation is just a part of a life worth living. And to have a life worth living, that is a life that will be remembered, you must have a purpose,experience challenges, and master them.

Purpose: As I told my son the other day. "No one cares about people that let the ship of their life wander aimlessly from port to port. People only care about those that take charge of the rudder and steer. Like a pirate. YOU NEED TO BE A FUCKING PIRATE!!!!" He grinned at me because he thinks I am crazy but the point was your life needs to mean something. It needs a purpose. That purpose changes throughout your life. As a toddler your purpose may be to simply grow. As you get older it may be to achieve higher education, or it may be to help others. Those without purpose stagnate and become stale. Their life is not worth remembering.

Challenge: Any purpose worth achieving will have challenges. These challenges or obstacles are what makes the purpose worth your time and your life. By continually meeting challenges head on we become stronger and better as people. Ready to meet another challenge.

Mastery: After repeated attempts we master the challenges. We achieve the purpose. If we are to continue to grow as humans and our life is to be remembered we then need to re-purpose. Find another purpose and conquer those new challenges.

My thoughts on this subject are similar to part of the Buddhist path "to develop wisdom and understanding." Challenge, Mastery and Purpose make a remembered life.

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