Intrinsic + Extrinsic Motivation

Music (00:00:00) – She is dreaming, she is drifting. Never been so wide awake. Captured in the moment by the beauty all around her. There’s nowhere else that she would rather be.

Koren (00:00:19) – Hello and welcome. This is Koren Motekaitis. And you’re listening to How She Really Does It, the place where inspiration and possibility meet. Years ago, I came across this book by this author Julia Cameron, and she wrote The Artist’s Way. And I don’t remember how I came across it, but I did. I think I even took a course in it. This is probably about 20 years ago or so, and I was wanting to do it the right way. And I remember reading the book and doing the morning pages. And the idea of the morning pages is you write, you free write for 30 minutes every morning, first thing you do. And I would do it. And I wanted to do it the right way. And I remember I really struggled because part of it was, if you did this and you kept your commitment, then there’d be this extrinsic reward at the end of the week and you could have a date with yourself.

Koren (00:01:18) – And I really struggled against it. And it’s so interesting that this memory has popped into my mind as I’m recording this show for you today, because that’s an example of an extrinsic word. If I do this, then I get this right. And that’s one example. And today I’m going to talk about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, because it’s often the thing that’s underneath what my clients may be struggling with in their lives. Then they may often be pursuing something that is intrinsically based, which is not going to be sustainable for them in the long run, and they can get on this hamster wheel. So I want to talk about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, because this is a topic that comes up quite a bit with my clients. So according to the Harvard Business Review, intrinsic motivation is a term used to describe the incentive we feel to complete something simply because we find it interesting or enjoyable. And extrinsic motivation is what we feel when we complete a task or something for an external reward. And so I’m going to give you some kind of identifiers so that you can look, it’s not bad to have extrinsic motivation.

Koren (00:02:30) – It’s just not long term. It’s not sustainable. And one of the things that I do with my clients, we do deep work and it’s about longevity. It’s about sustainability. It’s about so that they can do meaningful work as well as create connected relationships in their personal and professional lives. Right? So some of my clients will call it, we play the long game. Well, the way to be able to do that over the long term is really to go into intrinsic motivation. It’s not saying that one is right and the other is wrong. It’s not right or wrong. It’s a matter of looking at how much extrinsic motivation you are using and how much intrinsic. So this past summer, as we wrapped up the summer and swimming, you know, I’ve always thought that swimming was one of the greatest classrooms to teach about life, right? So often parents are thinking like, Oh, my kid’s going to play a sport or they’re going to learn how to swim and so often for myself and, you know, so many the athletes that I’ve coached over the years and led through an organizations, it’s who you become in this process of going through this sport.

Koren (00:03:39) – But the sport starts out very extrinsic, highly motivated, right? Some programs they will use candy, we will not, but some programs will use candy and they’ll give the kid a piece of candy if they hit whatever milestone it is. Right. Some schools will do this as well. So some teams and some schools will do this. Those are extrinsic motivations for our kids. For the Monsters, their extrinsic motivations will be awards. It could be ribbons and oh my gosh, I remember there’s this little boy, Jake, he’s probably like a senior in high school now, but when he was like 5 or 6 and he kept stalking the ribbon table because he so badly he swam his race and he could not wait to get his ribbon that he believed he had earned. And he kept going over there and he was on, he was looking around and he kept waiting. And they hadn’t gotten to it yet. And he leaves and then he comes back very excited. And hopefully it was he just really wanted this ribbon.

Koren (00:04:33) – Right? And the pride and the joy of having that ribbon. And I remember his smile on his face and how he’s beaming, you know, once he got the ribbon and then another kid and oh, my gosh, I coached him in the 90s. He’s become this world class runner when he was young. And it was so cool because he was so excited. At the end of the day, he had his ribbons and he’s like, look, Koren, I have a rainbow of colors, right? He enjoyed all the different colors. He later enjoyed winning. And that would be a blue color, right? But at the age of six, he enjoyed all the different colors. So extrinsic motivation is awards. It can be ribbons, It can be in sports, swimming pins, trophies. Right? Winning high point. And then the interesting thing that happens with the summer and the career of a swimmer is that instant award. That extrinsic motivation eventually channels into something that’s intrinsically based, right? It’s then about who do I become in the process.

Koren (00:05:36) – Understanding that there’s often a deeper reason we’re doing something than just the ribbon, right? Or a pin or a trophy. What are the other reasons? You know, sometimes it’s the intrinsic reward for me as a swimmer was the place I could belong, right? It was a place that I could show up. My shy little self didn’t have to talk to anybody else. My coach would say hello to me and say goodbye. I’d swim, get to hang out in the locker room and shower and change and make friends and then go back and I’d be able to go to swim meets and make more friends. Or it was a place to be. So for me, it was intrinsically motivated because it was a place to belong. And when I was a kid and a teenager, I didn’t know that it wasn’t something that I impacted until much, much later. But it was an intrinsic reward. It was that sometimes the goals that I had inside that may have never been publicly recognized. And that’s the beautiful thing about a sport like swimming, is that while we can be so transactionally motivated, right, we need to be awarded like, am I making the right choice? Notice the word right intended that my accomplishing something that’s worth my time by these awards.

Koren (00:06:50) – But over time, especially in the sport of swimming, it’s really gruesome. There are days that you may not get an award, and the way it works out is very much in the development of us as humans, right, at first as a kid, like getting those ribbons and how beautiful it is. But then as we get older, the ribbons become harder to obtain. We may not be as excited about them. We may go to swim meets where there aren’t ribbons anymore. It’s about going and it’s about maybe getting a best time, a personal best. Or it may be about, okay, where are you in this year, in this process? Where were you last year? Because at this point you may only be swimming fast a couple times a year, maybe three times a year, and being able to have the motivation to keep going even when the results are coming in not to your liking. It’s like we see somebody and we want to hear that like, oh, that was great. I had this tremendous meet.

Koren (00:07:44) – It’s not always going to be a tremendous meet. Not every day is going to be a highlight reel. We’re going to have highs, we’re going to have lows, we’re going to have everything in between. And that’s the range. And so often we forget that and we get so stuck on this extrinsic motivation versus the intrinsic part of the intrinsic is who do you become in the process when you pursue these goals, whether it’s in your career, you know, if it’s in your parenting, whether it’s your kids in a sport, who does your child become in the process? Why do they go? Why do they keep showing up? What are they here to learn? So sometimes the extrinsic motivation I’ve seen on teams has been like swimming for something bigger than yourself, right? Being a part of a team and where there’s a team championship and it’s like we’re going to go and and sometimes a lot easier to be vulnerable within a group of people versus if you’re on this quest for yourself, right? So you’re a part of something and it and going through the process, getting up for morning practice not because you want to, right? Because when that alarm goes off, there’s really not as many athletes that I know that are like, oh, yippee skippy, I can’t wait to go.

Koren (00:08:54) – Could be, you know, being on a team relay for a big win rate. For adults and adulting, let’s talk about that with careers. Right. So adult adulting, right? The extrinsic motivation can be money. That’s often the thing that’s an easier thing that’s measurable. Right. How much money do I make? How much money does my business generate? Right. It can be with things. We can buy houses, cars, trips or the title on the door. It’s like you’re climbing this ladder. I’ve had so many people that would talk about climbing this ladder and realizing once they got to the top of that ladder that they had climbed a really tall ladder and it was the wrong ladder. But there’s this extrinsic motivation because it was almost validation of, oh, see if I can do this, then who am I now, right? Versus who do I become? What lessons do I learn? How do I rise back up? Which is intrinsic motivation? What is your why? Why do you do it? You know, growing up as a kid in the summer, like I didn’t know what my why was.

Koren (00:09:57) – It was very intuitive. I like to swim. My mom was willing to sign me up. I’d go, I didn’t think much of it. I’d like to be in the water, you know, And I just would keep wanting to go back and I keep wanting to go back. And really my motivation was to be around people, right? Even though I was really shy. And then it evolved. I mean, I had a career for about 15 years and learning and growing and understanding things and challenging myself. And who did I become in that process? Right. That was what was my intrinsic motivation and what it taught me. I didn’t know this as I was going through it. But again, looking back as a career, are you noticing are you extrinsic motivated or are you intrinsically motivated? It can be a part of the ingredients of your career, can be a part of the ingredients of this one precious life that we all live the obstacles of when it’s the only one is when then we start to live in the shallows.

Koren (00:10:57) – We’re like, okay, I did this and I want this. I did this and I want this. And we’re hustling for our worthiness in that way. Instead of realizing that what’s our intrinsic and in the cost to us, right in extrinsic is we’re constantly looking for a dopamine high. We’re probably draining our cortisol levels. You’re going to be exhausted and burned out over time. And to check in and say, do those extrinsic rewards really fill me up? So we’ll go back to little Jake when he’s six years old and some years ago, before Covid, one of my board members had suggested like, let’s get rid of the ribbons. And she had four kids. She was over the ribbons. You know, you have to find somebody, a parent that’s going to put all the names on the ribbons. It’s another volunteer job ordering the ribbons, all of this stuff. Right. It was just a pain. But she had had four kids and gone through and they weren’t as special and shiny. Over time.

Koren (00:11:57) – This happens the same thing with us. Maybe that car that you were so excited to buy and was such an extrinsic motivator. You look at it and it’s not a motivator or buying another car is more of a hassle and it’s no longer a motivator or buying that house or living in that neighborhood. Right. And it’s all of a sudden no longer. That’s the same thing that happens with the extrinsic rewards, right? So we go from Jake at six years old and being so excited to then where I remember we had this bin of ribbons that hadn’t been collected with two bins, not one, two bins of ribbons that had not been collected. And so some parents at a meet were like, hey, we’re going to hang them all up on the easy up. And then kids will want to come by and get their ribbons. I think they got rid of like 25% of the ribbons at that time. So after a while, those ribbons are no longer the motivation for why the kids swim. The kids outgrow that.

Koren (00:12:51) – They find a deeper meaning, and sometimes it’s because their friends are there and they want to be there. Sometimes it’s about a time that they want to swim or there’s a meet that they want to attend. There’s different motivations, and the ribbons are short lived oftentimes. So as we think about this metaphor, what is in your life is the metaphor, the ribbon metaphor, that is the extrinsic motivation. And take a look at that. And here when I ask you this question, it’s not to judge, right? It’s not to shame you. It’s to really own your story and say, okay, this is my extrinsic motivation. And then look at do you have other intrinsic motivations as well? And if not, this is an awesome opportunity for you to ask yourself, What is my true intrinsic motivation? What do I desire? And here’s the thing. This is really hard to do on our own, right, especially if it’s here right now moving forward. So then take a look, go back and look at a story like I shared with you with swimming about intrinsic and extrinsic, and think about the extrinsic motivation that maybe you had garnered at first.

Koren (00:14:05) – How long did it last? What was the experience like? What was the intrinsic motivation that allowed you to continue, that created that desire that allowed you to sustain it? And as you do this reflective process, you’re going to learn a lot more about you. And it’s not to say that we don’t do extrinsic at all, because sometimes those are fun as well, but we want to have a smattering of both, right? And intrinsic motivation is what can sustain us. So as I wrap up today, the extrinsic motivation, which can be fun, it’s also a dopamine hit, right? And at some point, those ribbons, it’s the metaphor, right, for the awards and the recognition they get left behind, just like those ribbons that were hanging up on that easier that eventually after a couple of summers got left in the trash, they get left behind because they’re no longer the dopamine inducer. And instead, as the stakes get raised, they go to something higher. Right. So that’s when we see in the adult world somebody who is extremely likely motivated for the car, then it’s for the house, then it’s for the bigger car, then it’s for the bigger house.

Koren (00:15:24) – Right. Where they’re trying to fill that hole. But nothing’s filling it. Maybe for some it’s that new job every 2 to 3 years, right? Or it could be a new partner. A new – you fill in the blank. It’s the shiny object that also often isn’t soul filling, whereas the intrinsic motivation will allow you to sustain over your career in your life. It’s going to take less adrenaline from you and allow you to perform more from a growth mindset which is learning, growing, being curious, having compassion as you fall down because you well, that’s what happens. Which will allow you to get back up and create the life and the career that you desire. I’m smiling big for you. Hey there. Before we go, I have a question for you. Have you subscribed to the show yet? This is an awesome opportunity for you to preserve your brain juice. I love the fact that I can subscribe to podcasts and television shows and they go straight to my iPhone or they go straight to my DVR and then I don’t have to worry, oh, no, especially with television shows…

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Music (00:17:13) – She is dreaming, she is drifting. Never been so wide awake. Captured in the moment by the beauty all around her. There’s nowhere else that she would rather be.