Could it be possible that even though you’re financially secure, well educated and live comfortably that your life still feels dull, that you’re not living up to your full potential? Sadly the answer could be yes… but it’s not because you are not smart enough, or because you haven’t set personal goals, or even because you can’t afford a more glamorous life. Discover what changes you can make to no longer feel unsatisfied, emotionally indifferent, and how you can turn your life around so that it doesn’t seem trivial.
What motivational changes occur when one’s instinctive biological need for survival is no longer threatened and one’s attention shifts to fulfilling the need to perform at one’s highest potential and one becomes self-actualized? Survival needs include our physiological needs (our need for air, food and water), safety needs (physical and emotional safety), our need for a sense of belonging (family and friendships), and esteem needs (a need for self esteem, confidence and respect). Lacking one of these needs causes discomfort, signaling a threat to our existence – much like a red emergency light indicates danger. When our survival needs are taken care of and we are confident in our prospect of survival we reach an initial level of comfort and become “comfortably bored.” This is when our existence is no longer threatened as we have mastered the skills to survive. However, soon our natural human curiosity becomes bored with the lack of challenge – now we want more, paradise has lost its appeal. We ask ourselves, “What else am I able to conquer?” This inner questioning soon leads us to accomplish great outcomes as we discover financial security, academic excellence, instant gratification, material wealth, and a way of achieving set goals.
Now that we have achieved financial security, academic excellence and found a way of instant gratification and accumulated material wealth we reach a second comfort zone, the zone of “comfortably dull.” We now have so many of the things we once thought were important but it all seems to be in vain. Our accomplishments cured the sense of boredom but now what we have seems trivial. We now face a new dilemma – if what we thought would have given our lives meaning only cured the boredom, what would make our lives feel significant?
To solve this riddle we analyze, scrutinize and intellectualize what we have done. We look for where things may have gone wrong. We tell ourselves, “I’m smart, I’m educated, I can figure this out.” We spin around and around in circles of thought, unable to find a solution that makes sense; but it is not a lack of intellect that got us into this predicament, it was a bad habit, our habit of seeking instant gratification instead of striving for something which could challenge us to stretch towards our potential.
With our refined skills of achieving instant gratification to overcome the boredom of comfort, we became lazy and even worse, possibly petrified to chase after a meaningful cause. With our bad habit in control, a haze of dullness slides down and covers our better judgment. To overcome this bad habit and discover our true potential and find emotional fulfillment a new attitude needs to be developed; one that is able to take into consideration the dichotomies we face daily, that of intellect and feeling, instant gratification and lasting reward, personal significance and the trivial, freedom and responsibility, and comfort and challenge. We need to set goals in new ways that will engage our personal self. Our survival no longer relies on our ability to meet our basic needs, but our need for self-actualization, to be all we can be, rests solely on our ability to ask ourselves for more.
The greatest challenge to overcome is fear of the prospect that if we were to reach our full potential, would all the hard labor have been worthy of the cause, would the dullness have subsided? Consider if it would be more meaningful to strive for your potential or to settle for mediocrity.
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