Monday Motivation #2 (Alan Watts)
Here we are, my friends, another beginning, another opportunity, another Monday. Now today, we’re not just cranking the psyche system to 11 and getting all sorts of spastic motivated. I’m not your spin instructor, and you don’t need me showering you with spittle as I channel my inner drill sergeant.
Instead, I’m gonna ask you a simple question: What do you desire?
That’s it. That’s all. Simple, right? Now, check the video below where world renowned Zen-Buddhist, hippy dippy, transcendentalist philosopher Alan Watts will expand on my very vague question.
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Yeah, I know. There isn’t a quick and easy answer to this question–because truthfully I think it’s always a bit of a moving target, sort of like fire-cast shadows on the wall–so don’t feel crummy if you can’t answer immediately.
However, I do want you reflecting on this question for at least 5 minutes a day for this next week. Maybe you set aside some time in the morning before work, maybe while you’re sitting in traffic, or while waiting for the printer to magically un-bugger itself; I don’t care when you do it, but I think this is one of the most important questions any of us can ask because until you can name that desire, you won’t know where to look for it.
Once you’ve named that thing, stop back over here and drop it in the comments. I want to hear what it is each of you truly desires.
Wow, where do I begin with this one? Not getting it with the fiction today so hell with it, essay time instead…
I tend to stay away from motivational posts because half the time I feel like I just don’t need them, but this one interested me enough to watch the video. I love this guy’s voice, and I’m mostly on the same level with him. The part I don’t fully click with is ‘ignore the money.’
I get it (I think) – what he’s saying in this context is ‘Don’t waste your life in a job or pursuit you don’t like just because it pays,’ yet money matters. Example, if I answered his question ‘What would you do if money were no object?’ I’d go get on a flight to Tokyo and only get a return ticket once I’d seen just about all of it. Picking one thing I really want to do? There are many things, but I’ve always fancied the challenge of becoming one of the few western-born people to master Japanese language, and I mean speak it like a pro. Because people tell me it pretty much can’t be done. Red rag to a bull.
So let’s say I get on the path to making that happen. (And I do intend to, although right now I also want to write books and get the other languages I can already speak going again. Too many desires sometimes means you have to pick the one that’s within reach for the moment.) There’s no way money’s ever going to be no object. I’m not poor, but I’m not loaded either. A flight out there aint cheap. Learning a language usually starts with a class with a good teacher (teaching yourself from a book and CD can work, but I did a languages degree 10 years ago and I’m old-school.) Helps if I do have some finance set aside.
So about 7 years ago I applied this logic to career-thinking. What did I desire? It certainly wasn’t to keep working in a supermarket because I never got anywhere with graduate jobs and that whole thing just felt equally uninspiring anyway. I literally, one day, just saw an ad for a forest ranger’s job in the paper and thought ‘Yeah, I desire that. So how do I get it seeing as I’ve got next to nothing required?’ It wasn’t just a snap decision like I’m making it sound; if I look at my life up to that point, it added up that I wanted an outdoors job, and something with more get-up-and-go than working in an office or on a shop floor. The languages degree thing was another ‘desire’ episode. I wanted to be good at German and Spanish, so I got good, and a certificate with a decent grade on, but it wasn’t a career move. It was just desire. So, fastforward to me looking at that ad, there I went again.
Seven years later, I’m in a steady job as a ranger. It pays well enough for me to finance the stuff that I want, and it applies pretty well to what’s in that video: I love it. Granted, I might find it harder to live on that money if I were raising a family on it, but I’m not. That kind of settled life for the long term isn’t my thing. I’ve known that for years. If you asked me ‘What do you desire’ on a more philosophical level, then I desire freedom. Not to suggest that someone married with kids is necessarily a prisoner, just that I couldn’t do it because I like having as much time as I have to go after my ambitions. Loads of free time suits me because there’s loads I want to fill it with.
Shameless plug time: I write more about ambition and desire than any other themes (Is there a difference between the two? Now THERE’S an interview question.) Ask half my characters what they desire and the true answer would be ‘To get back what I’ve lost.’ (Although most of them aren’t that self-aware.) Deep, huh? After saying you can’t simply forget money, I’m now thinking that money often flows through my books (in the fictional sense) on an oil-tycoon level and yet so many people, like AW says in the video, ‘just [don’t] get there.’
Wow, this is fantastic stuff, Tommy. It takes a lot of courage and conviction to just change career trajectories like that. I find it inspiring that you were able to point to the thing you wanted to do, and then actually pursued it until completion. That’s a rare trait these days, my friend.
What exactly does the day-to-day of a ranger look like? What sort of schooling/certifications did you have to go through?
Just thought of checking for replies on this…the day-to-day of my job is really hard to describe without writing way too much, simply because it’s very varied and there’s a lot of plan-changing that goes on, but just to give an answer: at this time of year I’m mostly on orchard harvesting (apples) and working with volunteers who help in various ways, right down to making the cider at the start of October and having a 3 day festival event in the middle of the month. That’s the big thing, but around that I’ve got things like tree checking after bad weather, pathway maintenance in the park areas, bits of conservation scrub clearing and tree felling now that it’s the right season (september-march) and there’s some office stuff like writing management plans and general admin involved in making stuff happen.
Schooling…well, I went through a two year college course that taught me all the academic side of it and also got me qualified in practical stuff like using a chainsaw, a tractor, a brushcutter…(all the fun stuff basically!) and then once I’d finished it I started volunteering full time for a well known organisation for a year. They later hired me into my first paid work in the field 4 years ago. That’s how a lot of people get in: save up a bit of money (remember I said it matters? =P) and work for free during the week and keep a paid weekend job on the side (you don’t get to do this kind of work without knowing what being tired is right from the start!)
This is interesting when I think about the articles you’ve been blogging up about routines. I also wrote the final draft my first novel during that year…because I was dealing with two ‘desires’ – become a ranger and get a book self-published. Despite achieving both I still don’t feel like I ever developed a strict writing routine or ritual, yet I get BIG wordcounts and average about 1.5 books per year (finished or drafted, not published). The day job draws an interesting parallel – a certain amount of it is planned but I have to allow for changing the plan, and sometimes for chaos. If I’ve ever gotten into routines I’ve only ended up changing them when they’ve no longer worked. A certain amount of routine gets me where I want to go but I still think it’s often my enemy as well…never mind the
Excellent post. I’ll try to accept your challenge to think about what i desire each day this week. 🙂
Awesome! Be sure to check back in and let me know how it’s going. I want to hear about your progress.
I’m just turning 80 years old and I’m always asking myself, what if I had took this or that job, where would I be today. I find the question a lifelong question.
And are you ultimately happy with where you have arrived? Would you have chosen another path knowing what you know now?