Motivation Monday: a series pt 2

Last week we laid down a simple understanding that motivation is simply the reason we have for acting or behaving in a certain way. If you haven’t read it yet, go check it out here.

This week we will break down the major myth about motivation and explain the types of motivation we encounter each day. But first, where do we get our breakdown of motivation? In behavioral psychology, particularly that of sport psychology where motivation is of utmost importance, our scope of motivation comes primarily from Self Determination Theory. Self Determination Theory, or SDT, was developed by Edward L. Deci and Richard Ryan to further expand on the work in the early 70s examining types of motivation. The core tenet of SDT is that humans have an innate need for competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Motivation will depend deeply upon these three things.

Within the framework of SDT, Deci and Ryan identify 4 types of motivation that exist within the framework of extrinsic or external, and intrinsic or internal motivation. There is also amotivation which is the absence of motivation but in that description there would be no thought of what we want so it’s almost not worth mentioning. The 4 subsets of motivation are: externally regulated behavior, introjected regulation of behavior, regulation through identification, and integrated regulation.

The biggest myth that I see perpetrated, aside from just a complete misappropriation of motivation, is that motivation is finite. There’s this image of motivation as a gas tank that you can fill and empties through time. This just isn’t the case. As we will examine further, motivation exists in perpetuity; motivation doesn’t run out. Instead, we move along the continuum of the motivational spectrum that runs from external to integrated and using different skills along the way. The idea that we have more or less motivation to do something is just a matter of dipping further into the external side of motivation in order to get things done.

So the next time you feel as if you are lacking motivation realize that if that was the case you wouldn’t even be thinking about it. The motivation is there, we just need to continue doing the things that help us to further internalize it. We need to gain competency in our tasks, to feel autonomous in our decisions, and relatedness to others. As we increase those qualities in our desired tasks we will need less and less external drive to get it done.

Next week we will dig a little bit deeper into the types of motivation and how we can initiate them. And remember, your motivation cup isn’t empty, it’s always full. You might just be trying to drink from the wrong cup.