My friend asked me what was the topic of my next article and when i responded “the God Complex” she replied “c’ mon…it doesn’t have to be about you all the time!!”
According to Wikipedia: “A god complex is an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility. A person with a god complex may refuse to admit the possibility of their error or failure, even in the face of complex or intractable problems or difficult or impossible tasks, or may regard their personal opinions as unquestionably correct. The individual may disregard the rules of society and require special consideration or privileges. ”
And this is just the harsh truth. Obviously, the God Complex can vary in form, development and behavior and, even more obviously it is denied by the carrier. Each of us felt once or twice in our lives, immortal or having said the absolute truth and never gave it a second thought if that was a manifestation of this particular “disease”…. or is it internal motivation?!… for behaving a certain way or saying a certain thing.
There are things that make us feel powerful, make us follow through, make us never look back, make us not question our decisions or the things we said. In certain cases the motivation behind those actions is a manifestation of this God Complex, which can either be a constant part of our personality or can manifest itself occasionally. You could ask “how come?” or even “why?”, but there are no absolute truths or answer options to these questions. These manifestations are part of who we are and how we brought ourselves up as humans. Yes, we brought ourselves up with guidance from our parents, outside influences and personal incentives and appreciation of events….but that is a thing we will talk about some other time.
Motivation is the topic on our agenda, and internal motivation to be more specific. The choosing of the first kind of internal motivation was not random as it is a very powerful and often shoved under the rug. Narcissism, egocentricity, selfishness, pride are powerful incentives for action and speech. All of these are manifestations of the God Complex and the inner belief that somehow we are or are entitled to be superior. We have more strength, more knowledge, more experience and therefore we have the obligation to act stronger, we have the obligation to lead, to express and even enforce our opinion, our way of doing things, to stand out from the crowd, to be a small god for a minute, a week…however long that ambrosia lasts.
That is how internal motivation works…for some…or sometimes. There are times when we can control ourselves or control the outputs of our behavior, because we can identify the type of the internal motivation, but there are times when we are real assholes and hurt people or even situations or things because the internal motivation was stronger than the outside markers and environment.
And this is just the negative interpretation of this “unshakable belief” that we are or at least can act like Gods sometimes.
To be continued…
Great piece Anamaria. This is the challenge for us all, to be able to motivate ourselves without attachment to our successes or become egotistical in our motivation. Many of the motivation gurus work with their audiences at the level of self image, creating a vision of a ‘super you’. This is very ego-based indeed. Without marketing too much here, In my upcoming book ‘The Art of Selfless Esteem’ I write about creating a balance between motivation and service to humanity. Obviously we need to look after ourselves also, but if we are just fixated on getting more external validation and reaching greater emotional highs, that narcissistic bubble is bound to burst some day. Empowering empathetic action is a better use of motivation, in my opinion anyway.
Thank you for the reminder to be humble Anamaria :). Bless you.
Thank you Paddy for the feedback.
It is true sometimes we all need a shake down…but it is very hard to understand the hows and whys when this behaviour is normal….and even work with it and try to tone it down, if necessary.
The next article will continue this topic, but will have quite a twist to it 😉