Breaking Free from Distorted Motivation
Transforming the Shadows of Psychological Transference into Genuine Power
I explored the “six transferences in human motivation” in an article titled The True Engine Behind Motivation. You can refer to it by following this link or see recap below. I wanted to go deeper into the nature of transference and its undesirable impact on our lives.
Recap from Previous Article:
If you’ve read the article: The True Engine Behind Motivation, you can skip to the heading below: What is Transference?
You could easily postulate that life is greatly influenced and guided by our choices. When we make decisions that are aligned with who we truly are, life begins to flow. Challenges still arise, but there’s a natural sense of harmony and purpose—even in uncomfortable moments of frustration, sudden changes, or delays.
This alignment hinges on understanding what we are genuinely motivated by. Having insights into what influences our personal, social, and professional dynamics, can alter the course of our trajectory in a positive and constructive fashion. Based on groundbreaking research in neuroscience in the past few decades, understanding our Motivational Perspective can be a powerful key to aligning with our authentic self.
Motivational Perspective is a broader, panoramic approach that captures vast peripheral information, allowing us to navigate life effortlessly, more successfully, and with a genuine feeling of satisfaction.
The first thing to understand is that when we make decisions or set goals based on mental conditioning, we disconnect from our true inner intelligence. Conditioning that is not rooted in our true nature but based on what is expected of us, will mask our authentic motivation, distorting our natural perception and clouding our capacity to think and act clearly.
There are six transferences in human motivation.
The Masterful Investigator — Survival Intelligence — FEAR
The Calm Seer — Possibilities, Hope & Talent — HOPE
The Great Leader — Power & Leadership — POWER
The Intuitive Opportunist — Want — NEED
The Great Fixer — Probability — GUILT
The Visionary Hermit — Personal Destiny — DETACHED
They all function away from our true self, veiling our innate motivational tendencies, leading us astray, and suffering unnecessarily. Maintaining the correct motivation is paramount to a fulfilling life and personal well-being.
The issue, however, is that most people “transfer” into the opposite Motivational Perspective of their authentic design and disposition. INTELLIGENCE becomes NEEDINESS, HOPE turns into mindless GUILT, POWER is avoided to become blind ESCAPISM, and so on.
This tendency isn’t anyone’s fault. It’s largely due to the lack of knowledge early in life, reinforced by childhood conditioning and its profound influence on our development.
We’re often compelled to make decisions rooted in societal norms or familial expectations, rather than from our own inner clarity and built-in organic strategies for living. Conditioning is powerful—its influence, based on cultural, religious, political, and social values, presses down on us from every angle. These values and expectations, embedded in parental structures, are the great conditioners of human motivation, steering us away from our natural motivations and into patterns of “transference.”
What is Transference?
When “mind over matter”, you could call it our lower- or false-self, rules our decision-making process, and thus our direction in life, our true cognitive gifts (reasoning and problem solving) do not get transmitted properly by the brain. It means that the original information from the brain is deviated by the conscious mind’s need for control. The result is a very topsy-turvy world where value structures are dominated by thinking that is not grounded in real perception.
It is called transference precisely because our thinking is grounded in its opposite motivation. It results in a strategy which manifests as a shadow side—an unappealing, ineffective version of our true potential. The work, therefore, lies in recognizing our natural motivation, living life from a place of empowered self-alignment.
A New Psychology
Psychology, with its mapping of the mind, is the information that educates the mind about the mind. We each have a differentiated ability to mentally process the world. Ironically, the notion of an IQ test is a product of our earlier evolutionary purpose; it is setting an arbitrary standard for intelligence whereas in this current evolutionary phase, we are far more mentally sophisticated than previously understood. From a very early age we get the message to use the mind to manage life, we end up lost in a mental maze that is disconnected from our real cognitive gifts.
Early conditioning places us in a state of complete hypnosis or trance without ever realizing we’ve been indoctrinated into believing our thoughts over our gut feelings and intuition—our biological form-principle. As an example, in the 1970s, followers of the Reverend Moon, leader of the Unification Church, believed they were chosen to fulfill a divine mission. Recruits were isolated from their families, subjected to intense indoctrination sessions, and coerced into mass weddings and financial exploitation. Years later, many former members described their time in the church as a fog, where critical thinking was suspended, and their intuition silenced. Upon leaving, they experienced profound disorientation, as if waking from a dream, grappling with the shocking realization of how their minds had been manipulated.
Following Our Truth
Surrendering to our inner guidance—intuition and gut feelings—realigns the original frequency emitted by the brain so as to begin to see reality as it really is. The result is profound. True cognition returns and we begin to see our thoughts for what they are—just thoughts—not who we are or as orders to execute under pressure. The spells slowly disappear as we begin to gather evidence that the mind is meant for a different job.
Conditioning can be so complete that we often live decades without questioning it. We pursue goals we think are ours but are seeded by family, culture, or fear. We develop identities shaped by societal roles and expectations, hypnotized into thinking this is "who we are." The true self—our instinctive, intuitive, and unconditioned nature—becomes buried under the weight of the mind’s stories.
Example: Transference for The Great Leader — Power
Aligned State: The Great Leader carries an innate charisma and authority, naturally inclined toward roles where their guidance and decisiveness are valued. They are discerning and confident, able to distinguish true leaders from opportunists. For instance, a Great Leader might step into a challenging project and effortlessly inspire those around them, or identify a leader-in-the-making among their team and guide their development. Their presence commands respect, and their decisions are decisive, often groundbreaking.
Transferred State: In a state of transference, the Great Leader retreats into the Visionary Hermit archetype, convincing themselves that detachment or isolation is the answer to their woes. They may avoid leadership altogether, feeling safer in passive roles or withdrawing into private indulgences. This withdrawal is a kind of denial of their power, as they avoid the very responsibilities they’re designed to manage. Instead of leading others, they become stagnant, possibly indulging in escapist behaviors that divert their energy from meaningful pursuits. They also try to be much more social and transpersonal than they are.
The real tragedy? The trance (transference) doesn’t feel like a trance. It feels normal. Like those under historical mass hypnosis, we don’t realize we’re being manipulated because the manipulator is internal. Only when we begin to question, to see the gap between our thoughts and our essence, does the fog start to lift. And in that moment, the shock of having lived a borrowed life hits us—not unlike the Germans under Hitler or cult members waking up, though on a deeply personal scale. Conditioning doesn’t just hijack our actions—it steals our very sense of being. Our cognitive architecture is based on a different blueprint than the original. And yet, the moment we wake, the mind’s power dissolves. Its tricks are revealed, and what once seemed unbreakable becomes as fleeting as a shadow at dawn.
Developing Awareness
At first, freeing ourselves from the authority of our false-self (our transferred motivation), can be tricky because of the nature of duality. The power of conditioning to use the mind to run our life and manipulate our consciousness to believe its dictates, developed the strong habit of familiarity and die-hard attachment to the “transferred” frequency. It means in a nutshell that there’s still a strong tendency to believe what our thoughts say about us and rely on its input to make decisions.
Developing awareness of the dualistic polarity between the quality of our true cognition versus the false claims the mind makes on our decision-making process, allows for the habit to be seen for what it is—a tendency. It is the seeing without interfering that accesses our true consciousness to free our minds of the preference. Then the mechanism of the mind will naturally find a balance, where there is a peaceful resting in the proper frequency for our life’s direction and purpose, with only “occasional movements” to the transferred state—just for reference.
Transformation
There is a doorway to our true consciousness in observing this exact mechanical bouncing from one side to the other. First it concerns watching the way the mind predictably and habitually produces our false- or lower-self identity movie with great intensity. Second, it pertains to watching the insistence of our conditioning to use the mind for decisions, but also to be the protector of a “self-image” through the various adaptive strategies our minds have used to steal our decision-making processes.
On that level, the mind will use fear to scare our consciousness into obedience. There are two levels; one concerns watching the transferred motivation come and go—without fear. The other concerns watching our evolving awareness along a specific, radically different, and liberating track.
It is in the process of acknowledging the presence of our false-self (our shadow or ego self) with compassion, courage, and non-interference, that a slow transformation is able to take place. As we locate the neutral watcher in us, we access our witness consciousness. Getting in touch with the neutral watcher can be a life-altering process because it gives us access to the power of free attention. The choice is ours whether to listen to the mind or not.
As soon as that happens, we have unhooked from the fuel to build the false-self and our inauthentic self-images. Beyond that lies the true functioning of the mind. It involves the way the mind has been trained to think that survival depends on fabricating “an image of self” based on the values and beliefs of our early conditioning. The “letting go” of needing an acceptable “self-image” to identify with, amounts to an “ego” death. Whether major or minor, the death of the false ego with its “well-intentioned” but manipulative effort to protect the dignity of a false-self, is a shattering—a breaking down of the inauthentic within our personality construct.
Moving Forward with Self-Alignment
Correcting your motivation is not about achieving a flawless alignment overnight; it’s about cultivating a steady, incremental shift back to full-time authenticity. With each decision you make from your core, you gain greater clarity, confidence, and resilience. Reclaiming your true motivation empowers you to experience life as it’s meant to be lived—from a place of grounded, self-assured and self-reliant direction. Each step brings you closer to a life that resonates deeply with your inner purpose and potential.
As I mentioned above, If you wish to learn more about your motivational perspective, you can follow this link for the article titled The True Engine Behind Motivation, published on November 26, 2024.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I have learned one elementary truth: people are not their fears, their doubts, or the stories running loops in their heads. There’s a masterpiece inside every being.
I live for transformation. My true aim is to empower, educate, and challenge self-imposed limitations. If there’s a thread that runs through everything I do, it’s this: if you want to be free, trust yourself. The development of self—especially self-reliance—is the education that matters most.
Every decision I have made is in fact a direction. It determines the quality of my experiences and their outcome. Therefore, I live by a code: my instincts and intuition run my life, not my mind. My mind is a precious tool for research, stimulation, creative ideas, and communication with others—not my guide, my guru, or my boss.
Outside of work? I keep my world simple, cooking like a madman, playing piano, researching, and writing. Humor—sharp and unrelenting—is my weapon against the dullness of small talk. I spend countless hours in conversation with my wife, deepening our understanding of life, each other, and the one thing that truly matters to us: awareness.
Critical Skills to Empower Your Journey & Light up Your Soul
I founded the Eric Stone Studio in Los Angeles in 1989, coaching actors, performers, and voice artists while actively working as an actor and director. In 2003, I expanded my coaching to business professionals, helping them master communication, leadership, and media presence. Today, I’m a husband and a performance coach, sharing powerful insights and techniques for public speaking, self-development, and business communication. From 1979 to 2015, I built a career in New York and Hollywood, performing on Broadway, in soap operas, and voicing over 400 films and animated series.
“All Great Outcomes in Life Come from a Paradigm Shift in Perspective.”
Speaking Engagements | Self-Development | Business Communication & Leadership
If you need coaching, call or text (323) 986-6363. My contact page is here