Motivation and Mediocrity II

The whole question of motivation lingered in my mind yesterday after I wrote my post and continued about my day.  The issues I wrote about were the same ones I confronted at work - bottom line, why is it that so few are motivated to be self-initiating and will only respond to outside influences?

The question came up last night with Bogha Frois in phone call.  Her lament mirrored my own earlier one:  why is that some people are simply content to put in the minimum of effort - except when pushed by others?  Why aren't more people self-motivated - and self motivated to do well?

Motivation, in case you were wondering, is either "The act, process, or condition of being motivated" or "a motivating force, stimulus, or influence". (Thank you Merriam-Webster.) 

Okay, that's a definition I can start with.  A motivating force, stimulus, or influence.  Interestingly, it doesn't say whether that force is internal or external, just that it is.

So now we've got something to work with:  A force/stimulus/influence, internal or external, which motivates.

Motivates?  Back to Merriam-Webster:  "To provide with a motive; impel".  Fine, then - Motive?:  "Something that causes someone to act."

So motivation is really nothing more than something that causes someone to act.  It's a neutral thing.  It can come internally or externally.  But motive as a cause has an effect - it causes an action.

The question then becomes "Why don't more people seem to have something which causes them to act from the inside, rather than having to be externally caused to act from the outside?"  There's the nut that, if someone could crack, could lead to one of the greatest explosions of creativity and industry in the history of the world.

Back to the practical.  What causes you to act?  What causes me to act?  Can it be discovered in others and fanned into flame?  Or is it something which we all must discover on our own?  Are motivations, like our secret selves, something only we and we alone can truly find - and change?