You’d be surprised how much blood can come from one person

In many cartoons, literature, movies, video games and fantasy role playing, there’s something called post mortem power absorption.

It’s when a character steals the life force of others by killing them. Once a victim is dead, their powers are instantly absorbed into the other person’s body as their own. Providing the recipient with healing, new skills and an extended life.

Now, as far as we know, this process is not scientifically feasible in real life. The moral, ethical and legal implications alone would be a public relations nightmare.

Although frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me if the government had already built one of these top secret life force harvesting programs for the military. Gamifying murder could result in a huge savings for our national defense budget.

But all video games and conspiracy theories aside, motivation is still an inside job. It’s not something that happens to us, but in us. Others may be able to inspire us to motivate ourselves, but we’re the ones who ultimately press that button.

Motivation is an intrinsic force.

And in many cases, we can’t even localize our own power until after the fact.

My old coworker was telling me how she experienced an unprecedented surge of motivation with a few projects. Her creative output was on a hot streak. New projects were getting finished left and right, and she wasn’t feeling overwhelmed, manic or burnt out by the process.

And her natural urge was to question that surge.

Where did all this new energy come from? Why am I still working on this project so late? Is there something wrong with me?

Not at all, I reminded her. Unless you killed a motivated person, siphoned their life force into your body, and tossed their corpse into the wood chipper, you’ve done nothing wrong.

This is a good thing. Energy is the organizing principle that gives you the greatest momentum. Some people spend their whole year trying to manufacture moments like these.

And so, if you’re suddenly blessed with a burst of high energy, and it’s lasting days, weeks or months longer than you’re used to, then by god, get the hell out of the way. Take that momentum wherever you can get it and ride it into the sunset. As long as you’re still sleeping and feeling balanced and not neglecting other areas of your life, it’s okay to let that life force have its way with you.

Remember, timing isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. The great discipline is simply knowing what season you’re in.

Maybe when it’s over and things finally, settle down, you can look back and reverse engineer the factors that came into play to allowed such a motivational anomaly.

Or maybe not. It’s okay if motivational mystery too.

What matters is noticing, naming and enjoying it when it happens. Thanking the surge for its generosity and hoping for more of its abundance in the future.

It’s might not be as exciting as murdering someone and absorbing their life force, but it’s certainly more legal and far less messy.

You’d be surprised how much blood can come from one person.

Are you questioning your surge of motivation, or following it to see where it leads?