"Driven", "motivated", "passionate". I've always thought they were positive qualities.

Various people have said I have these qualities and looking back at my life I'd agree. But I also see something wrong. Here's some things I've done:

Some these actions seem fine in isolation. They seem like "driven" actions. But there's something that really unsettles me: I don't know why I do a lot of these things.

Of course I know some reasons. I'm a real human person, so each action I take has lots of motivations. For example: I cared about getting a professional career going so starting a business in college made sense to advance that goal.

But there seems to be a part of my motivation and drive that is also causing me pain, and I don't quite know what it is. Like why did I work on my resume in my down-time last week?

I think all these actions are connected. I think they're motivated by some kernel of myself.

I suspect I'm insecure about something: success, worth, skill… And that I'm trying to get external validation through these actions (despite knowing that I won't really internalize any of that validation 😅). But I don't really know.

I'm hoping that one day I'll be able to upgrade to "healthily driven", "healthily motivated", and "healthily passionate". That I'll be able to continue taking actions toward goals I care about, without taking actions that just hurt me. But I don't think I'm there yet.


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