Are You Intrinsically Motivated

Why intrinsic motivation matters

Source: Photo by Szilvia Basso on Unsplash

Intrinsic motivation can be defined as the practice of doing things that do not provide any external benefit. You are doing these things as the activities bring happiness and internal satisfaction to you thus, basically, the reward is the activity itself. Intrinsic motivation is associated with self-improvement, which provides you insight into your own competencies and purposes.

Consider the following cases of intrinsic motivation:

• You might be interested in sport as it makes you happy
• You might like traveling to new places as you are interested to learn about various cultures
• You might be interested in self-improvement as you want to achieve personal growth.
• You might be gaining knowledge about something because you are personally interested in that subject.
• You might be striving to be an authentic leader as you want to motivate others.

The following aspects can be identified as boosting our intrinsic motivation:

i) Difficulties & Challenges