Master series
Motivation
episode 01
PART 2: TRAILER
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to the moonshots master series. It's episode zero one. That's right. The very first one. I'm your co-host Mike Parsons. And as always I'm joined by a rather motivated guy. Mark Pearson Freeland. Good morning, mark. Hey, good morning, Mike. What an exciting journey that you and I and our subscribers on Patriot on are about to begin today, right?
It's crazy for all of our members, the moon shutters, we are kicking off a brand new series. It's the master series of moonshots. We're going to still do the moonshots podcast every single week. But for those of you that are members, you're getting a brand new additional show that we're going to publish every single month.
And mark, where are we starting this journey today, listeners and members. We are digging into the concept of motivation. Motivation is clearly [00:01:00] an a DNA. You have a lot of the moonshot is that we cover on the show. And after all these amounts of lessons and insights from these individuals, Mike, I feel like we've got.
And particularly in the last part of the show, we're going to be doing some questionnaires and some inventories and motivation on how we build these daily habits. Make sure that you've got those in front of you because some of them might really unlock something for you in this area. Of motivation.
All right, mark, where do we start? As we now kind of switch modes? I mean, it felt like we're in fifth gear, so I don't know. Are we going into sixth gear here or like, where are we going? Well, look, I would, I would coach or okay. The first section of first part where we heard from the three GS of, of Gary, Gaga and Goggins as the underpinning element of motivation that maybe our listeners and you and I have experienced before.
These are individuals that maybe we've seen out in the world. There's an element of motivation that I guess you learn as you grow up, but the truth is how many times have you actually taken a step back and thought, well, what is actually the [00:34:00] principle of motivation? What does it actually mean? And the second part, Mike is really, as you say, digging into the science and understanding what motivation is.
So actually I'd like to almost slow us down a little bit and actually hear from Ronan owl who has this great breakdown of what motivation is. So this next clip that we're going to hear from is motivation and how it moves us. Meaning of motivation is to be moved, to do something. It can be described as a trigger that starts the thought I am going to do this.
And there are two basic kinds of motivation. There's intrinsic. And there's extrinsic. If you are intrinsically motivated, you will perform a task because you enjoy doing it. You are having. If you are extrinsically motivated, you will perform a task because of external impulses, like a reward or punishment to determine whether a task is motivated by intrinsic or extrinsic [00:35:00] impulses.
We can use the concept of the psychological needs provided by the self-determination theory. This concept states that everybody has three innate psychological needs, namely autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The more each one of those needs satisfied. The more we perceive the task as intrinsic, hence more enjoyable.
Autonomy refers to decision-making does need to satisfy it. If you can decide for yourself, if you want to do something, if someone tells you to take action, you probably won't enjoy it that much. Competence means that you have the right skills to complete a task. It is important that the task is neither too easy, not too hard.
A two piece puzzle is probably no fun, but a thousand piece puzzle of a clear blue sky might be no fun. Either relatedness refers to the degree, you feel connected to your [00:36:00] social environment. If a friend asks you for a favor, you might have no problem helping him or her out. But what about a friend of your friend's friend?
So of none of those needs are satisfied. We have no motivation at all. It is a motivation. If all of those needs are satisfied completely, we are intrinsically motivated in between those two points, that different stages reaching from purely external impulses, extrinsic to completely internal impulses intrinsic.
Well, mark, you are absolutely right. We're getting into the science of this. There's plenty to share. So this is where the, the master series gets so good. So not only do we sort of pick our favorite, our absolute favorite clips from our moonshot podcast, but what we also do is we go a [00:37:00] level deeper to find the science behind in this case.
Motivation. Now, what we were listening to is a summary of what is called the self determination theory. Now, the great news for you listeners is that if you go to moonshots.io, go to our members section, you will find, you will find in the show notes, a link to the. Huge piece of work that was done in 2000 by Ryan and deci, we have the peer reviewed paper of the self-determination theory.
This was breakthrough because what it actually do is it presented to us two fundamental types of motivation. So we're going to simplify it and give you an introduction to this theory. It's what they call the self-determination theory. We're just going to give you an introduction to it, [00:38:00] but there is so much power in it.
If you're really interested in it, go to moonshots.io, get the show notes because they're all the links are in there and you can go a lot, lot deeper than we're going to go. So traditionally, what the world has done is said, Hey, I will give you a promotion. If you do a good job. The objectives. I'll give you a bonus, a pay raise, I'll throw in some extra benefits.
Maybe there'll be prizes. Maybe there'll be winning and perks. Sometimes it's the threat, the extrinsic threat of if you don't hit it we'll be chopping off the head. That's also not necessarily a great motivator, but maybe so here's the point. A lot of people before this piece of work, the self-determination theory relied [00:39:00] heavily on extrinsic motivators, you know, a badge, a prize or ribbon for doing well.
Okay. What the long term winners, people who become the best version of themselves, what this study found is it was those that had. Intrinsic motivation. Those were the ones that performed the best over time breakthrough watershed study that has opened up a massive body of work and insight into how we actually are motivated.
So if extrinsic motivators, prizes, badges, perks, all that kind of stuff is on one side. I want you to imagine there's another side of us, and this is so, so. Typically moonshots. It's all [00:40:00] about what is deep and inside of us. In fact, mark is what we just heard right from God, God Goggins. And Gary V isn't it.
Why exactly, you know, you could argue that, that for those who don't know about self determination theory, SDT, it's just their personality. They're just driven to do this because they want to get out of that. But the truth is they are pure personifications or demonstrations of that intrinsic motivation.
Aren't they they're doing it from themselves. They're doing it. Gary V I'd say he's certainly passionate, but also he's curious about the world, right? Exactly. Exactly. So intrinsic motivators are the secret sauce. If you want to win for the long haul, here's what you need to focus on enjoyment of the task at hand enjoyment in your day purpose in your day growth.
In your day, curiosity, passion self-expression [00:41:00] and fun. You have to work hard on these things. They do not. And this is really important. They do not just turn up and say, Hey, I'm Mr. And gentlemen, I'm here to give you an enjoyable day. You got to work at these things. You've got to find the things that bring you growth and curiosity, enjoyment, and purpose.
You need to go out and work on these things. Intrinsic motivators. So let's frame this a little bit. Self-determination theory hit moonshots dot O a D I O. If you want to follow up on this, it's a landmark piece of work in a moment. We'll get to Daniel pink who built upon this and put it in context of work, which I think is super helpful for a lot of our moonshot is.
But Mo let's, let's think here for a moment, we've got this intrinsic versus extrinsic [00:42:00] motivation framework. When you look at this, how do you think we should apply this to ourselves? Let let's maybe apply it to you. If you look at the intrinsic motivator list here, enjoyment, purpose, growth, curiosity, and so on and so forth.
How can you use this? To improve your level of motivation? What, what comes to mind? Well, the, the thing that come came immediately to my mind, and it was reinforced by the first part of the show today, when we heard from, from our moonshot is, is the, the fact that intrinsic motivators are personal to me.
When I think about extrinsic, they are broader, you know, you mentioned pay rises, promotions, bonuses, and carrot on a stick. Those are things that could be applied to you or me or our listeners or anybody else in the world. Those are physical elements. Aren't they, when I then look at the intrinsic list, [00:43:00] as you just read out and as our listeners can check out in the frameworks, in the show notes, those feel much more personal to me, the things that I'm going to get enjoyment from.
Aren't necessarily going to be what my friends or my colleagues might get enjoyment from. Likewise, things that I'm curious and passionate about are going to be slightly different. So for me, when I'm thinking about all this conversation that we're, we're digging into in today's show, I've got to go back to what you said a second ago, which is it doesn't come easily.
And I see you've got to put in the work to understand or uncover. What are those intrinsic motivations for yourself? So for me, one of the practices that I try and do this, Mike, and it is something, you know, I'm early thirties and sometimes it's quite easy to get to a point where you're so focused on doing the job.
You actually kind of forget the value or the benefit of having hobbies or things that kind of give you that little bit of spark that you [00:44:00] might do on the weekends. Right? You might forget about it and maybe just be orientated around one problem that's in front of you. And this is a great reminder of putting in the time to actually find out, okay, well, what do I like doing and what motivates me?
And for me, one of the things that helps me doing, or at least uncovering these elements, these intrinsic motivators is to, you know, genuinely sit down and try and write something down. Maybe it's goals, maybe it's mantras, maybe it's journaling and something that enables me to think, okay, What do I want to do this weekend?
Or what do I want to be in six months time or a year's time or 10 years' time. And gradually, if you know where you want to go, maybe it's, it doesn't have to be, you know, CEO or a world famous podcast, host, whatever, whatever it might be, it could be something much smaller. You know, I just want to be able to run a 10 K marathon.
[00:45:00] Yeah, totally. When you can break it down and think, okay, well now I can just go out and find a way that matters to me and something that I can go and own and, and have fun doing. That's that's kind of where I get my motivation. Absolutely. So, so for me, it is being able to define in your work, in your personal life, the things that bring you purpose, enjoyment, growth, curiosity, et cetera.
I'm just going to be totally open about riff on what I think they are for me, just to kind of for you and for our listeners, just to get you thinking about this, because, because I think we don't spend nearly enough time asking ourselves what are, are intrinsic motivators and what did they look like?
In know? So enjoyment, what brings me enjoyment. I love being presented [00:46:00] with an opportunity to create something, the journey of building something, a product or a podcast. I really enjoy that process. I love doing it with people. So that brings me real enjoyment. My purpose. Well, I'm very clear, like I've, I've obviously read, start with why, and I know that my purpose is to help and to coach people to do bold and audacious new things.