SOME BUT NOT ALL ARE MOTIVATED BY OPTIONS

Earlier in the week, I lost or misplaced my favourite fountain pen. To be honest it’s my only fountain pen ~ a present given to me by my mother and father nearly twenty years ago. It has great sentimental value.I didn’t panic!

No, I remained quite calm even though I hadn’t seen it for over four days.

Why was I so calm? I kept asking myself this and what follows is a concise version of what seemed to be happening.

As I was searching for the pen, my thought was “this is going to turn up somewhere” and I was glad that I didn’t always have the same orderly place for it.

My pen could have been in any number of places, and so not finding it in one place, made it possible for it to be found in any number of others.

I suppose what I’m saying, is that by not being so orderly & certain allowed me the luxury of hoping that it might be elsewhere. I even allowed myself the luxury of feeling sorry for those who always had a definite place for their valuables.

Reflecting on this, a number of things spring to mind,

1. The hope that I would find the pen seemed to diminish any anxiety about not finding it.

2. Some inner voice was making points about certainty and options.

I suppose the lack of certainty in this instance gave rise to the possibility of hope and by extension serendipity. The happy accidents that occur when things are not too rigidly planned and of being able to take something positive from unintended outcomes.

Having reflected, I believe that perhaps I am far more motivated by the open and indefinite, and that this provides me with ‘options’ ~ wherever I have options I see opportunity. Wherever there are limited or no options my light seems to burn far less bright.

I remember sitting around with friends in our teens, each of us writing down half a dozen things we might do over the weekend, and committing to do the thing that was drawn from the bag (I hasten to add that our choices had to be realisable and realistic). All those possibilities!!

I think that not having had an awareness of being motivated by options may have created some difficulty in the past, particularly with people who I now realise are motivated by the definite, the tied down and I suppose the ‘absence of having to choose’

By way of an example, in a training session I may say “what time would you like to go for lunch”. I never realised that some people prefer to be told what time to go for lunch and not have the option.

Maybe when I present a range of options to a client I need to hold down my ‘motivation’ when I help them to weigh up the ‘pros and cons’ of these options ~ it could be all too easy to value the options at the expense of moving towards making a choice and taking action.

It might be all too easy to revel in the options and use this as a justification for procrastination. We need to get the balance right here.

After searching for two or three days I eventually found my pen and am happily using it. I am also grateful for the opportunity I have been given to reflect…and act on how to keep my options open!