I hear of some people being motivated by failure and the will to do better.  At least that is a common thread in motivational speaking.  I don’t know about those people.  I’m not sure I can relate.  I am motivated by success and the will to be even more successful.  Perhaps this is a trivial difference, but he effect that it had on me is this.  I would do various activities for work and enjoyment in the normal fashion, just like anyone else.  Then, on rare occasions, when I would start to get near the top at something, I became hyper motivated to pour it on and see how far I can go.  ‘I’ve done all this work to get where I am’ I would think, ‘let’s not waste it, see what you can do’.

This flavor of motivation can work.   I did reach reasonably near the top at a few activities in my life.  The downside is that it tends to make you into a specialist.  You tend to train your strengths instead of your weaknesses.  It is fun though and I have no regrets.

So far, I have felt fairly successful inventing and devising new, clever strategies to stay independent and reasonably (relative term) good at things.  A worry that has crossed my mind is that I am getting to a pretty low level of physical strength and I might be running out of tricks.  How will I be able to retain that feeling of successfulness that motivates me.  So far so good, much of the time.  My wife, friends and family are becoming a bigger and bigger part of my bag of tricks.  I know that sounds silly.