autonomy, relatedness, competence

https://hbr.org/2014/11/what-maslows-hierarchy-wont-tell-you-about-motivation

Despite the popularity of Maslow’s Hierarchy, there is not much recent data to support it. Contemporary science — specifically Dr. Edward Deci, hundreds ofSelf-Determination Theory researchers, andthousands of studies — instead points to three universal psychological needs. If you really want to advantage of this new science – rather than focusing on a pyramid of needs – you should focus on:autonomy, relatedness, and competence.

Autonomy is people’s need to perceive that they have choices, that what they are doing is of their own volition, and that they are the source of their own actions. The way leaders frame information and situations either promotes the likelihood that a person will perceive autonomy or undermines it. To promote autonomy:

Frame goals and timelines as essential information to assure a person’s success, rather than as dictates or ways to hold people accountable.Refrain from incentivizing people through competitions and games. Few people have learned the skill of shifting the reason why they’re competing from an external one (winning a prize or gaining status) to a higher-quality one (an opportunity to fulfill a meaningful goal).Don’t apply pressure to perform. Sustained peak performance is a result of people acting because they choose to — not because they feel they haveto.

Relatedness is people’s need to care about and be cared about by others, to feel connected to others without concerns about ulterior motives, and to feel that they are contributing to something greater than themselves. Leaders have a great opportunity to help people derive meaning from their work. To deepen relatedness:

Validate the exploration of feelings in the workplace. Be willing to ask people how they feel about an assigned project or goal and listen to their response. All behavior may not be acceptable, but all feelings are worth exploring.Take time to facilitate the development of people’s values at work — then help them align those values with their goals. It is impossible to link work to values if individuals don’t know what their values are.Connect people’s work to a noble purpose.

Competence is people’s need to feel effective at meeting every-day challenges and opportunities, demonstrating skill over time, and feeling a sense of growth and flourishing. Leaders can rekindle people’s desire to grow and learn. To develop people’s competence:

Make resources available for learning. What message does it send about values for learning and developing competence when training budgets are the first casualty of economic cutbacks?Set learning goals — not just the traditional results-oriented and outcome goals.At the end of each day, instead of asking, “What did you achieve today?” ask “What did you learn today? How did you grow today in ways that will help you and others tomorrow?”

Unlike Maslow’s needs, these three basic needs are not hierarchical or sequential. They are foundational to all human beings and our ability to flourish.

The exciting message to leaders is that when the three basic psychological needs are satisfied in the workplace, people experience the day-to-day high-quality motivation that fuels employee work passion — and all the inherent benefits that come from actively engaged individuals at work. To take advantage of the science requires shifting your leadership focus from, “What can I give people to motivate them?” to “How can I facilitate people’s satisfaction of autonomy, relatedness, and competence?”

Life Purpose; a selection of 4 texts

http://www.raptitude.com/2013/03/how-to-find-the-way/

Asyou move north:

Personal criticisms seem less relevant to you and you’re less likely to react to them emotionally.It becomes easier and more appealing to relinquish control over external events, particularly over what other people do.You naturally put a greater proportion of your attention on the physical world around you, which leaves less attention for following your internal dialogue. Inner dialogue becomes less persistent.Ordinary details of the physical world become more beautiful, and feel like they somehow make more sense, and you feel less inclined to tell others this. Private experiences of beauty make up a greater proportion of your day.You evaluate external events more in terms of their overall good in the world — how much joy they bring or suffering they relieve — than in terms of your own interests.You come closer to being able to accept undesirable events in real-time. You lose interest in talking about how the situation ought to be.Other human beings (and, farther north, animals) appear more individualized. They seem more delicate, interesting, and worthy of care and attention. Walking among them begins to feel more like walking in a china shop.Self-consciousness fades. You feel an increased willingness to let things be. Farther north, you cease experiencing yourself as an opaque object moving in the world and instead feel like a transparent subject through which the world moves. You may feel like you are watching the world without being there at all.

***

I don’t know if there’s a specific quality the spectrum reflects. It’s not important. The best barometer for your current position on the spectrum is probably how much peace and ease you feel during in-between moments. By in-between moments I mean moments in which you’re not getting what you want and not getting what you don’t want, which is most moments.

We move north and south along the spectrum throughout our lives. A swing can happen within a day, especially as a reaction to the arrival of exceptionally desirable or undesirable circumstances: major setbacks, major insights, major gains or major losses. You may be in one place one day and quite another a few days later.

It tends to shift in wide arcs though, like the tension in a storyline does. You may spend an arc of a year or two quite farther north than normal for you, if you’re doing something that serves your deepest values, or something that requires exceptional levels of attention or effort from you. You might have an arc in the other direction corresponding with a rough period, like a divorce or an illness.

But generally, if you have a persistent interest in personal growth, you’ll find yourself gradually moving northward over the years.

You move north by doing the things that seem to result, for you, in the “northward” qualities above. You only get a firsthand look at your own inner states, so it’s necessarily a solo practice. Spiritual golf.

For me, what has helped most has been practicing mindfulness informally, reading, simplifying my life in terms of possessions and commitments, confronting long-running fears, and writing.

You find your own best practices by trying things. If you never try anything new you never find them.

“Follow your bliss” is how Joseph Campbell put it. He always knew what he was talking about, but I have trouble with the word bliss because it’s been hijacked by Duncan Hines and other gratification-peddlers. Someone’s “bliss” may be heroin, after all. But if you get a good sense of where north is from the list above, then a personal practice of self-education can’t help but move you gradually northward.

I suppose it’s possible some people have done well a

http://markmanson.net/life-purpose

...Everything involves sacrifice. Everything includes some sort of cost. Nothing is pleasurable or uplifting all of the time. So the question becomes: what struggle or sacrifice are you willing to tolerate? Ultimately, what determines our ability to stick with something we care about is our ability to handle the rough patches and ride out the inevitable rotten days.

If you want to be a brilliant tech entrepreneur, but you can’t handle failure, then you’re not going to make it far. If you want to be a professional artist, but you aren’t willing to see your work rejected hundreds, if not thousands of times, then you’re done before you start. If you want to be a hotshot court lawyer, but can’t stand the 80-hour workweeks, then I’ve got bad news for you. ...

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/01/how-to-discover-your-life-purpose-in-about-20-minutes/

... Here’s what to do:

Take out a blank sheet of paper or open up a word processor where you can type (I prefer the latter because it’s faster).Write at the top, “What is my true purpose in life?”Write an answer (any answer) that pops into your head. It doesn’t have to be a complete sentence. A short phrase is fine.Repeat step 3 until you write the answer that makes you cry. This is your purpose.

That’s it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a counselor or an engineer or a bodybuilder. To some people this exercise will make perfect sense. To others it will seem utterly stupid. Usually it takes 15-20 minutes to clear your head of all the clutter and the social conditioning about what you think your purpose in life is. The false answers will come from your mind and your memories. But when the true answer finally arrives, it will feel like it’s coming to you from a different source entirely.

For those who are very entrenched in low-awareness living, it will take a lot longer to get all the false answers out, possibly more than an hour. But if you persist, after 100 or 200 or maybe even 500 answers, you’ll be struck by the answer that causes you to surge with emotion, the answer that breaks you. If you’ve never done this, it may very well sound silly to you. So let it seem silly, and do it anyway.

As you go through this process, some of your answers will be very similar. You may even re-list previous answers. Then you might head off on a new tangent and generate 10-20 more answers along some other theme. And that’s fine. You can list whatever answer pops into your head as long as you just keep writing.

At some point during the process (typically after about 50-100 answers), you may want to quit and just can’t see it converging. You may feel the urge to get up and make an excuse to do something else. That’s normal. Push past this resistance, and just keep writing. The feeling of resistance will eventually pass.

You may also discover a few answers that seem to give you a mini-surge of emotion, but they don’t quite make you cry — they’re just a bit off. Highlight those answers as you go along, so you can come back to them to generate new permutations. Each reflects a piece of your purpose, but individually they aren’t complete. When you start getting these kinds of answers, it just means you’re getting warm. Keep going.

It’s important to do this alone and with no interruptions. If you’re a nihilist, then feel free to start with the answer, “I don’t have a purpose,” or “Life is meaningless,” and take it from there. If you keep at it, you’ll still eventually converge. ...

www.LearningStrategies.com/EffortlessSuccess/Home.asp

Health Sparks

What's your life purpose? To inspire others to reach their goals? To promote a greener world? To help others heal with Qigong?

Whatever it is, a purpose-driven life could mean a longer life.

A group of researchers at the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center in Chicago has been tracking nearly 1000 people with an average age of 80 for seven years, assessing physical, psychological, and cognitive wellbeing. At the beginning of the study, participants were scored on their sense of purpose using statements like, "Some people wander aimlessly through life, but I am not one of them," and, "I sometimes feel as if I have done all there is to do in life."

Participants who scored a higher sense of purpose were 2.4 times less likely to develop Alzheimer's than their lower scoring peers – even if their brains showed physical signs of the disease.

"Even for people developing plaques and tangles in their brains, having purpose in life allows you to tolerate them and still maintain your cognition," says neuropsychologist Patricia Boyle, an author of the study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

The perks of purpose don't stop there. Purposeful people also had a 30 percent lower rate of cognitive decline, a lower risk of diabetes, and were less likely to die.

A separate study from the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center followed over 1,200 participants with an average age of 78 over five years. Those who scored a higher purpose had nearly half the mortality rate as their less purposeful peers. Researchers controlled other factors that could increase wellbeing, including social relationships, depression, disability, and demographics. They determined that purpose stood alone as a major factor in increased life quality and expectancy.

People "want to make a contribution," says Boyle. "They want to feel part of something that extends beyond themselves...a sense of their role in the community and the broader world."

You can reap the benefits of knowing and living your life purpose at any age. "The clearer you are about your purpose and the more your emotions and beliefs are aligned with it, the more likely it is you will attract what you desire," says Jack Canfield, author of ourEffortless Success course. To clarify your life purpose, he recommends the following exercise:

Think of two personal qualities that others most appreciate about you (i.e., enthusiasm, joy, creativity).Consider the way you most enjoy expressing each of these two qualities. For example, you may enjoy singing, building things, or teaching.Visualize your perfect world. Envision how people close to you are interacting, and imagine how you feel living in such a world.Write a statement in the present tense describing this perfect world – how it looks, feels, sounds, smells, and tastes.Draw upon everything you thought, felt, and expressed in the first four steps. If you were to draw, paint, or sculpt an image of your life purpose, what would it look like?

You can repeat this exercise as often as you'd like. It is okay if you are not completely clear about your life purpose at this point. Once it is clear, revisit your life purpose daily to keep living it!