Why do You do what you do?

How much of your dreams and determination to succeed is linked to your vision of paradise or your reason for being?

I would suggest, because I strongly believe, that the answer to that question is also linked to how much respect and admiration you have for your own dreams and those of other people around you and how much respect and admiration that your own dreams and achievements receive from those around you.

One of the reasons that I do what I do, for example, is linked to the image of that beautiful Cyprus beach. I want to have time to sit and relax by the sea if I want to, I want to be earning just enough to enable me to do that whenever I want to. It's not necessarily about earning the most - just simply enough.

Think about what drives and motivates you almost without fail - is it receiving respect and admiration from others to a large extent? We are after all human and as such for the most part social creatures who thrive on interaction (postiive rather than negative interaction).

How motivated and driven are you by respect and admiration for yourself? Do you believe that it is important to acknowledge that you have achieved something of which you can be proud or do you feel that pride is a sin that you should not feel no matter how well you have achieved, so therefore you screw down those feelings of respect and admiration for yourself and refuse to acknowledge them for fear that they will spoil you somehow?

What is the difference in terms of output and earnings if you are driven by wanting respect and admiration from yourself as opposed to wanting respect and admiration from others?

Where do your dreams take you and why?

I believe that both of the above aspects of respect and admiration are important in our personal development. We need to be respectful of ourselves if others are to be respectful of us. Respect and admiration are both earned, emotional responses. They are dependant upon an action carried out to good effect in some way.

So to return to the concept of your vision of paradise for a moment, does it involve only being in a physical place of great beauty, or does it also revolve around being surrounded by the goodwill of others, sharing mutual respect and admiration for each others achievements?

Which of those images conjures up that feeling of warmth in the pit of your stomach and brings a smile to your lips regardless of where you are?

Are they interlinked? Is one dependant upon the other?

I don't have the answers for you because we're all individual and we all have slightly different drivers because of our emotional differences. I just hope that it's given you a little pause for thought, the way that it does me and I'm interested to know if you do have any views on that one way or the other?