| Chapter 3 External vs. Internal Motivation "Motivation is the art of getting people to do
what YOU want them to do
because THEY want to do it."
—Dwight David Eisenhower We learned in the first chapter that our assumptions sway our thinking. In Chapter Two, we gained an understanding of how our thinking impacts our feelings and our stress levels. We now address the third critical understanding for stress reduction: how we are motivated. EXPLANATION OF TERMS The term “motivation” has many definitions. The most commonly used are external/extrinsic and internal/intrinsic. In a technical sense, however, all motivation emanates from within a person. In practice though people are often influenced or inspired by someone or something outside of themselves. In these cases, people are stimulated. However, we do not usually refer to humans as “stimulators.” We refer to people as motivators, as in, “She is a terrific motivational speaker”—rather than, “She is a terrific stimulator, influencer, or inspirer.” External and extrinsic refer to motivation that originates from some stimulus outside of us. The stimulus persuades, induces, inspires, encourages, cajoles, spurs, triggers, provokes, rewards, or punishes. External motivation includes societal influences for a desire to cooperate and the powerful pressure of peers. Internal or intrinsic motivation applies when people act for some inner reason—prompted by interest, curiosity, desire, or by some necessity such as eating and sleeping. This type of motivation is innate; it engages the natural propensity to engage in an activity not influenced from anything outside the person. In this book, the terms external motivation and internal motivation are used to contrast influences emanating from outside vs. inside a person. An awareness of the difference between the two is the first step in understanding and deciding when to accept or act on something external vs. when to resist its influence. Understanding the source of motivation empowers us to reduce stress that can impact us in negative ways. People operate from both external and internal motivation. For example, your mate knows you went to the grocery store. When you return, you asked for assistance to take in your purchase and the person helped you. Compare this to where your mate helped take in the groceries without being asked. Notice that the behavior was identical. In the first example, external motivation was used because the motivation came from you, whereas in the latter case, the motivation was internal in that there was no outside influence. The critical point to understand is that—although the actions were identical in that the groceries were taken in—the motivations were different. | 
