{"id":103095,"date":"2018-07-11T00:32:30","date_gmt":"2018-07-11T07:32:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/11\/whats-your-prime-mover-in-life\/"},"modified":"2018-07-11T00:32:30","modified_gmt":"2018-07-11T07:32:30","slug":"whats-your-prime-mover-in-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/11\/whats-your-prime-mover-in-life\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Your Prime Mover in Life?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s your prime mover in life? Or in Latin, your \u00e2\u20ac\u0153primum movens\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in life?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

Motivation means \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to move\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/h2>\n

<\/p>\n

A lot of us in life aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t \u00e2\u20ac\u0153motivated\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00e2\u20ac\u201d which means, we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have an impetus or reason to move, do, act, or create stuff!<\/p>\n

Also as a small note, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t confuse motivation with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153inspiration\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Inspiration means to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153breathe in\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00e2\u20ac\u201d to breathe in ideas and novel concepts from others. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Motivation\u00e2\u20ac\u009d means to actually have the power and reason to move, act, and do!<\/p>\n

\n

Primum movens<\/h2>\n

<\/p>\n

A lot of philosophers like Aristotle tried to philosophize on the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153first mover\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the universe<\/a>. Aristotle said in his book on metaphysics, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153…there must be an immortal, unchanging being, ultimately responsible for all wholeness and orderliness in the sensible world.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Anyways this stuff gets way too theoretical. My practical question is this:<\/p>\n

\n What is the thing within your soul which promote you to move, to act, and to create stuff?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

Sometimes in life we need an external \u00e2\u20ac\u0153motivator\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00e2\u20ac\u201d someone else<\/em> to motivate (push) us to take action and move in life. These motivators can be our parents, our partners, our teachers, motivational speakers, etc.<\/p>\n

I think there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing wrong with having external motivators. But the problem is if all<\/em> of the action in your life comes from an external person \u00e2\u20ac\u201d how can you motivate yourself by yourself, without them?<\/p>\n

In other words,<\/p>\n

\n How do you motivate yourself to do stuff and create stuff in life, without getting the electric prod from someone else?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

For myself, I always ask myself \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d many times, to better understand my personal motivators in life.<\/p>\n

Usually whenever I ask myself the question \u00e2\u20ac\u0153why?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d enough, it comes down to this:<\/p>\n

\n I do what I do in order to empower other humans (still alive today), and to also empower future generations of humans.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Personally I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe in a conscious afterlife. I do kinda have this concept that after I die, my biological matter will decompose into the earth, and give new life to a tree, and bear lots of (delicious) Avocados. But for the most part, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m only certain of my life while still alive and conscious on earth \u00e2\u20ac\u201d which means this:<\/p>\n

\n At best, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll live to be 100 years. At worst, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m gonna die today in my sleep, or in the next few hours in a texting-while-walking accident.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Therefore because the length of my life is uncertain \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the only logical thing to me is this:<\/p>\n

\n Best employ today to make the most meaningful impact on my fellow human beings.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

As of now, I think my ultimate purpose in life is human empowerment. Everything I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve done up until now has reflected this.<\/p>\n

For example, I started blogging at around age 16, doing motivational life-advice encouragement stuff (in a very tactless way). Then as I got older, I would encourage and motivate my friends and family. I then continued to try to empower others through studying sociology, later psychology, later teaching street photography (which is confidence building with a camera as your tool), and now philosophy-art and entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

So once again, my primum movens (first mover\/first motivator) in life is to empower others.<\/p>\n

I have no idea what it is for you. You must discover the answer for yourself.<\/p>\n

Some questions to meditate on by yourself. Write answers to these questions on a piece of paper, on your phone, or just meditate on them:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What kind of work or actions in my life gives me the most meaning, purpose, and feeling of elation?<\/li>\n
  2. What kind of artwork gives me the most joy? How can I figure out ways to have more time, energy, and attention to continue to make more artwork which brings me joy? And how can I most effectively share this artwork with others?<\/li>\n
  3. What is making me miserable in life? How can I subtract more bullshit from my life, or subtract more negative people from my life? Nassim Taleb encourages us to find happiness \u00e2\u20ac\u0153via negativa\u00e2\u20ac\u009d style (subtract what makes you unhappy, instead of adding what makes you \u00e2\u20ac\u0153happy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    \n

    <\/p>\n

    A basic answer you can also answer:<\/p>\n

    \n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why do you make photos?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Share your answer in ERIC KIM FORUM<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    BE BRAZEN,
    \nERIC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s your prime mover in life? Or in Latin, your \u00e2\u20ac\u0153primum movens\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in life?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":101025,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-posts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/img_0843.jpg?fit=1545%2C1024&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}