Author Confessions: Understanding Motives
Let me start by describing what a motive is. These are deep forces within us that result in an individual to behave in certain ways. Why do they do that? That is a motive question. Motives can be physical, psychological, emotional, social, and even spiritual. It is the reason why a person does something. They can be conscious or unconscious, but I suspect sometimes the unconscious ones might be the more powerful force.
How well do you know anyone? Sometimes I am not sure I fully understand myself or my motives. Someone tried to put me down a while back for, in their minds, a bad decision I made decades ago. While I agree now that it was not a wise decision, it is over and done with. I didn’t understand myself well enough then to understand the forces that pulled me into that choice. Some of those were deep emotional needs to be wanted and loved, I thought would be satisfied. My motive? Seeking love and security.
Big fail. Decades later I wish I could help myself understand that I deserved better. The lies I’d been told by well-meaning individuals that no one would want or love me amplified those needs.
When someone commits a crime, one of the key aspects to solving the crime is the motive. A crime of passion? Larceny? Insanity? Justice?
When an author is coming up with characters for a book, we are often trying to figure out the motive behind the character’s actions. Maybe the character isn’t even aware of those forces whirling inside them.
Let’s consider briefly what might motivate any one of us, or a character in a book.
Biological Motives. These would include: hunger, thirst, sleep, avoiding pain, regulating temperature, sex drive, and maternal or paternal instincts.
Social Motives. These could include: achievement, power, connection, curiosity, aggression or desire to aquire things.
Personal. Habits, goals in life, aspirations, attributes and interests.
As I discuss motives and goals but when I worked in the field of mental health I discovered that when I was working with a client from an South Asian country, on goal setting, I ran into a problem. Their language had no word that equated with goal, motive, or purpose! That doesn’t mean it didn’t exist but it was difficult to motivate someone to grow and become independent when there wasn’t even a term in his native language for that.
Some people are definitely more driven to pursue goals than others, but what is really motivating someone can be difficult to discern simply based on an outward action.
Motives are often connected to needs, and sometimes more importantly, unmet needs. We all have needs that we need to meet. The biological motives for instance all corrolate with a need that is unmet when it becomes a motive. When I’m outside in the hot sun weeding my garden and get thirsty, I am motivated to get up and get something to drink. Need leads to motive.
We are so complex aren’t we? Of course motives can go beyond need but I believe at their core they can be connected to a needs as mentioned in last week’s post. Add to that all those dangerous emotions and it’s amazing the human race is still around. I’m joking of course, but given the complexity and depth of each human being with all their needs, wants, motives, emotions, preferences, histories, cultures, languages, giftedness, physical capablities, and personalities… it’s kind of silly when we focus on something like skin color. That should be the least of our concerns when we are seeking to have relationships.
Understanding motives, needs, and emotions, needs to start with our individual selves. The good, the bad, and the ugly parts of who we are. That needs to be addressed long before we start trying to figure out someone else. Counselors don’t ascribe emotions or motivations to people, they help them unearth them, to understand what deficit perhaps is behind the behavior which can lead to an unmet need that is motivating them. Did your head spin with that? I think mine did.
I started writing this post because I, like many people, have been accused of false motives. Even people close to me, have believed the lies instead of seeking to understand my choices and decisions. As a follower of Jesus, I try to make decisions based on what I believe God is leading me to do, even when it runs contrary to what I might normally consider rational and sane. Yet God has always been there. When someone ascribes false motives to me it is as if there is an excuse for them to break the relationship for their own motives which I don’t know or understand or can’t even begin to guess. It flies in the face of our need for family and connection when it hits close to home.
The reality is, not all needs, met or unmet, are pure. One can be confident but one can also be arrogant. One can want property, but one can be greedy as well. And sometimes people are too fragile to accept the reality that intimacy and relationships come with challenges, perhaps accountability, and confronting sin, which might shine a light on unmet needs and bad motives. We don’t always seek to meet our needs in good ways and sometimes, if we are too self-focused, we can wound others in the process.
All of this comes in to play when writing a character in a story as well. Sometimes even our characters don’t always understand what drives them but the author brings some of that out in subtle ways.
Hopefully looking at the needs and motivations, will give you some tools to use as you try to understand why you do some of the things you do. Family patterns might play a role as well. Maybe that will be for another post but it is an entire branch of psychology and I doubt I could do it justice. For the moment, however, it is good at times to evaluate what is 
driving us to do the things we do. It might be a combination of things but it’s worth it to seek God and undestand that so even our unmet needs and our motivations can be submitted to Him, and growth can occur in new ways.
Maybe too, try to avoid assuming the motivations of others unless they let you in to help them understand them. I’ve said it before, people are messy. Understanding motives can help, but start with yourself.
Physiological Needs
Summary 
The lie is there isn’t enough time. The truth is, perhaps I’m not focusing on what God really wants me to do. If I believed the lie I would have worked instead of being there for my friends. Maybe God understands that our timeline is not possible and if things are delayed, it might be because He, in His perfect wisdom, understands our limitations.
I’m going to take a few breaths, finish up this project and a few other things that slipped through the cracks and then get back to the grind, or not, if I run out of time for today. I’m good with that because God knows my heart and the purposes He calls me to. Sometimes I get too caught up in the small stuff to see the bigger picture and to remind myself that God is faithful and will see me through. If I need to cry like my friend, with all the emotions that fight to be felt, that’s going to be fine as well, and maybe, if I’m brave enough to ask, a friend will sit and listen to me too.
We are so unique in so many ways that it really is a miracle when people can get a long at all. We are emotional people as well and the way we are wired is not identical to anyone else even if you can fit in a similar Meyers-Briggs catagory. I have three close friends and we all share the same Meyer’s Briggs type – but we are still so very different from each other.
Just write. 
Memorial Day is to remember those veterans who have died, whether during service or after. I found this short poem years ago and put it as my Facebook header every year at this time because Joseph Rodman Drake wrote it so beautifuly. “And they who for their country died shall fill and honored grave, for glory lights the soldier’s tomb and beauty weeps the brave.”
Grandpa lived to come home, have another child and raise his family and lived to see grandchildren. So many others never got that opportunity. My grandmother never spoke about the war to her children and didn’t save the letters she exchanged with her husband during that time. It was too painful. My father said that as a child the Army stuff was stashed in a corner of the garage. After his death, however, with military honors, the flag was in a box and kept as a momento by her until she too passed away.
My publisher has been promoting my novel, 
Part of psychology helps people to look at negative events differently. Sometimes as we grow older we recognize that while an event happened and we reacted to it a certain way, as we gain more information that can change our perspective. Understanding more of what drove another person to say or do things can help us not feel as victimized, which in many ways can decrease a trauma response when the past is brought into fresh light and examined.
We too easily fall into a victim mentality and I believe this has escalated in our current cultural climate. Too many have become spoiled, lazy, and entitled. As well as angry and vindictive. This is nothing new. The Israelites did that in the desert, defying and doubting God at every turn and then suffering the consequences of that.
Motherhood is a difficult job and whether a mom has a job other than the full time mothering or not, it is a difficult, exhausting job. Any mom who acts like it is all sunshine and roses is lying. Most moms struggle to do well and many fear they are failing. There are so many opposing positions that make it difficult to make choices for fear of being maligned for those choices. Add marital challenges, finanical struggles, behavioral issues, a variety of personalities with some clashing (especially if the child is a lot like you!), discpline challenges, possible health issues (mental, emotional, or physical), and then the spiritual challenges if you are trying to raise your child in the Christian faith. There is not any one perfect way to handle any of these. Add the residual grief from children lost due to miscarriage, stillbirth, SIDS, or any other reason that might result in a child dying, there can be deep sorrow that never leaves.
Some would idolize Jesus’s mom, Mary, but she was as human and fallible as any of us. She too, was human, imperfect, and I’m sure she failed time and again in trying to raise the Son of God to adulthood. She was chosen for a task. God chooses every mom to be a mother to the children He decides to place in their lives, for however long He chooses. They are ultimately His and we may only have them for a short time.
We can hope for many things. Rescue, a new home, a long-awaited child, healing from an illness. Nothing is too big or small for God to be concerned with. When we don’t understand His timing, the hope seems so far off, and we can lose hope. Not necessarily to the point of hopelessness, but we can doubt it. Hebrews 11:1 states: “Now faith is the certainty of things hoped for, a proof of things not seen.” Hope is closely tied into our faith in Jesus. We can all struggle with doubt at different points in our lives. Proverbs 12:12 describes it this way: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”
The author of Hebrews wrote: “This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and reliable.” (Heb 6: 19a) I love that image of an anchor, holding us fast to Jesus and all His promises. When we place our ultimate hope in HIM, we can experience great freedom and joy. The apostle Paul wrote: “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.” (Eph 1:18) What a prayer to pray for yourself and others.
I digress but I think it’s important. Sin took everything wonderful and corrupted it. Everything is impacted and as generations go on, we see increases in genetic disorders, and chronic illnesses that were not as prevalent in previous generations. Now some of that might be due to environmental factors, and the food we consume, true, but still, it just shows that things move to disorganization and diease. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that everything devolves. Now some state thht this isn’t true because the universe is not a closed system (required by that scientific law), however, there has never been any new information added to our DNA added through natural processes, and our genetic code is devolving not evolving, hence, more physical disabilties. This occurs throughout creation, not just in human beings.
Moderation is not something Americans do well at. We are more of a culture of excess.
All of those start with the heart. Our sin is ultimately an internal issue for each of us. What we focus on impacts that greatly. Luke 12:34: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”