the driving force by which humans accomplish their goals

I went to a neuroscience seminar this past week, and the speaker started his presentation by talking about motivation. To paraphrase: 

Everybody has to have a motivation for what they’re doing. I love talking to young people about their motivations because for them, their motivations are so much more clear. But for me, my motivation is figuring out how people think. I acknowledge that there are several different ways to figure this out, but to me, the most interesting one is the molecular perspective. That’s why I became a scientist. The molecular perspective might be incomplete, and it might turn out not to be the best way, but it’s the most interesting to me. 

It’s an interesting point. This guy realized he loved science, and decided to use it as a tool to accomplish what motivated him, to figure out how people think. Since then, I’ve been thinking about what motivates me, and I remembered these wise words: 

“Sometimes the only way to take a really good look at yourself is through someone else’s eyes.” - JD from Scrubs 

So I had some of my closest friends describe me: 

“Nobody else sees the world quite like he does, and is so comfortable analyzing and discussing conclusions on life.” 

“Over the course of my life I have yet to meet a person more thoughtful, and reflective. When I read his Sidenote blog, I remember the long runs in which we shared these thoughts with each other. It looks like all the uncertainties that Ken and I had then still linger 8 years later.” 

“Nobody else has been willing to talk to me about all aspects of life as much as we did on those nights.” 

What motivates me, is that I just want people to be happy. 

Sidenote: why I want people to be happy:

And as my friend’s suggest, I love thinking. 

In particular, I’ve been thinking about people for the past few years. I’ve had conversations with roughly six hundred people. I’ve lived with eight different people during that time, whose brains I’ve thoroughly picked. I’ve read somewhere between one and two hundred books about other people’s thoughts. I’ve wrote over a hundred short essays on my own thoughts. All that to say, I’ve wasted a lot of time trying to figure out what makes people tick.

So I’ve been thinking about how to get people to become happy. It’s been hard, and it’s been confusing to sort through the piles of ideas I’ve gathered from these past few years. Sidenote – here are the few fundamentals I feel like I solidly believe: 

1) People are not good at being happy 

2) People love their own kids, even if they aren’t able to show that love effectively 

3) It is hard to extract meaning without other people 

Anyways, it’s hard to say if thinking is important. I’ve met people who don’t think much, and they live perfectly content lives. In fact, a lot of times it’s hard for thinkers to get out of their heads and into real life where it actually matters. 

The author Donald Miller has this quote about overthinking: 

“I do this with good things; I think joy into its coffin; I analyze too much. I don’t want to think about life anymore; I just want to live life.” 

It’s a good point, but I still love thinking about things, and though it might not be the best way, it's my way. I might die in twenty or fifty years, not having been able to come up with any ways to help people be happy, but at least I'll be happy that I got to think about it. 

See you on the other side.

from ken

If you have a driving force by which you accomplish your goals, I am interested to hear about it.  Maybe you can help me expand my understanding of what makes people tick.