Flow and the Hunger

While I have been interested in gaining flow I recognize that to do that one must have clear objectives ..... oh, and sufficient motivation to set out to achieve them.

So when I fixate on "the Hunger" it is because I am intrigued by people who are motivated .... really motivated, beyond simply lip-service ...... because I am not.

At my age you acquire some wisdom .... like it or not .... which means I try to see both sides of most things. But this is not always good for getting motivated.

When I set myself some abstract objective, before I get down to something that can be acted on I can see the negative, the pitfalls, the uselessness, even before I get started. The "so what?" or "who cares?" questions cripple me.

This is especially true of my personal objectives .... I seem to only get motivated by artificial stimulus ... in other words, I work well to achieve someone else's objectives. Whether that is my wife's, my boss at work .... my parents? Just not good at doing my own thing.

I don't apply my brain in my own service .... I never finish anything for myself ..... no deadline I make is important enough.

Where do others find their motivation? Where do you buy this Hunger? And to an observer, is it always a little pathetic ..... patheticly needy human behaviour? A weakness? A discomfort? What I call the "pea under one's matress?

That is the contradiction of flow - that to have the drive and hunger to achieve an objective, one needs to be unhappy? And when we are really happy, we just don't care to apply ourselves to achieve any worthwhile objective?