What motivates us? Nature, nurture, change or acceptance?

Different things motivate different people. In this article we will explore what can motivate us as individuals. Where does our drive really come from? Find out here!

Nature vs. nurture

What shapes us as individuals? Is it our nature that we are born with that dominates our future path, or is it nurture – the way that we are brought up and the influences on and around us during that time? Of course the truth is that it is a blend of both.

A natural talent and creative flair for music, if not developed, does not automatically lead to a musical genius like Mozart. He is regarded as a child prodigy, a naturally gifted musician. A natural born genius.

Well, yes and no. He wrote incredible pieces of music at an astonishingly young age, so it is reasonable to assume it was in his nature somehow. The reality is though that he lived and breathed music under the immense pressure from his father and wrote very many pieces of music so that by the time some of it was pretty good he was still young. From the outside it looks as though he is a genius, if you saw the reality you may conclude it was sheer hard work and dedication.

What is true though, is that without the “encouragement” (or pressure) from his father he would not have accomplished the things that he did.

In this example the nature and nurture were clearly working together to produce music of extraordinary quality at a young age. Most nurturing is not however done in such a concentrated, focused and consistent way. Most nurturing – or conditioning as we might call it is much more subtle as we will now discover.

The desire for acceptance

The main thing that motivates the vast majority, if not all of us, is to be loved and accepted and to know that we are good enough.

This desire for acceptance creates in us a sort of rule-book of beliefs and values, a sense of right and wrong, what is acceptable and what is not. They could be helpful beliefs or unhelpful beliefs, true of false.

They have been inherited from parents, family, friends, colleagues and society at large. Indeed much of it is neither deliberately, or even consciously taught to us, but is received by osmosis. Long held beliefs and ‘common sense’ approaches are talked about in an unquestioned way and adopted as fact by the individual growing up.

Even as adults we are bombarded with messages and our desire to be individual conflicts with our desire to be accepted. Usually the desire for acceptance wins. The simple reason for this is that the only way that society can operate, i.e. with lots of individuals living together in peace, is if everyone plays to a set of rules. This means sacrificing some individuality in order to gain the security that comes with living together in community.

Most social rules are contained in an unwritten social code which needs to be discovered throughout life. An example of this would be that parents and society expects people in their twenties to be getting a job and establishing themselves in a career. For the individual, the desire to get a well-paid job may outweigh the desire to express their individuality and so a career that does not really fit the individual is chosen. This may be one that is socially acceptable to friends and/or to meet parental expectations.

This is the sort of point at which we can start to lose ourselves and set the nagging feeling going that “this isn’t really me”. Decisions such as this can have long-lasting effects for the individual.

There are a myriad of things that you may have adopted as a world view, beliefs about what is good and acceptable. However, these fit other people’s ideas of what is right and appropriate – and not necessarily yours. You have to test these for yourself and decide whether they are relevant to your life today.

Responding to change

Life in today’s society is very different from life even a few decades ago. The pace of global change is remarkable – the growth of populations, the development of technology, the global nature of trade and commerce.

Consider the start of the 20th Century. Britain was running an empire that spanned the globe. Within a few decades and after two world wars the USA was the new superpower and Britain was in decline.

The rise of communism gave hope of a new way of living, which soon gave way when the cracks started to appear and populations revolted against their oppressive communist regimes. The rise of Japan as a leading economy was soon followed by other economies developing in Asia. At the start of the 21st century we are witnessing the rise of China and India as enormous countries with fast developing economies.

The USA is no longer without rivals and the formerly powerful European nations are joining together to form a block to retain influence on this new larger scale.

All this happened in the span of one lifetime – and some people have lived through all of that change. Attitudes and outlooks from one generation need to be tested by the next rather than unthinkingly being assimilated. I am sure you can call to mind examples where someone older has made assumptions about the way the world is which are no longer true, maybe because technology has changed or society’s attitudes have changed with the next generation.

The world is constantly changing and without understanding yourself you may struggle to thrive – or even survive – in the changing environment. Finding and understanding ourselves enables us to let go of outdated notions and respond to the changing world as it really is – but this is very difficult to do if these beliefs form an integral part of our identity as we shall see in the next chapter.

Are you keen on learning more about what motivates us and how we find out who we really are to bring out the best in ourselves? Then the free eBook “Finding yourself – Understanding yourself and relating to others” is the right choice for you. Take a look inside.