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Creative Motivation




Our own, innate powers of motivation involve several creative "assets" we're all born with:
- curiosity (our interest is sparked)
- inspiration (what ignites our curiosity)
- initiative (we come up with our own ideas and plans of what to do)
- free will (we have our own power of choice)
- enterprise (we follow through with our own endeavours and pursuits)
- joy and love (what affirms us in our adventures)
- trust (what keeps us open in our approach to others, as well as to ourselves)
- spontaneity (what keeps us dynamic and authentically responsive)

None of these "assets" need prompting. Rather, they operate independently - and by themselves.

Our part of the bargain is simple: we need to allow them space and permission. This is where we might need a little savvy, for standing in the way of our innate creativity - and motivation - are certain "stress forces", like anger and fear.

These "stress forces" can very quickly crowd out our creativity. Take blame culture - delivered by the stress force anger. Blame culture - and anger - illustrate very well the handiwork of stress forces, which operate subconsciously to distort our appetites and desires - and steer us away from our own, innate direction, attention and loyalties.

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Open up to love, joy and curiosity, and motivation is never far behind.

Nothing motivates us as much as to love or enjoy someone or something, or to own a little curiosity about the world around us (and about what's inside our own mind and imagination).

What motivates a truly high achiever are things like commitment, inspiration and sense of purpose - much more so than those more compulsive "forces" like fear of failure.

In other words, what brings about quality and excellence in human endeavour are "creative forces" like love and joy - personal creativity, in other words - far more than stress, and stress's "mind bullies", like compulsive greed and fear.

Success is bound to follow - not just in our art and industry, but even in our personal lives, families and societies.

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Nevertheless, there seems to be a fashion for disregarding the potential of us human beings to be self-governing, and directed by our innate captaincy and motivation - courtesy of such "creative forces" as joy and love.

Instead, in place of true cooperation, respect and trust, there seems to be a lot of control, and even coercion.

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Teachers, for example, seem to have become caught up in a political game. A culture of targets and bureaucratic overreach threatens to squeeze the initiative and joy out of the classroom - for pupils no less than for teachers.

Taking responsibility for one's own work seems to be seen as an over-costly liberty, with human autonomy and originality - and creativity - seemingly something seen as in need of rationing.

Yet creativity has a growing number of advocates.



One such is Dan Pink, who has observed how costly the same development is proving within the world of private business.

In his TED talk from 2009, The puzzle of motivation, Pink reveals the counterproductive nature of financial incentives as a means of "boosting" worker's performance, Pink's startling conclusion is that, "there is a mismatch between what science knows, and what business does."

Incidentally, in his TED talk about motivation, Dan Pink also highlighted an essential point about creative thinking and puzzle solving - and how this, too, can be sabotaged by stress.

Once again, the obvious question that needs answering is: what is dragging us down this dead-end in the first place?

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If there's a "lesser" part of our nature, then surely all of us have more than enough personal experience of it. Just take sibling rivalry - something familiar to most of us. Here, we become (unconsciously) swept up in a clash of egos or ambitions - whether literally with our siblings, or perhaps with our workmates or neighbours struggling with "status anxiety".

When caught up in rows and squabbles, it's as if we become unrecognisable to ourselves. The "squabble instinct" takes over, and "stress forces" switch over to what feel like reptilian ways of seeing the world - as where we develop "tunnel vision" focus, and desire domination and control (due to the compulsive desire-driven interest in outward power).

The trouble is, instincts and "forces" like these are great at grabbing our attention. But these same "stress forces" can, of course, prove our undoing.

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Again, to be brutally honest, we can easily revert to patterns seen in more "primitive" creatures, even if we try to conceal this through a veneer of sophistication and cleverly worded "justification".

Still, the truth is never far from the surface - for example when it comes to our instinctual fondness for "pecking orders".

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Alternatively...

Starting with our own self, we can start to grow a little more conscious of those unconscious forces that otherwise take us over - like compulsive desire and fear.

Equally, we need to grow a little scepticism towards that ancient weapon of enforcing compliance: the fear of punishment (“stick”) and the desire for approval (“carrot”).

Very tellingly, this “carrot and stick” means of controlling us is even referred to as “controlled motivation” in the psychological literature.

Though a very young field of study, the psychology of motivation finds only more and more evidence that controlled motivation only compromises our well-being, while actually weakening our performance (except in the most rudimentary of tasks, such as tapping as fast as possible on a keyboard).

The only conclusion we can draw is that it's time to stop treating a human being as a mere mule to be ruled through the sugar lump and boot.


Psychologists Richard Ryan and Edward Deci propose a far more effective kind of drive: the autonomous motivation that comes when we're trusted enough to unfold our own - creative - potential.

When free from fear etc., we're reunited with our own, true motivational "rocket fuel": joy, love, inspiration, along with empowerment and initiative.

Armed with such innate motivational forces, our motivation, willpower and self-control will take care of themselves.

Meanwhile, such essentials for our well-being as adopting a healthy diet - and the habit of regular exercise, and caring properly for our loved ones - can be restored to their rightful place in our lives, alongside a return to real motivation.

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John Lennon knew all about "bad" motivational techniques - like when others seek to intimidate us through awakening our fear.

Never one to shy away from telling it like it is, Lennon's song Working Class Hero includes these lines: “They hit you at school... When they’ve tortured and scared you for twenty-odd years... you can’t really function you’re so full of fear.”

Lennon was written off in school reports as “certainly on the road to failure” – but the evidence speaks to a rather different reality.

Precisely because they operate by taking control, “stress forces” can mislead us, and direct us to take ill-judged shortcuts.

Sooner or later, the chickens come home to roost, as where a compulsive desire-infected culture of bonuses saw too many home loans pushed on a public incapable of ever paying them back, leading to the subprime mortgage splurge – that, in 2008, collapsed the economy of the globe.


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The answer is to trust in our own, innate, creative motivation, or, as Ryan and Deci would call it, autonomous motivation.

Whether at school, in the workplace, or at home, Ryan and Deci propose a far better approach than gung-ho carrot-dangle and stick-poke. In a nutshell, they advise us to have more of a vote in how our life goes, so we decide things truly for ourselves. Setting out their stall in “self-determination theory”, Ryan and Deci refer to autonomy as a psychological need. Yet they hasten to explain that autonomy needn’t lead to our closing the drawbridge and retreating into ourselves. Quite to the contrary, they see the individual and the community as thriving simultaneously. Indeed, Ryan and Deci see autonomy as existing alongside not just competence, but relatedness also, these fellow needs being all-of-a-piece.

Ryan and Deci’s research points a way forward for all of us, with autonomous outperforming controlled motivation in areas to include: encouraging healthier lifestyles, coaching athletes, running companies and teaching children.