Steve Pavlina recently wrote an article on Achieving Peak Motivation through use of polarity.
In it, he writes:
Love polarization means you adopt the mindset of unconditional love for everything that exists. You center your life around serving the highest good of all. This commitment stems naturally from the decision to align yourself with the polarity of unconditional love. Think of this as an outward flow of energy. Your focus is on giving and on making a contribution.
Fear polarization means you become unconditionally self-centered, driven by greed, power, and lust. Your commitment is to make your life the best it can possibly be, purely for your own self-gratification. Think of this as an inward flow of energy. Your focus is on acquiring and absorbing all that life has to offer you.
While I don’t disagree with his two types of motivation, I disagree with his labels. I think that what he is really describing is a positive (what he calls love) and negative (what he calls fear) aspect of the love polarity. I think the real love and fear polarities go deeper than that, that they have a more fundamental difference than whether you love yourself most or all people equally.
When you orient yourself toward the love polarity, you look at things from the perspective of wanting to bring certain things INTO your life, whether it be love, money, or something else. You are seeking an inflow of energy, of life, bringing things into yourself. Your focus is on bringing the good things to you.
When you orient yourself toward the fear polarity, on the other hand, you are looking at things from the perspective of wanting to keep something OUT of your life. This can be loneliness, or poverty, or any number of other things. You are expending your energy outward, pushing things away (though you may be doing it by trying to bring certain other things into your life, your focus is on keeping the bad things away).
As Steve says when talking about polarities, love and fear can both be incredibly powerful motivators. If you understand them, and use the power of conscious choice to make one a cornerstone of who you are, it can provide sustained high motivation in a way that little or nothing else can. Choosing the one that conflicts with your natural tendencies (read subconsciously learned tendencies) is one of the most difficult decisions to make stick, but it can still be done, you just have to keep at it.
If you choose the love polarity, you can then choose within that polarity from the two aspects Steve presents. If you choose the fear polarity, though I’m not certain that anyone would ever make that choice consciously, then there are probably similar positive and negative aspects, though I have chosen love, so I can’t be certain. Either way, make the choice consciously… don’t leave it up to your subconscious, or you may not like the results.
