Many people fail to find joy and happiness in the work that they do on daily basis. Due to this, they feel unhappy, unmotivated and generally experience lower well-being.
Fortunately, there is a growing body of research which shows how this challenge can be addressed, so that you not only increase your well-being, but also your experience and sustain “happiness” as you engage in your livelihood activities.
This website, makes reference to the Self-Determination Theory (SDT), a widely recognized psychological theory that focuses on understanding and fostering intrinsic motivation. According to SDT, people are most motivated when they feel a sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness in what they’re doing.
Understand Your Motivation:
The quality of motivation is dependent on whether the one’s actions and behaviours are driven by deeply held values and experience of enjoyment at doing the action or behaviour vis-à-vis whether the actions and behaviours are driven by expectation of rewards, punishments or internalized pressures from others.
Intrinsic Motivation: Self-determination theory body of research shows that when an individual’s actions or behaviour are autonomous—that is, when someone is motivated by the value they have for the action or behaviour, such a person tends to feel more satisfied, and will generally have higher well-being overall. This is what the theory terms as Intrinsic Motivation.
Extrinsic Motivation: When an individual is mainly motivated by rewards, punishments, and internalized social pressure – hence, such a person is complying to the values of other people, such person will have lower enjoyment of the actions or behaviours, lower well-being and will also have a harder time initiating and maintaining such actions or behaviours over the long term.