Give people a reason to step up their game. Learn their motives and trigger that spark under their arse.

Ever drank camomilled coffee?! Tastes amazing. Opposites combine perfectly.

Aaand some might have gone cause their handlers didn’t want to share what they hadn’t earned to keep. Sad story.

BUILD A LIFE TOWARDS THAT REASON AND WATCH IT CARRY YOU THROUGH IT ALL.

— SNW | SHS – HUMAN FIRST

Oh, humanity.

I have another rather interesting question for you.

WHY ARE WE TEACHING PEOPLE HOW TO FORCE THEMSELVES TO KEEP GOING, INSTEAD OF HELPING THEM FIND SOMETHING WORTH GOING FOR?

Discipline.

Discipline yourself to wake up early.

Discipline yourself to work.

Discipline yourself to eat properly.

Discipline yourself to exercise.

Discipline yourself to study.

Discipline yourself to remain consistent.

Discipline yourself to become successful.

Goodness gracious.

HOW MUCH OF YOUR EXISTENCE ARE YOU PLANNING TO SPEND FORCING YOURSELF TO LIVE IT?

And why does nobody seem particularly interested in investigating what happens when a human being finds a reason powerful enough that continuing becomes the natural response?

Because there’s something rather extraordinary about having a reason.

A real one.

Not a goal somebody else convinced you to pursue.

Not an ambition borrowed from a society that measures your existence through your performance.

Not a lifestyle you’ve seen somebody else enjoying and decided you ought to replicate.

I’m talking about something that reaches so far into your understanding of existence that abandoning it would mean abandoning something fundamental about yourself.

SOMETHING YOU DON’T HAVE TO REMIND YOURSELF TO CARE ABOUT.

Now that is an entirely different relationship with life.

And I know it because I’ve been living it.

People might look at the amount of investigating, writing, creating, questioning, building and challenging I do and imagine some extraordinary level of discipline must be involved.

Discipline?!

Darling, I’m investigating the very conditions under which humanity exists.

I’m attempting to build an organisation that can provide humanity with a different foundation for living.

I’m investigating the consequences of systems that have governed billions of lives before I was even born.

And every discovery opens another twelve doors.

YOU THINK I NEED AN ALARM CLOCK TO REMIND ME WHY THAT MATTERS?

I don’t have to convince myself to care.

I have a reason.

And that reason has been creating its own momentum.

Not because every day is easy.

Not because I’m never exhausted.

Not because I haven’t encountered circumstances that could have made me stop.

Quite the opposite.

It’s because the reason has survived the circumstances.

And every circumstance has given me something else to investigate, understand, integrate or build from.

THAT IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOUR REASON IS BIGGER THAN THE CONDITIONS YOU CURRENTLY LIVE UNDER.

Now imagine if we approached human development from that direction.

Instead of asking children what career they want, imagine helping them investigate what matters enough to them that they would willingly spend years understanding it.

Instead of teaching adults to endure forty years of employment through discipline, imagine investigating what kind of lives would make their contributions worth continuing.

Instead of asking people to become more productive, ask them what their productivity is actually producing.

Because there’s another rather uncomfortable question hiding beneath all this.

WHAT IF MUCH OF WHAT WE CALL A LACK OF DISCIPLINE IS ACTUALLY A LACK OF PERSONAL REASON TO PARTICIPATE?

Imagine waking up every morning to contribute to something you don’t believe in.

Something that consumes your energy, dictates your movements, determines your availability, and leaves you with just enough resources to return and do it all again.

And when you begin losing interest?

Society tells you to develop discipline.

How terribly convenient.

Rather than investigating whether the arrangement itself is worth sustaining, we’ve developed an entire culture around teaching human beings how to sustain it.

And then we congratulate the ones who endure it the longest.

ENDURANCE IS NOT AUTOMATICALLY EVIDENCE OF A LIFE WELL DIRECTED.

You can be extraordinarily disciplined in building something that is destroying you.

You can be consistent in the wrong direction.

You can spend decades mastering a routine that takes you further away from the very existence you wanted to experience.

And you can become so accomplished at performing your obligations that you forget to investigate whether they were ever yours to begin with.

That’s why I keep returning to the foundation.

WHAT ARE YOU BUILDING A LIFE FOR?

Not what are you earning money for.

Not what title would you like to have.

Not what position in society would make other people admire you.

What is the reason?

And once you’ve found it, don’t simply write it on a piece of paper, repeat it in front of a mirror and call it motivation.

BUILD YOUR LIFE TOWARDS IT.

Give it somewhere to exist.

Allow your decisions to contribute to it.

Let your education expand your understanding of it.

Let your relationships support its development without reducing other people to instruments of your ambition.

Let your daily experiences become information that can help you understand how to reach it.

Build your surroundings, your capabilities, your resources and your support systems around the life you’re actually attempting to create.

And understand that rest is part of that construction too.

You don’t stop needing sleep, nourishment, affection or recovery because you’ve found your purpose.

Your body is part of the existence you’re trying to carry forward.

DON’T DESTROY THE VERY HUMAN BEING REQUIRED TO COMPLETE THE WORK.

There will still be things you don’t particularly enjoy doing.

There will still be responsibilities, difficulties, interruptions and moments when your mind cannot give what it gave yesterday.

But here’s the difference.

When you understand why something matters, the unpleasant task is no longer an isolated punishment.

It becomes part of a much larger construction.

You’re not merely completing another obligation.

You’re laying another foundation.

And when you need to stop, you haven’t lost the reason.

It’s still there when you’re able to return.

That’s the beauty of it.

You don’t have to be continuously enthusiastic to remain committed.

You don’t have to feel powerful every morning to know where you’re going.

THE REASON DOESN’T HAVE TO DISAPPEAR EVERY TIME YOUR ENERGY DOES.

And perhaps that is where we’ve confused discipline with continuity.

Discipline teaches you to repeat an action.

Continuity gives those actions a direction across time.

One can help you maintain a routine.

The other helps you understand what the routine is supposed to preserve, develop or eventually make possible.

And when the reason is sufficiently integrated into your existence, you may discover that you no longer experience much of your persistence as discipline at all.

You’re simply living towards something you have already decided matters.

Now imagine what that could do for humanity.

Imagine an education system designed to help people discover their reasons before assigning them their roles.

Imagine an economy organised around enabling meaningful human contribution rather than making survival dependent upon performance.

Imagine communities where people have reasons to participate because they can actually see what their participation is building.

Imagine what happens when a child doesn’t have to wait until adulthood to find something worth waking up for.

And imagine what happens when an adult finally realises that their life does not have to remain an endless rehearsal for somebody else’s production.

THAT IS THE LIFE I’M INTERESTED IN BUILDING.

A life in which we don’t have to spend our existence constantly negotiating with ourselves to participate in it.

A life whose foundations make sense to the human beings living upon them.

A life where meaning isn’t merely a reward we hope to purchase after years of obedience.

And I’ll tell you something else.

When your reason extends beyond yourself, something rather fascinating happens.

The future starts becoming personal.

People you’ve never met begin to matter to the work you do today.

Consequences you may never personally experience become worth preventing.

And possibilities you might never live long enough to witness become worth building towards.

Not because you’ve been instructed to sacrifice yourself.

But because you’ve understood something about the continuity of life.

YOU ARE NOT THE END OF WHAT YOU CREATE.

So no, I’m not particularly interested in teaching humanity how to become better at forcing itself through existence.

I’m interested in helping humanity build an existence it has enough reason to participate in.

Find what matters.

Investigate why.

Make sure it is worth the consequences of pursuing it.

And then build a life towards it.

Not just a career.

Not just a routine.

Not just a five-year plan.

A LIFE.

One in which your reason has somewhere to grow, somewhere to rest, something to contribute to and something to leave behind.

And watch how much of what you once had to force yourself to do begins to find its natural place within that construction.

Because perhaps the greatest form of consistency isn’t the ability to force yourself to keep going.

IT IS BUILDING SOMETHING YOU HAVE EVERY REASON TO RETURN TO.

And when you find a reason that carries you beyond your own immediate interests?

Oh, humanity.

You might just discover how far a human being can go when their existence and their direction finally agree.

STOP MAKING DISCIPLINE THE PURPOSE.

GIVE YOUR LIFE A PURPOSE WORTH BUILDING TOWARDS.

AND LET YOUR REASON SHOW YOU WHAT CONTINUITY LOOKS LIKE.

— SNW | SHS – HUMAN FIRST

The Womb of The Unknown Need.