Dr. Kentaro Fujita

The thing to think about, I think, is although achievement motivation may be sort of promoted by our particular culture, when I think of motivation, I think of much more of the myriad or plethora of different motivations that we have that might motivate behavior.

in just as productive a manner.

So I'm thinking about, for example, we know that belonging motivation is really important for humans.

Humans is a social species.

We survived because we were in groups and we had others.

A human alone is not very powerful, but a human in large groups is very powerful.

So we've evolved this motivation to be connected and socially intertwined with other people.

But I'm sure you know folks that are super belonging motivated and people who are not so motivated.

And the people who are really motivated to belong to a group will do amazing things in order to belong to the group.

If they get rejected from that group, they will bend heaven and earth to get back in that group and just do amazing things.

And there are many other motivations too, motivations for power, motivations –

for control, you name it.

There's motivations for self-esteem, motivations for competence.

And so when I think of motivations, I try not to think of any one motivation, but sort of think about the aggregate motivation impelling, pushing us towards a particular behavior.

So again, I was talking a little bit before about not giving the temptation a fair one-on-one

fight, but actually bringing to bear all the motivations that might help you overcome it.

If you know what motivates you,

You should use those and activate those when you need them strategically, right?

So if I'm someone who is competitive, then I might use achievement motivation to fuel my desire to do really hard things.

But maybe I'm not that kind of person.