WATCH: Are your goals good for your health?
Hello and welcome to food for thought insights for busy leaders and managers.
Goals
In just 150 seconds today I’d like to ask you a question. Are your goals intrinsic or extrinsic? And what I mean by that is intrinsic, being something that’s deeply fulfilling for you for yourself for your ideal self, to become your ideal self or something that says should something or to do
something you should do in order to be able to achieve something. Or get something and I’d like to look at the way that this can actually have an effect on your well-being. Because an intrinsic motivation and the intrinsic goal helps you with your personal growth. It’s also something that’s usually linked to emotional intimacy of some sort. Better relatedness, better relationships and some sort of community contribution be that a community of your personal life or your work life or the sector that you’re operating in but some sort of contribution to the community.
Whereas extrinsic is more about fame or popularity. Look at me, look how great I am, something that’s just for you to look good or to have an attractive image so that people will like you more. Or financial success so you can have a bunch of stuff. So you can earn more material things that tends to be extrinsic this tends to be intrinsic and the difference is that this is for your
ideal self and it’s actually durable over time. So the scientific study shows that people who have intrinsic motivation tend to keep their motivation overtime and it’s driven by doubt dopamine which helps us get up and go. Helps us be curious and want to anticipate a reward where extrinsic is more of a should.
It’s something that you ought to do, must do, should do and it actually fluctuates that when you achieve your goal it can drop your motivation completely. So your motivation just disappears and it’s driven by adrenaline. It’s like a fear of not achieving. So the best you’re gonna do if you achieve your goal is feel a sense of relief rather than a feeling necessarily, a sense of achievement it’s who I didn’t get my goal and what’s also interesting to note is that the intrinsic motivation in all the studies that have been done is associated increased well-being where extrinsic is increased with is associated with decreased well-being . So think very carefully especially over the next sort of few months and maybe even the next 12 months what are you driven by and whether your goals are intrinsic or extrinsic thank you
Because when it comes goals, stay curious!
With best regards,
David Klaasen
Talent4Performance help business leaders clarify complexity. We inspire people and drive continuous performance improvement, so they can convert thinking into action and results.
©David Klaasen – 2014
