Motivation for Students…Internal or External?

Before going deeper into the types of motivation, it will be wise to clarify our idea and understanding by the word ‘motivation’.

Many people have many different meanings of motivation. But the actual word comes from the word ‘motive’. From motive arises motivation. So if there is no motive then there cannot be any motivation. If there is any wrong motive then the resulting motivation will also be wrong motivation. 

In this world all the people are doing so much work. Almost all. Those who are going to earn, they are also working, those who are staying back home are also mostly working. And behind every such work there lies some motive. 

A housewife works with the motive to keep the house running well. A mother takes care of her child to ensure his or her wellbeing and proper growth. That is the motive. And that is where the motivation comes from. 

Hardly any human being can work without a proper motive or you can call it a defined purpose. Only a robot will be able to do something without any motive. They just compile and run the program given to them. They themselves do not have any purpose or motive with the program and hence they neither need any motivation. 

Thus humans need purpose or motive to work. And there lies the actual secret of such a magical word which we call motivation. The motive has to align with the type of the work. Otherwise there will not be any motivation. 

As I have already said, that motivation quite a lot varies from person to person. But to sum up there are two major categories of motivation. 

One is external motivation. Maybe one student is fighting hard to become the best scorer of the class. This is external motivation. The underlying motive is to score highest and rank best in the class. 

Some may have money as a motive behind his work. Hence that can become a point of motivation. Some can work for recognition and social position. That becomes the underlying motive and thus the main source of motivation. 

Some may work to support his family. So if that be the motive then from it can generate motivation. 

A motivation can be defined by two factors – the quality of motivation and the intensity of motivation. Obviously quality is more important than the intensity. Because if an inferior quality motivation gets more intensity then that may lead to a great problem. So it is better to have an acceptable ratio between the quality and intensity of any motivation. 

In this world the majority of people work on external motivation. It may be a dream job, or a great pay package, or place and location, or social position, peer competition, and so on. Even building a house, fancy cars, and every other prized possession can become a source of external motivation. 

Then there are internal or intrinsic motivations. These types are subtle, deep and hard to decode. Suppose two persons, both are working with motivations to buy good houses. One of them wants the house because he wants to own one such house. The other one wants the house because he loves his family and wants that house for his family.

Both seem to be external motivation but one is arising from the purpose or motive of ambition and the other is arising from the feeling of love and attachments. So the second one though looks external but not actually external. It is internal. 

Similarly a person can be in love with some subject and do it with great motivation. That love supplies the motivation from inside and it does not come from any external sources. 

By this I can remember two great personalities for whom the motivation was so internal or intrinsic. Both are Mathematicians and one is Srinivasa Ramanujan and the other one is Paul Erdos. Their purpose was that they have to do Mathematics, because they loved to do Mathematics. That was the motive and that was the source of motivation. 

They were least worried or concerned about how much salary they will earn by doing Mathematics, or how many awards they can get or what social position they can gain by their work. So these are among the classical examples of intrinsic or external motivations. 

But not all of us are so pure. Most of the people have a kind of mixed mode motivation. And the percentage or ratio of external motivation versus internal motivation keeps varying from person to person. Even for the same person the ratio can vary from time to time depending on many variables. 

Actually this question does not have a generalized answer. It varies with place, time and person. 

I was talking about the ratio of the ratio of the two types of motivation. It is usually better to have the ratio a little more favored towards the intrinsic or internal motivation than the external motivation.

Living with zero external motivation is not at all an easy task in this world. Perhaps impossible also. Ramanujan was a classical example of zero external motivation. And the result was he failed to sustain and survive. Thus his internal motivation of love also got annihilated. 

So it is advisable and intelligent to have a little blend of external motivation with a lot of internal motivation. Otherwise it may become hard to convert the internal motivation into external profitability. 

When we do something or learn something then something has to be profited. That profit can be internal profit or it can be external profit. Money, house, car, etc. are among the external profits. And knowledge, wisdom, insights, happiness, peace etc. are among internal profits. 

Those people who are mostly powered by internal motivation also tend to gain more of internal profits. That is ok but not too good for the material level of human existence over here. One needs to have quite a lot of external profits also. 

That is why, if a high level of internal motivation is there then the person has to cultivate a level of external motivation. Then that can generate a better and holistic profitability from both the motivations. 

Motivation is good. Internal motivation is one of the deepest in necessity but one of the rarest in availability. 

External motivations are also a need but should not be driven by greed. Then a great combination of internal and external motivations will form to provide a real peaceful and blissful life. Else life will be highly disbalanced and unpeaceful. This is the least desirable for anyone. 

So let us try to cultivate happy motivations and convert them to happy life profits. This together can create a happy and prosperous life for all.