Hi All!
I hope your week is wrapping up nicely. Here are your weekly tips and tricks to help you make progress on your goals. As a bonus for this week, I’m also including some guidance on how you can help out someone you care about.
1. Feelings of autonomy lead to happiness.
Autonomy means you have the ability to make your own decisions. Research suggests that people who can act on their own values, rather than being told what to do, report greater life satisfaction. Are your actions pleasing others more than yourself? Or are your behaviors aligned with the things you care about?
2. Don’t force change on someone. It very rarely works.
Have you ever tried to help a friend or family member who had no interest in taking your advice? The problem was not you, but how change works. Change has to come from within; it can’t be forced upon people. If someone doesn’t want to modify a behavior or become someone different, you can’t make them. Instead, express yourself in a way that leads them to a self-realization.
Your Weekly Digest: The Motivation Myth
Chances are that you, and the people you care about, rely on motivation to get things done. Motivation is an internal desire to accomplish something and is highest when we’re given autonomy.
In society, motivation is looked upon as a crucial element in setting and attaining our objectives. Our parents, teachers, and coaches teach us that we must be motivated to achieve our goals. Want to get a job, do your homework, or get better at something? Gather up enough motivation and you should be able to do it.
For most of us, getting motivated is easy. However, sustaining it long enough to accomplish meaningful goals is challenging. This is because motivation is a feeling, and our feelings, as we know them, are always changing.
In my article, “What Is Motivation? Definition and Why We Never Have Enough of It”, I explain motivation in depth and show why it is unreliable for achieving long-term goals.
Until next week,
Mike van der Poel
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