Monday, October 14, 2013

Day Fourteen: Motivation Check No. One

In my last two posts, I wrote about talking too much and over-thinking paralysis as old engrained habits that could derail progress on the road to “Dream. Plan. Do.” Over the next few days we will discuss bad motivators that are likely subconscious saboteurs to our success. One particularly bad motivator is guilt. 

If we are called to be servants and love as Jesus loved, then doing anything from a guilty standpoint is contrary to God’s word. If we are doing something out of a guilty heart than often times we are merely acting to assuage our own guilt and make ourselves feel better than out of love for others. The outward result may be that someone temporarily gets something they wanted or needed, but there is rarely any joy in doing from a place of guilt. 

Additionally, there are those who would take advantage of your guilt and push you outside of what you originally committed. I am sure each of us can think of a time or situation where we were motivated by guilt to do X and ended up also having to do A, B, and C that we never committed to doing. This will only build resentment and anger in you, as well as create an unhealthy relationship dynamic that you will find yourself repeating over and over again if you don’t put a stop to it early on.
Stop and ask yourself:

  • Is there anything on your dreams and goals list that is motivated by guilt? 
  • Am I acting from a place of love? 
  • Am I trying to make up for something that occurred in the past?
  • If I were to act from love instead of trying to make-up for a past wrong, how would my current actions change?
  • Am I in a bad cyclical relationship where I give and give and give out of guilt?

 
Sometimes we act of guilt so subtly that it may be that you have to ask God to reveal this to you in prayer. I would encourage you to pray about this if its sounds like something you do. Don’t continue on in this condition because the things you do only grow more and more sour. They will not become sweet merely because they were done. God will look at the heart behind the action and if your heart won’t look shiny and bright under God’s discerning light then you have some changes to make. (I have a feeling that we all will!)

To Read 31 Days of Dream. Plan. Do. from the beginning click here.

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