Originally Posted by
niff
all of these are very hard to identify with. my answer needs to be tweaked a bit -- it's easy for me to see why people would be motivated and driven towards a particular goal. what i felt would be the perfect answer to this question, for me, is "how can some people be so good at getting things done in the real world?" i've sometimes taken the mindset that making any type of real change or doing things with external resources is impossible and a waste of time.
one example that sticks out in my mind somewhat is a class project from 7th grade or so in which we were directed to interview somebody and construct an oral history about some socially relevant topic. most people interviewed family relatives or relatively uninteresting choices. some people ended up interviewing people that were somewhat more notable; i basically asked myself, "how did those people manage to get interviews with them? how would they do that?"
obviously, the answer is mostly in one of initiative; the process of actually picking up the phone and asking some notable person for an interview is not a difficult one. but that type of life initiative was something i never brought myself to understand.