Motivation

Cultivate Enterprise to Take Initiative and Seize Opportunity

We can put ourselves in situations or environments where we are more likely to encounter opportunity. We can teach ourselves to better recognize and evaluate opportunity. If we want to seize and exploit an opportunity, however, we must take initiative. We must act.

A bias toward action, the willingness to do something different or difficult, the eagerness to embrace a bold undertaking – these are the hallmarks of the enterprising person.

Some people are more naturally enterprising than others, to be sure. They are inherently driven, ambitious, self-starting go-getters. Others need to look a little harder to find their motivation.

No matter. Regardless of where we fall on the action orientation continuum, we can cultivate the quality of enterprise. We can develop specific tendencies that will move us to act when action is needed.

Managing the Motivation Gap between Aspirations and Expectations

We all have aspirations. We may aim high, low, or somewhere in between, but we all have some hope of achieving something. Our desires may not always be well formed or clearly stated goals, but we have them.

We also have expectations regarding our ability to achieve our desires. Expectations, like aspirations, range from low to high.

Advice about how high we should set our expectations varies, too.

“High expectations,” said Walmart founder Sam Walton, “are the key to everything.”

In Luck We Trust: Believe to Receive

Luck has fascinated philosophers for millennia.

Solon believed that all human success was just good luck, while Democritus consistently downplayed the influence of luck on people’s lives. Aristotle devoted a great deal of thought to luck, and considered the topic at length in his texts on ethics and physics.

People still debate the existence of luck, its nature, and the extent of its influence on the outcome of human affairs.

Whether we believe in the existence of luck largely depends on how we view the concept of luck.

Is luck an external force or a personal attribute? Is it stable or unpredictable? Is it nothing more than a way for us to frame happenstance in terms of whether the result was favorable or unfavorable?

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