Resolutions and Intrinsic Motivation

Did you make any New Year’s Resolutions this year? How’s that going?  I ask because most of us who set off to change something about ourselves at the new year fail. In fact, an article from www.statisticbrain.com from January of 2018 states that less than 40% of people in their twenties achieve their resolutions each year, and only 16.3% of people over fifty years old are able to reach their resolution annually. Of course, one has to dig deeper to see where and how Statistic Brain gathers their data, but if these numbers are even close, they say quite a bit about the success, or lack thereof, we have toward truly achieving what we tell ourselves we want.

In my view, the ability to succeed in any endeavor is at least in part dependent on motivation. No one does anything unless they are motivated to do so. You wouldn’t be reading this right now unless you, or someone else, motivated you to do so, and I wouldn’t have written this piece unless I decided at some point that I believe I had important information to share on the topic and that someone besides me might be able to benefit from that information.

Psychologists and others are often fond of categorizing two types of motivation, and it seems that one of the types has a stronger influence on whether you are consistently successful at achieving your goals. The two types of motivation are extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation comes from an external force and is often associated with rewards or punishments. As an example, consider someone who really dislikes his or her job, but gets up and goes to work every day anyway because they know if they don’t show up, they are not going to get paid in a week’s time. In this example, the reward is the paycheck at the end of the pay period.

Another example of someone who is extrinsically motivated is a man who, as a condition of his probation, may be ordered not to drink alcohol. Although that man may want a beer in the worst way, he will avoid imbibing because he knows that if his probation shows up at the wrong time, he will be sent back to jail to serve the remainder of his sentence.

Unlike extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation does not come from an outside source, such as a punishment or a reward. Instead, one who is intrinsically motivated goes to work not because of the anticipated paycheck, but because they see value in their work and they are personally rewarded from it. Similarly, a woman who is determined to give up alcohol because she believes that she can have a fuller life without it is intrinsically motivated.

Which type of motivation do you think is more effective in terms of being able to sustain effective change and reach goals? Research reveals that you are better able to achieve effective results when you are working toward a goal not because of an external reward, or a punishment, or because someone else wants it for you, but because you truly want it for yourself.

Where does intrinsic motivation come from and how does one develop it and, more importantly, sustain it?  Let’s go back and look at New Year’s Resolutions. Towards the end of every year, millions of people tell themselves and others that they are going to quit smoking, be a regular at the gym, spend less time working and more time with their family, etc., and many of them can even talk about why they want to embark on their journeys of change. Inevitably, though, when the journey becomes challenging for whatever reason, many end up reverting back to their old patterns of behavior and give up their resolutions.

The problem is that change is not easy, and here are a few reasons why. The first reason is that a lot of the things we do or don’t do that are not healthy for us in the long run give us comfort. If we typically have a drink after a long day at work, chances are that we do it because it makes us feel good. In other words, the act of having a drink or eating half of an apple pie in one sitting helps us relieve our stress, which helps us reach a state in which we feel better.

The second, and related, reason we often revert to the old habits is that when we give them up, we are often suddenly left with no way to relieve our stress, and thus we are uncomfortable. The simple truth is that most humans are very uncomfortable with being uncomfortable, and that is a topic for future article here. I will wrap this up today by stating what should be obvious at this point: If you are going to make resolutions toward change and want to be successful, your journey will probably not be an easy one. Your mission, therefore, is to think of a plan for success and then implement that plan as you prepare for your journey.

I would invite you to share your thoughts on this topic in the comments section here. Until next time, be well.