Motivated Experience

I was thinking about experience, how it governs one's mentality. This isn't exactly a new thought, I have long thought one's own experience will ultimately define what they believe. Facts and figures can always be bent to make belief and experience align.

Lately, however, the thought has been on observed experience versus personal experience. I've been know to observe others here and there and see what works for them. I love observing relational dynamics and I find them somewhat predictable in others. It mostly boils down to a couple general principles. This is nothing astounding, story tellers have been using those principles to their advantage for making an audience admire or despise a character as long as stories have been told.

What I find interesting is my own personal bias against all these principles as they relate to me. Probably resulting from a collection of my own experiences and the heightened emotion involved in caring about me more than the random guy I observe, I am able to quite easily convince myself that my life defies all rules. What works for them doesn't work for me.

This does two things. It makes me into a unique freak of nature who could never belong and it makes finding answers impossible. With all other cases being irrelevant, I have only myself to analyze, and myself is the most confused and the one who hasn't succeeded.

Don't dare ask me to define success. That's as elusive a concept as there is. Success is more and more is never enough. Success in my head is impossible.

An achieved goal must not have been a real goal, or it would not have been achievable. If it's done by me, then anyone can do it, and it is not worth celebrating. Many people find it strange I had no desire to go to my college graduation, but that's how I think. (And again, that's how I think about me, the rules change in regard to anyone else)

Here's where it gets crazy. Success to me has to be in something entirely unique, but something unique is not rateable because by it's very definition it has nothing it can be compared to.

In this quest to be unique, I keep trying to rewrite myself into someone who operates outside all the norms. It's almost like it's some sadistic attempt to make me hopeless to succeed. if I'm hopeless, I can stop trying.

Sometimes I really do believe I'm hopeless. This leaves me with one of my more favorite motto's: There's no point in trying, but there's nothing else to do.

So still, I continue to press forward merely to stave off boredom. What's this all mean? I'm doomed to excel.

Am I destined or cursed? Who knows? All I know is I'm motivated. I can't reorder my mind to a place that sits me still. I can't ever arrive. There is no ultimate goal, there are only vague, mutable dreams that vaporize when they are within my grasp.

Really, this is all just a quest for meaning and fulfillment, and the impossibility of either of those things is likely my greatest asset to getting things done. If only I didn't second guess everything along the way. I have no faith in me.

Hmm. That's what it is. Interesting. How does one fix that? Why do I think it needs fixing? Perhaps the mental instability is why. There's something about talking yourself of off ledges that makes you think you've gotta stop getting to that point. (No, I don't literally talk myself off ledges, don't worry) It's more like I talk myself out of holes. The point is that I get into to scarily low spots. I've long known hopelessness is what puts one down there, but I find my lack of faith disturbing.

The thought that always chases that is I think too much about myself. But the reality is I obsess when I am low. I can't seem to break those thoughts, and big surprise, I feel guilty because I am wasting time thinking about me and am incapable of accomplishing anything good. (according to how I am defining accomplishment at those times)

I can point to several insecurities that send me spiraling, but I'm too insecure to be specific about them here. Basically, I am ashamed. A couple things I have mentioned I'm ashamed of, people have told me I should be proud of, because I risked and I tried when many others wouldn't. But I get ashamed when I fail, thinking I was a fool to try.

This is a terrible line of thinking, because the biggest growth often comes out of failure. Fail. Learn. Change. Be better.

So now I am someone who's driven by the unachievable and crushed by the unavoidable result of that quest. Both of those things are backwards. I shouldn't be motivated how I am and I should see failure as a positive sign of progress.

My guess is I'm not going to change how I am motivated or discouraged. Instead, I should learn to channel those emotions to my advantage. (or the world's)

And maybe that is part of what I'm doing when I convince myself that I am unique and outside the realm of destiny, if you will. All I'm really doing is making things epic and over dramatic. If so much is on the line, I can push myself to do things otherwise to terrifying to try. Indeed, I've tried some crazy things. They've pretty much all crashed and burned to this point, but I've got a few more attempts on the horizon and I do have a better idea of what I'm doing. I think maybe, just maybe, I'll even forge ahead knowing what I know of observed experience, and see how what works for everyone else works for me.