An army general knows that if the opposing army has the illusion of an escape route, then the soldiers in that army will not fight nearly as hard as if they believed that there was no way out. In a similar sense, an army that is fighting for a valuable cause is more likely to fight much harder, longer, and fiercer than an army that is simply obeying commands. Ultimately, in many cases, the question of who is the winner vs a loser in any given competition simply comes down to a matter of desire. The winning side is usually just the side that wanted to win more.

But what happens when the question of winning and losing is no longer relevant to your daily life? What happens if you have already won, so to speak, and accomplished everything you set out to accomplish? Sure, you have dreams, goals, and things you would like to accomplish. But there simply isn’t any pressing need to accomplish these things right now. You are, for the most part, fairly content with your life…to a certain degree. You go to work everyday, you file your taxes on time, and every now and then you check up on your 401k to make sure it is still doing ok. You have everything that you need, and most of the things that you want in your life. You are fairly happy, and certainly you should be happy with the way things are, but it still seems like there is a certain something that is missing there. There are things in your life that you would like to pursue, but you simply don’t. Why?

This is the question that I have been asking myself lately…Why not? Is it because I have become too accustomed to the daily routine? Because I am somehow addicted to the security of knowing that everything will be the same tomorrow? I’m not sure what the reason is. But it seems that after coming out and accomplishing everything I expected and wanted to accomplish, the motivating factor seems to dwindle significantly. And, quite frankly, this pisses me off. It pisses me off so much, in fact, that it has occurred to me that I should use this anger. I should channel this anger into getting rid of what the source of the anger is – a lack of significant progress. This is, I think, what the intended purpose of anger really is. It is there to give us the motivation and energy required to overcome the hurdles that get in our way.

Now, of course, I just need to find a way to harness this anger and unleash it gradually over an extended period of time, without getting burned out in the process. Hmm…