RE-EXAMINING MOTIVATION: PART TWO
Claire Dorotik LMFT

            As we begin to take a closer look at motivation, it becomes clear that in many ways, external rewards can actually work against us. In a counter-intuitive way, they not only diminish motivation levels, but they tend to have many other negative side effects. In brief, rewards tend to create short-term focus, discourage intrinsic motivation, encourage unethical behavior, and cub creativity. At this point, it should be clear that the typical carrot and stick principle is outdated.
            So what does work? If the promise of cash incentives, pay raises, days off, favorite foods, pretty dresses and fancy cars won’t get people to do things, what will?
            To answer this question, we have to look at optimal states and the research of Mihali Csikszentmihalyi, the foremost authority on the state of flow. Csikszentmihalyi knows more clearly than most the effects of the absence of flow. At the age of ten, Csikszentmihalyi became an evacuee from Hungary at the time of the Nazi regime, narrowly escaping enemy fire on the last train to cross the Danube river. More than half of young Mihali’s relatives aboard that train later died, including Csikszentmihalyi’s brother. Mihali himself dropped out of school at the age of thirteen, and spent the next several years working odd jobs and searching for a better way to live. On a whim, he attended a lecture of the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung. It was then that he decided to study psychology. Determined to learn a more, he moved to Chicago, Illinois, as a high school drop out and little more than $1.50 in his pocket, and entered the University of Illinois.
            However, he was soon became jaded with the insular focus on psychological disorders and human dysfunction. He wanted to know what made people better, not just why they felt bad. While still working on his graduate degree, he began studying optimal states. Using a research sampling method, Csikszentmihalyi gave his research subjects pagers to wear, which he would then use to have them record their mood, thoughts, and activities at six intervals throughout the day. Over the course of three weeks, this amounted to a comprehensive journal of each subject’s moods and activities. Csikszentmihalyi was then able to identify when his subjects reported elevated mood states, and what they were doing when in these states. What he found was that when in optimal states, subjects reported an absence of thought, expansive and elevated mood, and an activity that they felt completely engaged in. He called these states autotelic, which stems from the Latin word auto, (self), and telos,  (goal). Essentially, these were activities that were rewarding in and of themselves. When doing these activities, Csikszentmihalyi’s subjects were in what he called a state of flow. According to Csikszentmihalyi, is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. It is when we are are in this state, that we are most motivated.
            Through several subsequent studies, conducted by himself, as well as researchers at MIT Harvard and Carnegie Mellon, Csikszentmihalyi has found that in order for flow to occur, the person not only has to be fully engaged in an activity, but he has to feel three things as well. Flow and therefore motivation, are dependent on a sense of mastery, autonomy, and purpose. Without these three components, motivation wanes, regardless of the amount of external rewards used.
            Most of us don’t think much about mastery when we want to motivate ourselves. Instead, we stay fixated on the rewards. However, ignoring this integral component can undermine motivation faster than that reward will be expended. Mastery is about a sense of competence. It is what we think we can do. When we feel as though the challenges of the activity match our skills correctly, we are motivated to do it more. Especially if the activity offers some room for growth. Activities that are just slightly above our skill level tend to produce the most prominent increases in motivation. Activities that are slightly below our skill level tend to bore us, and activities that are too high above our skill level tend to intimidate us.
            We also may not think much about autonomy when we are trying to motivate ourselves. In fact, we may not think much about autonomy at all. Yet here again, without a degree of autonomy in our activities, we often don’t feel like doing them. Autonomy is really about a feeling of control. It is the ability to choose for ourselves how we want to do things, when we want to do them, and who we want to do them with. Being told that we must play tennis at 8:30 am is not a way to increase our motivation, no matter how much we like tennis. Nor is being told how we have to play tennis. Rather, when we can choose these things, we feel we have a sense of control over our activities, and motivation soars.  
            Probably the thing we think least about when trying to motivate ourselves is the higher purpose. We may think about the goal, which in our mind is probably the reward. We may say to ourselves, “Lose 20 pounds, and you will get to buy a new outfit.” But we have neglected to find the higher purpose in losing weight. Without this, as soon as the reward is delivered, motivation fades. A purpose is about a reason for doing something that connects us to something larger than ourselves. It extends beyond ourselves to have a larger impact on those around us, and subsequently, us. It is the difference between doing something to achieve a gain that only you enjoy, and doing something to achieve a gain that you, and other people, enjoy. When we feel as though we have not only helped ourselves, but helped others as well, motivation surges.
            If we really want to be successful at motivation, we have to re-think our approach. The carrot and stick simply doesn’t work. We can’t bribe something out of ourselves or beat ourselves into action. This approach removes the very framework on which motivation depends. Without the central components of mastery, autonomy, and purpose, even the biggest rewards will fail to motivate us.

Claire Dorotik, M.A. is a licensed marriage and family therapist specializing in trauma, weight loss, eating disorders, addictions, and dual diagnosis. Claire utilizes equine facilitated psychotherapy from a psychoanalytic perspective to offer clients a unique method to understand themselves. She is currently the clinical therapist at Live In Fitness Enterprise, a residential bootcamp in Marina Del Rey, California.  Claire has written extensively on the topics of the psychology of weight loss, food and substance addictions, and trauma.  She is currently completing her first book, “The Horses of A Prisoner’s Daughter”, due out later this year.  Further information on Claire, or her upcoming book, can be found at www.clairedorotik.com.