Whatever It Takes

I am endlessly interested in what truly motivates people’s actions, especially when their actions don’t align with their stated motivations.

People are propelled by many things – tribal status, safety, ego, and a host of others – but since these motivations are so good at burrowing deep within our brains and disguising themselves as something else, we’re not nearly as attuned to them as would be helpful to us.

People will say “I’d do whatever it takes to get a job,” and then do maybe 5% of that, for example.

So, my first lesson: whenever someone says “I really want to do X,” remember that their true motivation was to say “I really want to do X,” not necessarily to actually do X.

Some level of motivation is also connected to what we want to believe about how the world works. People often seem to mean “I would do whatever it takes to do X, in a world where ‘whatever it takes’ is exactly the stuff I think should work.”

In other words, “whatever it takes” rarely seems to include “Change my worldview to better reflect the realities that I face.”

The broader lesson here for you, my friend, is that you actually can learn a lot about a person’s motivations by listening to what they say. But that doesn’t mean that they’re doing the same thing.