Extrinsic and Intrinsic Rewards, or What Really Motivates You to Be Healthy
When you look back and think about your health journey (or your life in general), what have been the motivations that got you where you are today? Has it been a competitive spirit? An incessant curiosity? An individual sense of purpose? An ambitious drive? Inherent in these questions are the broader trends of initiative. Do you tend to seek out external challenges, validations, feedback to push yourself, or are you more often buoyed by personal inspiration? What impels you the most: the outcome or the pursuit? For many people, it’s a combination of both, and their answers depend on the activities in question. Nonetheless, knowing what most effectively motivates us in a particular endeavor can change the game in substantial ways.
We’ve all heard of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations at some point. Although some experts don’t support the dichotomized differentiation, the framework offers a usable guide for examining what we’re driven by in our health efforts.
Extrinsic motivation looks generally outward – to obtaining a specific “reward” (e.g. recognition, award, money, or other concrete benefit), participating in competition, or contributing to a team endeavor. On the flip side, extrinsic motivation also encompasses our interest in dodging an unwanted external consequence. In short, it’s about working to achieve (or avoid) an external outcome of sorts.
Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, plays off of our internal interests and values. We do what we do not because we’re interested in what we perceive to be a beneficial outcome or reward but because we’re invested in the process itself. For example, we want to train not because we care much about where we finish in a race but because we just love the release of working out – of seeing our usual path, of enjoying how we feel during and after a run.
When it comes to the usual comparison, let’s face it. Sometimes extrinsic motivation gets a bad rap. Extrinsic motivations are often categorized as shallow or unenlightened compared to intrinsic interests. For example, we might be made to feel guilty for working to look good naked, so to speak, but vanity can have its time and place. I think the effectiveness of extrinsic motivation, however, suggests we’re simply human – that we’re a social species capable of learning from one another and responsive to our circumstances. After all, we evolved within an environment of constant reward-penalty feedback.
Intrinsic motivation can fuel our creativity and sense of inner purpose, but it doesn’t negate or diminish the legitimate significance of an extrinsic view. As critical and enriching as intrinsic motivation can be, for example, when excessively imbalanced, it can be isolating for some people. Likewise, many of us eventually come up against a wall when pure interest in the pursuit (e.g. fitness) doesn’t push us to farther distances or new dimensions the way looking outward can. Extrinsic motivation needn’t be just about unbridled materialism or fierce rivalry. It can just as likely put us in meaningful collaboration with one another or give us important perspective on the value or relative accomplishment of our efforts. Sometimes, it can give us a needed change of pace. The fact is competition is fun when it’s fair, and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a reward or recognition.
When we recognize that human truth and basic effectiveness can be found in both intrinsic and extrinsic incentive, we open ourselves to larger realms of possibility. The question becomes this: how do we harness the benefits of both to optimally foster our motivation for healthy and happy living? I hope you’ll add your thoughts, but here are a few to consider.
Cultivating Intrinsic Motivation
Create a Vision Board
Intrinsic motivation, I think, has a lot to do with personal clarity. What vision do you have for developing your health (or self)? What does thriving look like to you? Use everything from quotes to visuals as you hone your vision.
Keep a Personal Journal
Use the journal to examine what activities you find positive and fulfilling (e.g. a new yoga class, developing your strength with a new resistance training commitment). Get in touch with the subtle personal effects of the changes and progress you’re making. Write about how an activity or new health choice feels for you – what it does to your mood, your sleep, your energy, your confidence. Envision how you’ll go deeper into each goal and continually check in with yourself.
Applying Extrinsic Motivation
Identify Desired Incentives
Again, putting our natural inclination toward extrinsic motivation to work means understanding what kinds of external factors drive us the most. Do you appreciate recognition or enjoy looking good? Some of us might relish competition, while it has others running for the hills.
Seek Out Challenges and Collaboration
Participate in activities like semi-competitive team sports or seasonal gym “challenges” that offer you just enough pressure to push yourself to new gains, enjoy group contribution, and enjoy the opportunity for recognition. Start a photo journal that showcases the positive changes you’re making in your physical shape as well as overall health.
Use Personal Devices or Online Tools for Virtual Challenge
Everything from PaleoTrack to a Fitbit can help you track your progress and enjoy meeting goals, but take advantage of other tools that impose unpleasant results (e.g. lose money you put up front) if you don’t meet a particular goal or that offer a virtual rallying as you work toward an objective.
Now, what say you, readers? Where do you find the motivation to push yourself toward new health endeavors or into deeper, more challenging terrain?
Loading ...I hope you’ll take the poll and offer your insights into the sources and strategies of motivation. Thanks for reading, everyone.
Grab a Copy of The Primal Connection: Follow Your Genetic Blueprint to Health and Happiness Today!
Posted By: Mark Sisson
As a teenager I started working out only because of extrinsic motivation. I had been playing handball for many years being intrinsic motivated (the game, the team, it just gets you going), but I couldn’t image this for something simple like weight training and running. So I began, just gave it a try and while time passed I got more and more involved into the thing, learned to understand my body and even reached for flow moments, that today I’d say I’m at 50/50 now. I can’t clearly say which stimulus prevails, it varies from time to time.
Primary motivation: vanity. Health is an excellent side effect.
I workout and eat a primal diet to try and be as healthy as I can at age 65. However, Grok wasn’t concerned about extrinsic/intrinsic motivations. He was motivated by survival: hunt and gather or die. He didn’t have any other options.
So what should appear on TheOnion.com today:
Obnoxious Friend Won’t Stop Attaining Major Life Milestones
30-Year-Old Married, Pregnant Law School Grad Needs To Slow It Down
http://www.theonion.com/articles/obnoxious-friend-wont-stop-attaining-major-life-mi,31528/
Maybe it’s a sign from the Gods. Or maybe I just like The Onion.
Not gonna lie.. At 40 (closing in on 41) knowing I look better than a lot of gals half my age in a bikini is all I need to keep up my lifestyle. Heck it’s even a great way to motivate those same young gals to start a primal diet.
I find that reminding myself that my capacity for extrinsic desires – provided that the objects of them are rational – is proof of my capacity for intrinsic desire (and vice versa). It’s senseless to say that a person values health intrinsically or extrinsically – or even one or the other at different times.
If you don’t actually deserve what you desire extrinsically, you don’t actually desire it – and even the desire won’t last over the long run. For example, the desire to have a sexual partner who, physically, is very fit for sex – when you yourself are not – is not proof that you want to be physically fit, but that what you desire are the peripheral benefits of what people someone who has satisfying sex provides (envy, power, influence, etc).
Similarly, if you desire something intrinsically (ie: for it’s own sake), again, you don’t actually desire it. You desire something else – since possessing a value that doesn’t actually provide you with value isn’t really a value (ie: what does it mean to be “fit” if the question of “fit, for what?” has no answer?). What you desire is the vanity of wanting something “for it’s own sake” and not “just for what it can do for you” (a notion that is widely accepted and admired in this culture).
I found my intrinsic motivation when I started having health problems and I found that my inner values aligned more with eating better than taking a lot of medication. That gave me the Ooomph to really make the changes stick rather than jumping from idea to idea.
That being said… I’m becoming more appreciative of extrinsic motivation these days. Why? Because it’s fun, it can give a spark of inspiration to the day-in-day-out grind of managing a chronic illness, and because it can help create shared community motivation and support. I used to think of it as all flash and no substance, but I’m changing my mind on that.
I think, like Mark said, its important to strike a balance. Ironically, in the past I tended to be extrinsically motivated yet possessed an internal locus of control. Translation: I would freak out about the number on my paper or test and beat myself up if it wasn’t where I wanted it, because that number was under my, and only my, control. Lately, and I think this in large part has to do with a more primal lens in every dimension of my life, I’ve tried to reverse it a bit. I haven’t stopped working hard in school (or in my health goals, of course). However, I’ve tried to focus more on LEARNING and growing healthier rather than a grade point average or a number on the scale. Also, I’ve tried to accept that not everything can be placed under my control. I can only do my best, and further anxiety about “results” will not produce any greater benefits! While grades and external health benefits (i.e. a new sexy body, that I love!) still keep me motivated, I think a big part of growing up and maturing this past year especially (I’m 21) has been figuring out what is important in my life TO ME, without looking at external factors all of the time! This post is especially timely as I’m trying to figure out what the h*** I want to do with my life in a year once I graduate college . . .
A lot of the examples mentioned as extrinsic motivation, are actually categorized as introjected regulation… One of the inbetween categories. Check out Self Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan) for more details. As a motivation researcher, all forms play a necessary part in behavior…. I’m not sure which articles people have read claiming otherwise. It is generally accepted that intrinsic motivation is higher correlated with long term maintenance of health behaviors than extrinsic though.
I don’t know why, but I get most motivated when I buy new supplements. Just the other day I bought 4 of them. Pre-workout product, post-workout, during workout and a gainer. Now I am hitting the gym almost everyday.
I am in the category of “don’t really buy the dichotomy”, or at least “not sure how to really perceive the difference”.
Being from Europe (more precisely from France), I may not feel the same pride of being intrinsically motivated that I perceive as typical among American (wrong perception?). The more intrinsically motivated you are, the more a winner you are supposed to be in life, a potential entrepreneur…
Individual competitiveness is a bit less highlighted in european societies (maybe especially in France)… I think. So there is maybe less of a social pressure to appear as a gifted winner in life.
So, coming from this background and seing the overwhelming majority of reported intrinsically motifivated people on this board (and all those being self-evaluated), I can’t help wondering if the very feeling of being intrinsicaly motivated couldn’t be itself an external motivator. Just wondering…
Great share, I really enjoyed reading it.
I find the motivation swings back and forth between intrinsic and extrinsic, depending on the day, my mood, etc. I wonder if there is a way to keep things on track once they are begun? Certainly the vision board, journal, etc. are fine ideas, if used routinely. However, there are days when it just isn’t there. What are some techniques to “jump start” the motivation fire on those slow days?
After watching the brilliant documentary, ‘Happy’, I realized that my extrinsic values (although I wasn’t necessarily living just extrinsic values) were skewed and my perception of it was unbalanced.
I am trying to value intrinsic values much more which is what this website to me has always been about – the focus of being positive, valuing small communities of friends and family, doing things you want to do rather than what you think society expects you to do.
I am not saying looks and feeling confidence in appearance, career isn’t important but I am trying to get away from that a bit more and focusing hard on how to build better relationships with ‘my tribe’ – my mother (sounds cheesy but I have started giving her a hug for the first time after 30+ years etc), my friends, my lady and so on…
I am enjoying being myself again and really being the best me for the people nearest me, rather than the rest of the world.