Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. is a motivational psychologist and the author of
Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals. During her Social Capitalist
interview with Tahl Raz, she shared several ideas to help keep motivation high
and make success more likely. Here she shares some thoughts about reaching
goals by going beyond “the what” to “the WHY” that ensures commitment.
It all comes down to why you’re pursuing the goals
that you are pursuing. For example, if you are trying to get ahead at work,
which many of us are, are you climbing the ladder because you find it personally
challenging and rewarding, or are you doing it in order to seek the approval of
other people? Often, it’s not necessarily about what the goal
is but the why that really matters.
We choose goals in our lives that satisfy our
basic human needs, and people have been arguing for thousands of years about
what those needs are. The consensus is that psychology has basically focused on
three in particular: The first universal and cross-cultural need is the need
for belonging. This is the basic need to relate to other people, to be
part of meaningful groups, and to contribute to their communities.
The second need is the need for what psychologists
call competence. This need has to do with growing our abilities, working
on new skills, acquiring knowledge, and being able to impact our environment in
meaningful ways.
The third basic human need concerns
autonomy, the idea that we do things because we are intrinsically
motivated to do them. Autonomous needs reflect something about our values and
who we are as unique individuals. Here it’s really the “why” that matters. Why
are you deciding to go to medical school? Why are you doing what you’re doing at
work? Why are you in a particular relationship? If the answer is to satisfy
these basic needs, and they’re going to bring you authentic, lasting happiness,
then that’s success.
It’s when our actions and our goals are motivated
by things outside ourselves – such as the approval of others, or by seeking
power and fame for their own sake, rather than to use them to do something
positive – that our happiness is more likely to be fleeting.
If your goals really satisfy these basic human
needs of relatedness, competence and autonomy, then it’s likely that your
happiness is going to last longer and be deeper than you would have had
otherwise. While achieving goals is always a good thing, it’s when we pursue
what really satisfies us as human beings that we achieve a more meaningful level
of happiness.
How can you reframe your goals to make them more
tied to your needs? For more great insight into what makes us all tick, read the
rest of the transcript of the interview here.
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