Obligation motivates us to get up in the morning. Necessity motivates us to eat breakfast. Responsibility motivates us to go to work. Motivation runs the world. A lack of it runs us ragged.

Feelings of love and hate are strong motivators. So is the fight or flight instinct. My grandmother preached that he who runs away lives to fight another day. Unfortunately, many of us are too out of shape to run or fight.

Running out of time is another incentive to do things -finish shopping before the time on the parking meter expires or have a baby because the internal clock is ticking. I euphemistically refer to cleaning the house before my mother-in-law visits as getting it done in a timely manner.

Time drives all of us. At sixteen our inner drive is to drive, at twenty-one it's to be independent, at ninety-one it's to be ninety-two.

Bribes - from ice cream to a corner office - work best when called incentives; but being inspired by someone's example doesn't work as well as it used to. Politicians are tarnished, sports figures are untrustworthy, movie stars are bad influences - even religious leaders have fallen from grace.

Motivational speakers, on the other hand - the one holding the book for sale - are more popular than ever. Books like "Dress for Success" and "What Color Is Your Parachute?" keep selling.

In spite of that, I don't think motivation can be taught. You're born with it or you're not. Who taught the motivators? Whose books were they motivated to buy? If motivation could be taught, Gore would have been president.

Motivational speakers are motivated by competition. So are we - from sports to keeping up with the Jones. Unfortunately, the last Jones I knew was in high school, so I'm at a competitive disadvantage.

I use rewards as incentive. However, rewards can be expensive or fattening, unless you're a Type A personality like I am and think a nap is a reward.

Being compulsive also works as incentive for me. Because my husband had complained about not having enough space in his office, I reorganized it. It was then my husband suggested I find a way to motivate myself not to do things. I'm motivating myself to do this by knowing that if everyone were motivated, who would I motivate?