What are self-motivated goals? Why are they important? What makes them special from other kinds of goals? How can you know if you’re setting them?
We’ll answer these questions and several other crucial ones in this article.
I’ve always had an ambitious streak, even back to my school days. Since I left uni seven years ago, I’ve learned two languages, reached a high level in guitar, built several sources of income, reached a high level in meditation, and started deep-psychology.com, which at the time of writing gets well over a thousand hits a day.
I consider these self-motivated goals. No institution, family member or friend had to cajole me into setting them, planning their achievement, carrying out the work, and reaching my target.
And after achieving these goals, I’ve discovered many common threads that appear in all forms of learning, skill-building and achievement, one of which is self-motivation.
I share all the concepts and mindsets you need to become a rockstar learner and achiever in my Autodidactism course, which we’ll discuss later. For now, let’s talk about self-motivated goals.
What Are Self-Motivated Goals?
Put simply, self-motivated goals are those that you set for yourself and whose attainment you take responsibility for.
Nobody has to chase you up or encourage you to pursue them. You have enough motivation and clarity to do the work yourself over the course of months and years.
I find it’s very clear when a goal is self-motivated, because your passion and zest for life come alive. It’s an inside job: you’re able to pursue the goal without needing extrinsic factors.
Let’s face it, often we set and pursue goals because it suits other people: family, friends, bosses, teachers, and so forth. You might think that employment and formal education aren’t conducive to self-motivated goals, while self-employment and autodidacticism are, but not so fast.
It’s not so much the situation that counts, but your desire.
It’s true that keeping a standard job to pay the bills usually isn’t self-motivated, because we all have little option but to cover our basic costs. You don’t need to desire anything beyond just keeping your job.
On the other hand, choosing a particular career or calling that aligns with your interests is a self-motivated goal because you’re selecting one path from many possible paths, and doing so based on your own criteria, not those of others.
Learning in school and university isn’t usually self-motivated. It’s not necessary to be emotionally involved in your studies to do well. It’s not necessary to take charge. It’s not necessary to set your own goals. Show up, jump through the right hoops and paint by the right numbers, and you’ll be fine. Again, there’s no desire for anything special.
However, if you enjoy the subject and the grades aren’t your only concern, then there’s self-motivation. If you go above and beyond the bare minimum, think deeply about the subject and try to understand it, then there’s self-motivation.
So you can still pursue self-motivated goals in a formal context, as long as your school, university or professional training is part of your larger goal or plan.
Remember, the key is desire. How much do you desire it as a goal in and of itself? How much do you value the pursuit for its own sake? Desire for this goal means you’ll have enough intrinsic motivation to go after it and will be able to rely on your own energy and guile to reach it.
To have this clarity, you have to know yourself and be clear about your desires, regardless of what others think of them.
In this episode, I talk about how to be ruthlessly effective in your projects.
What Are Their Benefits?
When we’re young, we spend a lot of time pursuing other-motivated goals because we must obey the system.
This is good for developing discipline and taming our impulses, but it can hamstring our ability to set our own goals. Without that, we’ll never experience the benefits of doing so, like freedom and self-reliance.
In fact, I believe one of the reasons we fail to accomplish big things and live up to our potential is because we lack motivation and purpose from within, and lack the nous to transmute these intangible desires into tangible realities.
I’ve found the more you develop the ability to set self-motivated goals, the easier it becomes. You start applying it to more and more areas of your life, seizing the day, firmly grasping the wheel of your life and directing it where you desire.
This helps you gain trust in yourself. And the more you nurture half-baked wishes and vague desires and slowly transform them into living, breathing outcomes, you discover your character, peeling back the layers of the onion of the self and discovering what you really want from life.
From this, new possibilities open up like a fractal. Also, you realise that with persistence, you can conquer all. And the process is easier because you enjoy what you’re doing. You don’t have to drag yourself to work hard.
To be honest, at this point I find other-motivated goals very difficult to pursue. I feel hollow inside, as though life is less beautiful than it should be. I wonder why I’m not doing what I should be doing.
One last point: self-motivation is actually a scale. There is always some degree of extrinsic motivation involved in any pursuit. In fact, if you add some external motivation to your intrinsic desires, your chances of success shoot up.
Key Points for Self-Motivated Goals
To determine whether you’re pursuing self-motivated goals or not, ask yourself these questions:
Do I enjoy what I’m doing?
Is it a means to an end, or an end in itself?
Am I motivating yourself, or are others motivating me?
Would I continue if nobody paid attention?
Do I have to drag yourself to work, study or practice?
Where did this goal come from?
This should shine a light on it, and it may even help you understand why the project is progressing as it is.
In fact, these are questions I continually ask myself. I don’t want to look back and realise that I squandered my time being inauthentic, waiting for permission, and wasting my potential. I gently encourage you to ask them too.
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