More on Unhappiness as a Motivator
In this excerpt from the 1973 Monday Night Study Groups, Bruce Di Marsico discusses more on unhappiness as a motivator.
If we are unhappy, we believe that unhappiness is necessary to motivate ourselves towards what we want more than other things we also want. We want our wanting to be clear; we make it clearer by increasing fear. But unhappiness gives us extra motivation that we don’t need, since we are already wanting more, what we want more!
Since we can’t know the future, we also use unhappiness to try to guarantee we make the right decision for our future. This is also unnecessary. We already know everything about the future that we know. If we want to gather more information before making a decision, we already know everything we know that would help us make the decision to gather more information before deciding.
Having reasons to be unhappy reassures us that we want better for ourselves, and so, ultimately, unhappiness is a motivator for achieving happiness. But it is unnecessary, since happiness is exactly what we want the most!
Option Method – More on Unhappiness as a Motivator