Reply To: Who Are "You"

sure. it’s a bit of a long story…

so i’ve been a member of this forum (not a jewish one) and their goal is basically to change their world positively. lately however they have been in decline and they were looking for some kind of motivation to get them going again. so i posted something along the lines of “so what motivates you?” the idea being that i wanted to find out what motivated people in general in hopes that if i understand their more selfish motives i can use it to get them to do something selfless by appealing to their selfish side.

basically there are two reasons a person does something. because they feel a true selfless desire to help someone else, or because they get some other sort of benefit out of it. the for the first group the benefit is purely incidental, a byproduct i you will of their desire to help another. those people need no more motivation.

for the second group however, the benefit is absolutely essential. without it they will not do good for another, or they will, but halfheartedly and not very often. those people need motivation. so i figured id find out what benefit it was that was essential to them and find a way of manipulating that to get them to do something “selfless”

well, a friend of mine saw that thread and told me that it seemed a bit heartless, and to be honest it was. this friend told me to change it. so i took a step back, and analyzed it again, this time allowing for the human element. i basically came to the conclusion that what was needed wasn’t using their selfish motives to get them to do stuff, rather that it would have to come from within. but how to get a bunch of high school and college students to give of their time and resources?

passion is the answer. that age group is generally filled with a more naive idealistic view of the world; they believe anything can be changed. thus…they are easily made passionate about many different issues. they only need a little prompting to ignite this passion. so i asked myself, from both sides of the equation, why do i give a dollar to the meshulach. on the one hand id rather give to a meshulach that ill see the next day because i enjoy the recognition, but that motive is only secondary. when it comes to acts that are essentially selfless the selfish motivation is always going to be secondary because if it was primary you wouldnt be giving that dollar.

therefore the selfless aspect must be the primary drive behind the act of giving. so what is the incidental benefit of giving to another? well, it’s the look on their face. its the vibe they give you when you give them that dollar. its priceless. if that is the primary motivator when it comes to giving, what better tool to use when motivating people to give of their time and resources than a story illustrating that point?

when you give to someone else there is an intrinsic benefit to it, but unlike the motivator of recognition or whatever, the motivation and the benefit are one and the same. you give because you want to help and incidentally you get a benefit. but even if you do it for the benefit, it’s still one and the same because part of the benefit itself is the act of helping another.

long story short…this short story worked. more than any other effort.