Looking forward / motivations

What do you look forward to? What are your motivations in life to avoid inertia? (That is, what is it that encourages you to take initiative instead of following the path of least effort and least resistance — from the smallest everyday things to the biggest, life-changing things.)

Or do you simply not look forward to anything and/or just strive to live according to routine and nothing else?

(Not giving an answer of my own here because I simply don't have any... Which really is my biggest problem currently.)

This is really hard to answer.

Do I have life goals? I really ask myself that quite a bit. Right now, I can't honestly say I really do. I strive to learn more, do better at what I do, and enjoy life. Outside that - "Do I see where I'll be in 5 years?" I can't say I know the answer to that.

Dunno.

For small term goals, like eating better and losing weight...those are much easier for me to visualize and implement. I can see results easier, and feel less uncertainty involved when making those decisions. I do have a number of "short term" goals out there, though. Some current ones is to better understand myself, lose weight (something I've been doing for awhile now), and figure out what makes me tick, when it comes to enjoying life and what it has to offer. I've been noticing that I spend considerable amounts of time trying to keep myself distracted in some ways.

I'd like to try a long term goal sometime. There are guides, books, and so on out there that are supposed to help with this. I haven't read much into them yet though.

What drives me in any decision is an interesting question. I suppose what drives me in pleasure in doing better as time goes on, and having pride in my abilities and skills in whatever I decide to put my time into. Personally, this question is very difficult to answer for me though.

(i am almost an aspie but not rly)

anagram wrote:What do you look forward to?

old age and afterlife
and the summer, even tho i don´t like the summer (i just want vacation)

anagram wrote:What are your motivations in life to avoid inertia? (That is, what is it that encourages you to take initiative instead of following the path of least effort and least resistance — from the smallest everyday things to the biggest, life-changing things.)

stupid/the weirdest things... :/

My usual plans in life:
- collect information (or simply study) new things, increase my knolwedge
- rise intellectual capabilities to expand my views on the world (somewhat improve my invidual way of thinking/seeing things)
- further research of dream world
- find good music and film that I could enjoy
- have any form of fun in any way that is pleasure for me

The "harder" to reach goals:
- write own book or few if succesfull at first one
- learn to play on electric guitar and/or piano
- find a great job
- have own family
- check afterlife

What's nice is this topic prompted me to do a few Google searches, and I came up with:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/enl ... how-fix-it

It's kinda interesting, because it kinda aligns for what we look forward to in life. It seems to be a fairly big question - and most people tend to want to grasp "more and more", instead of being satisfied with what we have. The whole goal making thing, I think, aligns with wanting more and being dissatisfied more.

linked article wrote:When we are infants, we're pretty much all set. We eat, we sleep, we poop - we're good. The trouble starts when we begin to get a sense of ourselves

This is misleading. Unless you happen to somehow be wealthy without working, you simply can't eat-sleep-and-poop and be good when you're an adult. There are responsibilities that you can't completely avoid, and it's not natural, automatic and instinctive to fulfill them. Nobody likes responsibilities for the sake of responsibilities. You need to have something else that compels you to accept them and pursue what it takes to fulfill them. (Or else you're in trouble.)

I'm not talking about going after a better job, a better relationship, a better lifestyle. I'm talking about going after a job, a relationship, a lifestyle, in contrast to simply going on with nothing of that. If you really manage to be content with exactly what you have at one moment, nothing more, nothing less, you just sit there and wait for death. This is not realistic.

anagram wrote:This is misleading. Unless you happen to somehow be wealthy without working, you simply can't eat-sleep-and-poop and be good when you're an adult. There are responsibilities that you can't completely avoid, and it's not natural, automatic and instinctive to fulfill them. Nobody likes responsibilities for the sake of responsibilities. You need to have something else that compels you to accept them and pursue what it takes to fulfill them. (Or else you're in trouble.)

I'm not talking about going after a better job, a better relationship, a better lifestyle. I'm talking about going after a job, a relationship, a lifestyle, in contrast to simply going on with nothing of that. If you really manage to be content with exactly what you have at one moment, nothing more, nothing less, you just sit there and wait for death. This is not realistic.

I think you're missing the point of the article. Basic life needs, yes, you need to fulfill. The issue this article raises, which I agree with totally, is that after the basic life needs being met, people strive for more. The whole idea of life plans isn't only to really meet your immediate needs, but to plan for something "better" than what you have currently. I disagree that it's "Not natural, automatic and instinctive to fulfill them". Our basic needs, as well as our expanded wants are very much "natural" to fulfill. The problem is that, after the basic needs are met, we're in a continuous cycle of needing and wanting more.

If you really manage to be content with exactly what you have at one moment, nothing more, nothing less, you just sit there and wait for death. This is not realistic.

I can't tell you how much I disagree with you here. The very reason why I started studying this area of philosophy is to get more intimate with the exact question of what happens when you are totally satisfied. No, in short, is it a "wait for death scenario". By being totally content, you're just totally content. By "waiting for death", you're again striving for something to happen - another goal, just like everything else. You can't be totally content while "waiting for death", it just doesn't work that way.

I could be a bit bias on this article. This particular subject has been about 12 years of extremely heavy research on my part, and was the basis for the religion I picked up as a result of my early studies. This topic is very big for me.

My point is: working for money is neither an instinctive basic need nor an unnecessary item to be desired. It's in between. It's an unnatural necessity.

Well, I definitely agree with you on the "money portion". I doubt many save money or the sake of having more paper bills drifting around home, but the opportunity to convert the money into something more useful to the person.

i think that this has a great deal to do with self-image. most people that are driven are that way to bolster their egos. loose the ego and the drive goes with it to a large extent. then there's the matter of bordom to contend with. which is why an obsession is always a goood thing to have. but if one ever looks too objectively at these they can become rather meaningless. and we're back to bordom again. ultimately, i think most people ponder the meaning of their lives. and i think many come to the conclusion that life is most meaningful when it's spent trying to help others. but not everyone is so inclined. some prefer to feel sorry for themselves (justifiably or otherwise). and sometimes they simply never snap out of it. of course, AS is a major handicap in this department because the reward for social interaction is feeling good emotionally. and that's just what we don't do so well (feel anything emotionally). and intellectualising is a pretty poor substitute for actually feeling. a bit like watching a film with a blind fold on. you might be able to hear the dialogue but you're missing most of the action. and that's why i spend such a high proportion of my time improving my diet because this improves my feeling and this in turn makes my life more worthwhile.