What Motivates You?
Motivation baffles me. What is it? Where does it come from? How does one acquire it? Is it always something to be sought? Several years ago I taught educational psychology courses at a state university. I, in all of my youth, tried to explain to teachers, some of whom were quite experienced, how to motivate kids to learn. What did I know? I still haven’t figured it out. One of the things we talked about a great deal, however, was the difference between external motivation and internal motivation.
External motivation comes about when events or circumstances outside a person cause him or her to want to do something. We get our children to clean their room by rewarding them with a special trip to the park or with a popsicle from the ice cream vendor. Or we “motivate” them to clean their room with the threat of punishment—time out or the loss of a privilege like watching TV. These external events increase the likelihood that our kids will clean their room.
Internal motivation, on the other hand, originates in personal values, self-statements, or automatic unconscious thoughts that cause us to do something. I like to keep my desk clean because of some “clean desk” value I have. When I clean it off, I give myself a pat on the back (a reward). I tell myself, often unconsciously, what a good person I am. The consequences I apply come from inside. I no longer have my parents to reward or punish me. Instead, I have internalized their voices and taken on their role of parenting me.
The goal, we say, is to help people internalize their motivation so that they learn to reward and punish themselves to keep their homes clean, show up for work each day, work hard on projects assigned to them, be a self-starter and life-long learner, and so forth. I’m all for developing internal motivations.
There are two difficulties I see, however. The first difficulty is the ongoing problem of figuring out how to make this move from external to internal motivation happen in people. Educational theorists continue to argue about it. Why does it happen in some people and not in others? In addition, how can we increase the likelihood it will happen? These are questions for another discussion some other time.
The second difficulty, and the one that is most troubling me today, is one I never hear people talk about. It is the effectiveness of internalized motivation. For example, just because I normally work from some internal code, doesn’t mean that that internal code is healthy or productive. Last night and this morning, I found myself feeling a bit of depression coming on. I’ve learned to stop and think through what’s happening to me, what I’m feeling, and what I’m thinking when these moods invade.
I’ve learned that when this happens to me it’s often because my internal voices are “punishing” me for something I haven’t accomplished or some standard I haven’t met. The voices are meant to “motivate” me to do better. What happens, however, is that sometimes they de-motivate me by making me believe I’m worthless and unable to accomplish anything of value.
I’ve also discovered that these so-called internal motivational standards are still often tied to external stimuli. That is, I feel good about myself when I accomplish something and can pat myself on the back for it (internal motivation), but if I don’t continue to get external accolades for what I’ve done I begin to doubt that internal voice. So in essence, though I appear to be internally motivated, external forces are still in control. External motivation does works, but is dependent upon the constant presence of that outer force. When it disappears the affected individual often goes into a tail spin. That happens to me sometimes.
Wow. It seems I have much yet to think through.
Questions for honest reflection:
- How do I move my life toward pure internal motivation wherein I am not dependent upon the external stimuli?
- Is that even a realistic or desirable goal?
- If I cannot ever truly divorce myself from relying on external stimuli to motivate me, how do I avoid the troughs of let down when those external forces are absent?
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