When Moral Support Backfires

In terms of acquiring motivation from all possible sources internal and external, in all your pursuits that you are passionate about, there are two things that you need to remember:

The bad news: You’re on your own.

There may be a lot of support groups, online and in physical groups like your club or your own family. The problem with this is that these shared fiery emotions once left untended will inevitably turn a blazing inferno to a dying ember.

You have to remember that other people have problems of their own to tend to, and that includes your closest friends and your very own family. The last thing that they have to worry about is for your motivation to stay intact. A lot of times you are on your own, even if you are within your support group. Your group can’t and won’t do EVERYTHING for you because there’s none other that will do the dirty work that needs to be done but you.

The good news: You’re on your own.

The bad news above given the right perspective really is good news in disguise. Because you are on your own, there is just you and you are enough. Of course you will be needing to equip yourself with all the tools you need to get better to get wherever you want to go.

The point is, upon realizing this, you already overpowered the thought that you need your own cheering squad for you to persevere especially when the going gets tough.

Without them, you still won’t give up, right? And will you stop doing the things you do just because your cheering squad ceased shouting well wishes for you?

Of course you wont. You are too stubborn, too naïve, and too busy to give a damn about anything that can hinder you from achieving whatever you want to achieve, which includes the finite and scarce resource of “support fuel” which you mistaken for an indispensable lifeline.

“There’s just you.”

If you’ve ever watched the first Kung Fu Panda movie, remember how Tai Lung (Shifu’s protégé) coveted the mythic scroll that will unleash great power to those who take possession of it. And it’s only in the end that it was revealed that there are no secret ingredients whatsoever. The scroll didn’t contain a genie or any lucky charm. It’s in the realization that there’s just you, and no one and nothing else.

This is not to discount the impact of motivation that one receives, in whatever form they may be and in whatever sources they might come from. I myself had been a recipient of receiving hope. Because hope is included in the gift called motivation.

But what can possibly cripple you is when you take that motivation as an “end all and be all” of everything, treating it as oxygen such that the absence of which spells the end of you.

There will come a time that you will need to be your own cheering squad, with no less than yourself leading that crowd.

You are not going to give up. Not even when people abandon you or when they become indifferent. Quitting is never an option because that’s not you, because you are more than that.

There’s only you and your dream. You don’t achieve it because somebody else is cheering for you. You achieve it because step by painful step, you are reaching for it until you finally grab it by the balls.