What Kills Motivation?

Enclaimer: Now this isn't a funny topic, so friends hoping to find some sarcastic, idiosyncratic and caustic statements can go take a hike on the filthy road stretch between Dharavi leather market and Mahim creek via the stinking sheepskin factory somewhere in between. However, if you proceed further with the blog, you don't need any sheep skin factories for your daily dose of the stink. Thanks for stopping by!

So, today's topic is 'What Kills Motivation?' Last year I used to write lenghty monologues about brown muddy waters and flights over grey lands etc to reflect my demotivated, deflated, desolate spirit.. But this year, I'm not motivated to do that.

Really, what kills motivation? I think it has something to do with too much expectation. Like you expect to win a lottery one day to become super-rich overnight and that ex-girl friend of yours will feel bad seeing you on TV in glitzy clothes! But I bet you are still trying to figure out what Super Lotto really is and someday learn to play that elusive game called Poker that makes James Bond look so cool on 35mm screen. So what stops you from learning Poker and turning Pro? How about Golf? Did you ever try to play, since you think it is so elegant and so-befitting-your-statuture?

Actually, what deletes the word 'motivation' from your dictionary? I read this recent blogpost about how one can motivate onself to go through an entire art gallery of a museum and appreciate all the paintings, which most of us find extremely tiresome after the first three 'priceless' masterpieces.. The blogwriter contends that if you keep asking yourself in each room, 'If I had $15 mn and I'm buying a painting, which one in this room would I buy? Then you would start appreciating each painting's merits and motivate yourself to observe everything!' Splendid! You know what kills motivation? The thought that you will never have those $15 mn to buy paintings! So apart from too much expectation, realization of your actual worth also kills motivation?

And I keep asking myself, what is the root cause of motivation disappearing from your system every 3 hours inspite of the inflated self-esteem you built after that flirtatious conversation with the pretty girl you met last week. The girl, most probably, does not even have you in her target segment and is certainly far from the soulmate that you thought you were entitled to, after seeing Dil To Pagal Hai and the latest Karan Johar movie. So you just try to carry on with what you already have on account of the marriage or any other kind of miscarriage of natural justice engineered by higher forces of the society. So why didn't you marry that person that you keep thinking about on rainy evenings, travelling in the slow local? Why don't you still make an effort? May be you are just resigned to your fate. Hmm... does any talk of fate demotivate you? So it is too much expectation, self-realiztion and resignation to fate that kills motivation!

I have been working on this stupid PPT for the past two months to satisfy bloated egos and unfulfilled career goals (not mine). And I'm demotivated. I have too much expectation from my job, as I keep expecting free net access and frequent promotions for using office pc to write my stuff, and ppl keep disturbing me with work in between, say atleast once a week. I've just had a self-realization that I'm so good at bull-shitting, I make an excellent strategy-maker for people preparing for Christ's second coming. And I'm coming to office tomorro for a grand showdown with the PPT. Ah, Fate!

You know why I'm demotivated? Let me tell you my story......

(to be contd.)