Category: Motivation

How Do You Serve Others?

For some people, serving others  is a noble endeavor, and helps provide motivation for living. How do you serve others?

In the United States, a mythology has sprung up around the notion of being independent, like “individual’s rights” and “personal freedoms”. The idea of living your life in support of others is not something talked about as much, but it happens just as frequently.

The experience most have in this regard is family connection. For example, once someone becomes a parent, then suddenly priorities shift. Your time, effort, and money (and sleep!) are sacrificed for your child or children. Even beyond children, you may well feel an obligation to your parents, your siblings, or even members of your extended family.

Listen to a podcast where Michael and Lee discuss a related question: ‘What are our responsibilities to others?’ We also discuss a bonus question: ‘Are we too busy?’

But for some, serving others can go well beyond family obligations. There are many people who have chosen a public service career, from police and firefighters, to teachers and educators. Politicians, at local, state, or national levels are public servants.

Even people who work in the private sector often do so with the intention of improving the lives of others in some way.

Churches of most religions and denominations serve the public in various ways. Many holy texts speak extensively about the importance of serving others, particularly those less fortunate.

What about you? What do you do, in your daily life, to serve others? Are there ways in which your intentions are different from your actions? How might you change your life to provide better service for your community or the public in general?

Related questions: What expectations do you have of others? How do you depend on others? Protecting yourself or protecting others? What are our responsibilities to others?

How Can You Turn A Loss Into A Win?

In life, there are times when you experience a loss. How can you take the sting of that loss and channel it into a win?

No matter how successful you happen to be, there will inevitably be times where you experience a setback. Or maybe your life has more than the usual number of setbacks.

How you respond to these obstacles can be crucial. In fact, it can be the difference between long-term growth and stagnation. Being able to channel your pain, anger, misery and unhappiness into productive action is important. Even if it doesn’t bring about eventual success — and it might — it can help with your outlook.

Listen to a podcast where Michael and Lee discuss a related question: ‘How do you define success?’ We also discuss a bonus question: ‘Is happiness the most important purpose in life?’

Not that it is easy. A loss can be devastating, and it can leave you feeling powerless, even when you aren’t. It can sap your energy and your motivation.

So what can you do in that instance? Are there any tips that have helped you in the past? Are there strategies that you can think of that might help you recharge, in order to fight another day? And not just to fight, but to come out on top in the future?

How can you turn a loss into a win?

Related questions: How do you deal with loss? How can we turn sadness into constructive action? Why bother? What can you control? When is it useful to fail?

 

How Do You Justify Your Existence?

Author Isaac Asimov wrote a series of mystery stories about a group called the Black Widowers. In nearly every story, a question was asked of a guest character: How do you justify your existence?

Listen to a podcast where Michael and Lee discuss a related question: ‘Is happiness the most important purpose in life?’ We also discuss a bonus question: ‘How do you define success?’

In the stories, the answer to this question always leads to a mystery or a puzzle of some sort being presented and eventually solved. In real life, of course, there probably will not be a mystery. But we can still have the discussion.

So how, dear reader, would you answer this question? What is your justification for your time on this earth? The question is simple, but the answer may not be.

Related questions: What gives you purpose? Why are we here? How do you judge yourself? What do you do that matters?

What Brings You The Most Joy?

There are many things that can motivate you: fear, hope, anger, desire. One of the more overlooked emotions is joy. What brings you the most joy?

Negative emotions can be channeled into positive action. For example, if you are afraid of losing your job, you might try to impress the people you work for and with.

Listen to a podcast where Michael and Lee discuss the related question: ‘How can we maintain wonder?’ We also discuss a bonus question: ‘How do you think others see you?’

However, positive emotions are very valuable as well. Experiencing joy can be exhilarating, and the desire to recapture that feeling can be very powerful.

In order to have a repeat experience, however, it helps to know just what, exactly, brings you joy.

Can you think of times in your life when you have felt joyous? What did those moments have in common? And what might you do in order to feel that way again?

Related questions: How can we increase joy? How can you take joy from joyless tasks? What makes you the happiest?

Climate Change: How Would You Act If Your House Was On Fire?

For decades humans have known that we are driving climate change.  And for most of that time, it’s been clear that unless we change our ways, the planet may become largely, if not wholly, inhospitable to humans as well as many other plants and animals.

The experts tell us that we’ve reached a tipping point.  We cannot reverse climate change any longer.  The best we can hope for is to stop the progress and mitigate the damages we’ve already wrought — the impacts we see now as well as those that are already in motion due to current actions.

Concretely, the United Nations warns us that we will experience hotter temperatures, more severe storms, increased droughts, rising ocean levels, loss of species, not enough food, increased health risks, and increased poverty and displacement.

Listen to a podcast where Michael and Lee discuss the related question: ‘What are you willing to sacrifice?’ We also discuss a bonus question: ‘What do you believe?’

Our house is on fire.

It’s been burning for quite some time.  But the fire, until fairly recently, progressed slowly.  Not so any longer.  The pace of climate change has been increasing.  And every year, it seems we need to recalculate the rate of change to faster still.   To stop the progress and mitigate the damages will require immediate changes to the world, national, and local economies; more sustainable agriculture practices; assistance to struggling regions of the world already seeing life-threatening impacts; sustainable technologies (old and new), and dramatic changes to our personal lives.

While some advocate for the necessary immediate changes, the dominant view appears to be kicking the can down the road. We convince ourselves that new technologies will save us or that younger generations will take this seriously and enact needed changes. So, we’re either pinning ourselves to shallow hope or acknowledging that the pains of change are not ones we will initiate.

We should expect more of ourselves.  How would you act if your house was on fire?  Because it is.

Related questions: How is climate change impacting you? What is keeping us from sustaining the planet? What is the greatest problem facing humanity?