Running five miles on the treadmill to feel satisfaction or
studying diligently for an exam for a result of a good grade. Often times, we
have motives to push ourselves to complete tasks and hurdles in our everyday
lives. We all want to be successful, we all need drive, and all would like to
be seen by others as motivated. But, where does this come from? I was very
interested in this topic so I furthered my research to get some conclusions. Some
interesting points I came across included our biological makeup and the simple
feelings of thirst or hunger. These internal feelings essentially motivate us
to eat or drink so that we are provided with energy to keep going. Another theory
that came up was Freud’s psychoanalytic theory which states that we have two
drives called “Life and Death drives.” These drives simply reach the goals of
helping us to survive, or prevent our destruction and the example used was that
we go to school believing it will help us to obtain a good job, or even a spouse,
which I found intriguing. All in all, to me, motivation would be the reasons or
underlying forces for why we do things.
Extrinsic Motivation;
This type of motivation often times uses rewards for getting
through different events such as participating in a tournament and receiving a
trophy at the end. As discussed in class, it can be part of a fixed mind set
because just providing effort will get you the reward. What I find interesting
about extrinsic motivation is that there can be a negative side to it. A punishment
can also enhance our motivation and drive to do better.
Intrinsic Motivation;
One of the hardest things about this type of motivation is
that it has to come from yourself. You are the only one who can motivate
yourself to accomplish self-satisfaction. Creating measurable and appropriate challenges
with progress we can easily see can be a jump start in creating intrinsic
motivation. I like this type though because when you want to do something and
you want to apply yourself, it is so much easier to accomplish and do well. For
instance, lately, I have really been trying to push myself in classes and I found
that lately, I have been thinking about the material we learn outside of each
class more and more. This allows me to really understand and soak up the
information so I can further analyze in future assignments or classes.
How can balance be
achieved between the two types of motivation? Which type of motivation is more
crucial and helpful to our own lives?
New words I stumbled upon this
first full week of classes included tampered and variance. I had a prior
understanding of the word tampered and found in the dictionary that this verb means, "to meddle, especially for the purpose of altering, damaging, or misusing." However, I
was not aware of the alternate definition that included, “to engage secretly or
improperly in something.” The second word variance is one I came across in
Statistics and means the square of the standard deviation, but in the dictionary,
it is a noun meaning, “the state, quality, or fact of being variable,
divergent, different, or anomalous.”
