The Buddhist Antidote to an Unmotivated Life:
The 5 Levels of Motivation
The Buddhist Antidote to an Unmotivated Life: The 5 Levels of Motivation
Most of us start off in life with high aspirations.
Build a successful career. Start a family. Accomplish something great. See the world.
But on the way, the vast majority of us get distracted, have doubts, forget, get distracted again, find something new, have a setback, have more doubts, get distracted…
Before we know it, our whole life can have passed us by and all we’ve done is played video games, explored Reddit, and eaten burritos.
The modern world is full of things that can hijack our aspirations.
Instead of becoming a dad or working for world peace, our life’s mission can in an instant switch to exposing people on Twitter and watching every episode of Stranger Things.
But the problem isn’t the internet age.
The problem is the timeless question of motivation.
Being born human, we will always want to be happy and feel good.
Happiness and good feelings are an important part of life.
However, if we let them become our highest motivations, then even the strongest of aspirations may be forever put off for cake and Netflix.
Everyone from the ancient Greeks to the positive psychologists recognized that we need to go beyond being motivated by good feelings and happiness if we want to get anywhere and make something of our lives.
The Tibetan Buddhists understand this more than anyone. Sitting still without being able to move or get distracted has allowed them to see deeply into how human motivation works.
They found that if we’re to live lives of purpose and not just pleasure, we need to be motivated by not happiness or feelings, but meaning.
To help make this shift, they mapped out five main levels of motivation (traditionally grouped into three), starting from our most basic desires and personal happiness and moving toward ever deeper sources of meaning, value, and inspiration.
1. Instant Gratification
Our world runs on instant gratification.
The bottomless social feed. Wall-less online stores. Infinite streaming on demand.
The point of such things isn’t to feel fulfilled or become our best selves.
The point is to scratch an itch.
Instant gratification is when our only concern is how to satisfy our most basic needs and cravings and desires right now.
This is motivation at its most basic.
And the worst time to go food shopping.
We can only see what’s right in front of us. There’s little freedom of choice.
We just want to feel better and avoid feeling hurt or bad about ourselves for a moment.
The problem is it is possible to do this now with just a click.
Today there’s barely a breath between impulsive, fleeting urges for pleasure and building harmful habitual patterns that destroy lives.
The modern world prioritizes pleasure and short-term thinking. Attention is big bucks and the quickest and easiest way to grab and keep it is to appeal to our most basic needs, desires, and cravings.
In social life, this type of instant gratification shows up when we see others as valuable only if they help satisfy our needs.
In professional life, instant gratification is when we chase money, status, and anything else that just helps scratch our itches quicker.
At this level of motivation, the scope of our life is most limited.
There’s no worry about consequences. No care for tomorrow.
Happiness is chased in the immediate moment.
2. Long-Term Happiness
Brushing your teeth. Saving money. Exercising. Studying.
These are all things we do that benefit our long-term happiness.
They may not feel great in the moment, but they’re good for our future selves.
It takes perspective to delay gratification instead of just chasing pleasure or relief in the moment.
There’s an understanding that we don’t just live for today but we exist across time and space.
We also recognize that the actions we engage in now create what we become later – both the destructive and the constructive types.
This doesn’t mean the actions and plans are always well thought through.
We may still be driven by the need to scratch an itch but just more determined and ambitious about how to scratch it.
The self-improvement and wellness industry feeds on this level of motivation.
Do this today and you will get this tomorrow.
Vulnerable feelings and desires are exploited by wild claims and impossible standards, leading to the never-ending pursuit for the best version of You.
Work culture also hangs out mostly at this level – working hard and being miserable today in exchange for money and happiness tomorrow.
Being motivated by happiness over a lifetime is a step up from instant gratification and essential in living a good life.
But the perpetual search for happiness is a surefire way to stay unhappy and avoid pursuing bigger things.
3. Helping The World & Others For Ourselves
Most people have a desire to help the world and others.
But not everyone does so out of the pure intention of doing good and helping other beings in need.
We often help out simply to scratch our own itch.
Whether it’s gaining approval or status, relieving loneliness and existential distress, or feeling righteous and superior, helping feels good.
This level of motivation is also known as Idiot Compassion.
Idiot compassion is when we think we’re helping others, and also ourselves, but really, we’re just scratching itches and avoiding dealing with bigger things.
We do what appears to be the nicest or kindest thing, not speaking our mind, busying ourselves with good deeds, and pretending we’re happy, instead of doing what needs to be done and what’s the most beneficial for everyone.
Finding happiness and avoiding pain is still top priority.
That being said, our vision of why we do things and who we are is no longer limited to us but is much vaster and intermingled with the lives and desires of others.
Time and space have expanded beyond ourselves.
We’re not lone seekers of happiness, but a part of a connected culture of confusion in which every single person is seeking the same thing.
This can take some pressure off. Our motivation to be happy and feel good is shared among others.
However, sticking at this level can be dangerous.
Groups of people and even generations can be stuck trying to relieve their pain under the guise of helping others or saving the world. We may, for instance, work tirelessly to reduce suffering in the world out of an inability to deal with and be with our own pain.
4. The Shift From Happiness to Meaning
No matter how much beauty and success and material things you have, you’re still going to get sick, old, die and in the meantime be caught in confusion, attachment, and jealousy.
This is why good feelings and happiness can only ever be limited motivators.
To be motivated by happiness is to push away the very natural and often unavoidable feeling of unhappiness.
This level of motivation involves turning directly towards the root of the issue.
In Tibetan Buddhism, this is known as Taking Refuge.
Taking Refuge is when we see beyond the endless improvement and chasing desires and look at why we need improving and why we desire in the first place.
Focus shifts from trying to escape the difficulties and unpleasant parts of life.
Difficulties aren’t personal faults and shortcomings to beat ourselves up about and fix – The Fallacy of Uniqueness as Dan Harris calls it – but a universal part of being human.
We’re no longer seeking that golden pill that offers endless bliss and happiness and being pushed and pulled around by temporary motivations like instant gratification, pleasure, and happiness.
We’re instead motivated by the deeper, more expansive question of why we do what we do.
Why we do anything at all.
Our motivation shifts from being about achieving happiness for ourselves to being about finding our place in the world, connecting with others, living with purpose, knowing ourselves more, making change, and choosing the challenge over comfort.
The why takes us beyond living a life of momentary pleasures to living a life of a long-lasting meaning and purpose.
5. The Highest Source of Motivation
When we get curious about our motivations for doing things and being alive, we notice we’re a part of an interdependent network of billions of other living beings.
A quick look around and we also see we’re inseparable from and incredibly dependent on them.
We may also notice they’ve been kind to us. That they deserve happiness as much as we do. And that placing personal happiness above all else is a recipe for using others, living in fear, and endlessly trying to scratch itches.
Living for others and the world is the highest level of motivation.
Our problem isn’t distraction and struggling to get motivated, our problem is the narrow view of who we are and what’s possible in this world.
When we see ourselves as an inseparable part of everything, our sense of meaning is at its highest. Everything we do matters, motivation is inexhaustible, and taking action is endlessly rewarding.
This doesn’t mean you have to become Mother Teresa to live a meaningful life.
You could spend your days making neckties or selling pies or driving buses or working in insurance.
The key is why.
Is it out of small, narrow motivations like pleasure, happiness, creating your legacy, etc., or is out of more expansive motivations that go beyond your feelings in the moment and your life and connect you with something bigger.
The more sense of meaning you find – the more you feel connected to yourself, others, and the world around you – then the more you’ll find yourself letting go of worthless pleasures and charging toward your highest aspirations.
Closing Thoughts
The point of the five levels of motivation isn’t to try get to the top and become a Buddha who never gives in to impulses or desires.
The point is to find a balance between all of the five levels and become more aware of what’s driving you.
By being more aware of what’s driving you, you give yourself a choice between being consumed by momentary urges and desires for happiness and building a life around what’s truly important to you.
Once you know what motivates you in this life, then if, at times, you still only want to eat cake and watch Netflix, well so be it.