What drives us?

Yesterday evening while going back to my Flat, Thought started cluttering my mind about “what drives us towards anything that we do”. What made me think this was a statement I heard while sitting in the bus. Someone said – “I am doing -------- to show ------- that I can do this.” While such statements are a very common thing to hear, what initiated my train of thoughts was the fact that what prompts us to channelize our energy to do such things which we do, not because we really like it, but we do ,just to show someone that we can do this. In a short run, we may score some brownie points by proving our omnidirectional abilities; it’s very difficult to justify the act in a long run. Many a times, I witnessed such acts taking a huge toll when some crucial decisions are made based upon this “I want to prove” logic. This is generally a common cause of frustration among students. When they take up a subject influenced by such logic, they generally end up being in an environment where they never wanted to be. While the person may look like a winner in the public eye, somewhere he misses his own goal and may be start feeling distracted from what he ended up doing.On the other hand, it may also happen that while doing something, started with such a logic , a person may end up finding something which he likes more than what he is doing presently. However considering the fact that a person is more likely to start with something that interests him, changing the course of action most probably results in frustration and “I don’t feel connected to it” feeling.I think the solution lies in the way we perceive the challenge. World will keep throwing challenges (Just like a badly written program keeps throwing exceptions). Its our task to prioritize and decide which targets are worth chasing.