Carpe Diem Losers.
On terrible motives for positive behaviours.
Like most New Zealanders, I’ve drunk myself stupid every single New Year’s Eve since I was 15 years old. On the 31st of December 2024, we did things differently. My partner and I didn’t touch a drop of alcohol and were in bed before the fireworks went off. We made these sacrifices so we could get up at the crack of dawn, seize the day, and climb Mount Tauhara. It was hard work, with 1100m of upward slog, but when we got to the top, it was all worth it. We gazed smugly out across beautiful Lake Taupo - South towards Wellington and then North towards Auckland - and our hearts soared with the knowledge that all across this beautiful land of ours, people were lying in bed feeling crap and hating themselves.
To make that point clear, we took a bunch of inspiring pics of ourselves and sent them to friends and family. Then we fired some ‘winning shots’ through to the many Whatsapp and Messenger threads we are involved in. Finally, we blasted our virtuous behaviour out on social media so all the world could see how righteous we are and how shit they are. It was important to us that the first thing people saw when they woke up hungover in 2025 was us being better than them.
This is an example of positive behaviour fueled by bad motives.
Waking up and climbing a moutain = positive way to start the year.
Doing it so you can feel superior to your friends and family and hopefully make them feel bad about themselves = evil.
Interestingly, our sinister motivation only became apparent to us after we reached the top. Until then, we figured we were getting up early because we were changed people. We were doing it to start the year the way we meant to continue it. It wasn’t until the posts and messages had been sent we realised our real reason for being up there. We had climbed this mountain to elevate ourselves above our friends. After all, if we were doing it just for ourselves, why did we need to tell everyone? We were screaming carpe diem losers at the world when, really, it was us who were being the carpe diem losers.
Questioning your motives can be an interesting and rewarding exercise. Last year, for example, in June, I released the number one best-selling book, A Life Less Punishing - 13 Ways To Love The Life You Got. You can buy it HERE. For the longest time, I believed I wrote it to collect all the interesting, helpful philosophies I had learnt about life in one easy place in the hopes of helping other people. That’s what I claim in the book. However, after it had been released, a friend of mine told me that the book put a pipe in my mouth.
What he meant was it made me appear smart, like a professor. Then it hit me. One of my motivations for writing the book was so other people would think, “Wow, Matt wrote a book. He must be smart”.
Admiration was as much a motivation as my ‘love of writing’ and ‘helping people’. The fact that I shoehorn in that it is a ‘number one best-selling’ book whenever I mention the thing is particularly telling.
Motivation
Help others < Pipe in mouth.
But are there any truly pure motivations? I believe so. Quietly donating to charity, for example. When Taylor Swift, Elton John, or Bill Gates donate, it always makes it into the media. If the news doesn’t get out through a fancy dinner, a social media post or a direct press release, it gets out through a convenient leak. In Bill Gates’ case, there’s a Netflix documentary series dedicated to celebrating him for being the great guy he thinks he is. Obviously, whatever the motivations, it’s generally better to donate than not to donate. The charity doesn’t care that it’s a publicity stunt. They just need the cash.
Having said that, Swift, John, and Gates are pieces of shit - compared to Taiwanese vegetable seller Chen Shu-chu. She has silently, anonymously donated hundreds of thousands to charities over the past 40 years. To do this, Chen works 18 hours a day, six days a week and spends no more than three dollars a day on herself. Chen Shu-chu was over 70 years old when her generosity was discovered and publicised. She was mortified when this happened. Awards, recognition and celebration were not her motives.
Elton John, Taylor Swift, Bill Gates < Chen Shu-chu.
I could mention the charities I donate to here, but I won’t, as I am more Shu-chu than Swift.
In my aforementioned number 1 best-selling book (click on the above picture to purchase). I wrote about Mehrab Reza, the founder of Adlantica, a US marketing and creative agency that studies human desire in order to shift products. When he looked into the motives of why he’d bought a new Porsche Panamera, he realised that all the things he said made him want his dream car weren’t actually true. It wasn’t the engine, the top speed, or the handling — all that was just a story he was telling himself. When he honestly focused on his desire, he realised he bought the car to gain higher social status, signal success to others, and impress his friends. He was not proud of himself when he worked that out.
From the outside, skewed motivations are easy to spot. The person who climbs Mount Everest and doesn’t bring it up at every dinner party they attend afterwards probably had better reasons for climbing than the one who does. The couple who get up early on New Year's Day to do something wholesome and then spend 30 minutes on their phones telling everyone about it probably didn’t do it just for personal growth.
The Buddhists teach.
Simply following our desires without taking time to understand them leads to destructive behaviour and mental confusion.
Every now and then, it might be worth checking your motivations. As luck would have it, I am currently training to run a Marathon. It is a perfect opportunity to ask what my motivations are for doing so.
Why run a marathon?
A - To get fit?
B - To test my limits?
C - To grow as a person?
D - So I can tell people I ran a marathon?
E - Midlife crisis?
Mostly E, but considering I am discussing the run in this article that has been mailed out to thousands of people, there is probably a decent amount of D in there, too! Surely a bit of A,B and C also.
Anyway - Carpe diem - I’ll post dozens of finish line pics in November!
You seem busy, I’ll let you go.
Bless Bless Bless
MH
NOTE: My partner Tracey would like it known that her motivations for climbing Tauhara on the morning of Jan 1, 2025, were only ever self-improvement and that all the ‘Carpe Diem Bitches’ crap came from me and not her (even though she also said it - see below).
So funny! So true! 😂
That is great Matt. I am glad to know you are a Brother of the Briar. All thinkers, writers etc are. If not, they smoke cigars, or, if not cigars, they find something else perhaps not so healthy to put in their mouths and suck on. By the way, where can the public order your book from as i have been meaning to get a copy. Keep up the good work. All the best for 2025.