What Motivates You?
On a piece of paper or in the workbook for this course, create a list of your reasons for racing or engaging in endurance sports under two columns: one column for your intrinsic motivations and one column for your extrinsic motivations. Next, categorize those motivations into the buckets of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Finally, reflect on the themes that emerge to gain a better understanding of what drives you.
Detailed Instructions
- Identify your intrinsic and extrinsic motivations:
- Intrinsic. Write down your intrinsic motivations by identifying the ways you gain personal joy, fulfillment, or satisfaction from your athletic pursuits.
- Extrinsic. Write down your extrinsic motivations by identifying the external rewards associated with your athletic pursuits that are important to you (e.g., medals, finisher mugs, recognition of peers).
- Categorize your motivations according to these three basic psychological needs:
- Autonomy/Independence. Which motivations are related to feeling in control of your own actions and decisions in your athletic pursuits?
- Competence/Mastery. Which motivations are related to growing and gaining mastery through your athletic pursuits?
- Relatedness/Belonging. Which motivations are related to being part of a community surrounding your athletic pursuits?
- Reflect on your motivations:
- What are the key themes that emerged?
- What are the common sources of your motivation?
- How do those sources of motivation relate to basic psychological needs?
Workbook
The workbook provides templates for all of the practical applications in the course. Download here if you haven’t already:
- Practical Application Workbook (Google Doc)
Example
Below is an example of what I came up with when I did this exercise.
