Internal Motivation : Play for Yourself
One day A group of children frolic in front of an old man’s house and screamed.
After a few days, the old man couldn't stand it.
So, he came out and gave each child 30 cents and said to them: "You made it very lively. I feel that I am younger. Take this money."
The children were very happy and they still came the next day and played as always. The old man came out again and gave each child 10 cents. He explained that he has no income and can only give less.
On the third day, the old man gave only 2 cents to each child.
The children were furious. "Only 2 cents a day, I don't know how hard we are!" They vowed to the old man that they would never play for him again!
Who are you playing for?
There are two points of motivation: internal motivation and external motivation.
If we act according to internal motivation, we are driven by ourselves.
If we driven by external motivation, we will be influenced by external factors and become slaves.
The old man way is very simple.
He turns the children's internal motives into "playing for their own happiness" into an external motive "to play for the money", and he manipulates the external factor of cents, so It also manipulated the behavior of the children.
If the external evaluation is used as a reference coordinate, our emotions are prone to fluctuations. Because external factors can't be controlled, it's easy to deviate from our internal expectations, make us dissatisfied, and let us complain. Negative emotions such as dissatisfaction and complaints make us painful. In order to reduce suffering, we have to reduce internal expectations. The most common method is to reduce the effort of work.
The main reason why a person forms an external evaluation system is that parents like to control him. Parents like to use oral rewards and punishments, material rewards and punishments, etc. to control their children, regardless of their own motivations.
Over time, the child forgets his original motivation and does everything about external evaluation. When he was at school, he forgot the original motive of learning, the curiosity and the joy of learning. After work, he forgot the original motive of the work.
The external evaluation system is often a family inheritance, but you can break it completely, and from now on, cultivate your own internal evaluation system, so that learning and work become "play for yourself."