We are driven my internal needs and desires, whether we consciously recognize this, deep inside all of us is a need for purpose and motivation to meet our internal needs. Sometimes our need for safety and security override all other needs, the need for safety can be stronger than the need for fulfillment of purpose. Need for safety and security could also be fear driven.
For example, a fear of not having enough food to feed your family could motivate a person to stay in a ‘secure’ salaried job with compensation that does not fully recognize the value of the employee. These fears and needs drive our decisions, they are drivers.
You may be aware of your drivers, the internal motivations you have that bring you that feeling of satisfaction. I have been driven by the desire to provide for my family and the need to help others. The desire to provide was initially fear based for me. I did not want my family or myself to live through an experience where there was no food at home, like I had experienced in my life. This fear and need were one of the driving forces that helped me struggle through the discomfort experienced initially in my latest career. This need to provide spoke louder to me than the other warning bells and red flags that came along as I integrated into a negative work environment.
These are the kind of drivers that are beneath the surface that all people experience and are those drivers that can allow poor judgement to occur. If you have a high need for security and you are providing for your family, you are less likely to speak up to that boss that is belittling you. You are less likely to report the sexual harassment to your human resources department. You will not stick up your hand and say “stop treating me this way” to your union rep because inside you have a stronger voice saying “don’t fail, provide for your family”. This is why conformance happens in a rotten work environment. This is why sexual harassment is reported years after the actual event. The needs the individual faced at the time were so strong that survival meant choosing the more important need. Or the perception of having to choose.
We all must be aware of our fears, we need to bring them forward into conscious awareness so we can understand how our need to protect ourselves from our fear will drive behaviour.
Belief drives behaviour. If you want to make change in your life you must shift belief and work past fear driven decisions so you can move toward your potential. Behaviour driven by fear creates a “move away” perspective. We choose to move away from that thing we fear to avoid pain. Fears are within all of us and we all develop ways of dealing with them, there are hundreds of posts on the internet about fears, thousands of people who can counsel you on how to deal with your specific fear.
A person with a belief that they are safe will have a stronger foundation from which to take risks in their career and life. A person with a belief that there is not enough (money, food, jobs) will accept lower salary than they have the potential to earn and will stay in a bad working environment for longer because of this belief.
Belief drives behaviour. Fear and judgement drive belief and we confuse belief for fact. If you have a fear of being alone this may drive a belief that there are not many good potential partners out there and subsequently you decide to stay in a relationship that is bad for you. You behave as though you have no options. Fear drives belief; believe drives behaviour.
What do we do? First, we would all benefit from the knowledge that this is occurring within each of us. Call out your fears, bring them into your awareness. What belief is this fear creating within you? Is this belief factual? What behaviour has this belief caused? Is this behaviour helping me get the most out of life? Is this behaviour helping me reach my goals?
Rather than focus a lot of energy on those fears and attempting to fix them why don’t we just bring them to our awareness and find a new perspective? This isn’t easy, if our habits have been to make choices that keep us away from that thing we fear. If we have a long history of this habit it will be a challenge to change. Imagine the benefit of looking ahead and focusing on creating that future that you want to experience. What if you were able to take action and behave in a way that moves you toward that future? What if on the horizon you can see a place where you want to exist that you know is better for you and closer to your purpose and that place you can see feels so good to you that you are driven to take steps to move toward it. What if you could decide to look ahead at what you want, rather than looking back at what you don’t want?
Meet your fears head on, draw up your courage and put them in their place, reframe them in a factual matter and make them the size they deserve to be.
More importantly, focus on your desired outcome and that positive future you will create. Look up to the horizon to where you are headed and take a step TOWARD where you want to be. Be moved by your inspiration, identify a positive outcome that you feel connected to and move towards it.
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