Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Dr. Richard M. Ryan on Exploring the Heart of Human Motivation EP 386

Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up next on Passion Struct. Recent research in Neurolpsychology has really been showing that we do have a set of internally rewarding experiences that are behind a lot of our activities. When people are doing something benevolent, when they're doing kind things for other people, they're also feeling straddle activation. They're showing activation in the reward centers of their brain because something satisfying has occurred for them. I think in this way it's very much supported the general tenets of self-determination theory. Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host John Armiles and on the show we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most

Starting point is 00:00:35 inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guest ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello everyone, and welcome back to episode 385 of PassionStruck, consistently ranked by Apple as the number one alternative health podcast.

Starting point is 00:01:17 And thank you to all of you who come back to the show every single week to listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world. I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I just learned that my new book Passion Struck was selected by the next Big Idea Club, which is curated by none other than Adam Grant, Dan Pink, Susan Kane, and Malcolm Gladwell, as one of their must-read books for 2024, an absolutely humbling recognition. It's now available for pre-order and you can find it on Amazon or on the Passion Struck website. Links will be in the show notes. Throughout December and January, I will be using my solo episodes to discuss different aspects of the book leading up to its launch. This past week I covered a topic of self-doubt and give you seven key ways from my book

Starting point is 00:01:58 that you can overcome, fear and self-doubt, and imposter syndrome in your life. I also wanted to say that on launch day February 6 6th, I'm gonna be bringing you a very special episode you're not gonna want to miss. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here, or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member, and we absolutely love it when you do that. We now have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans favorite episodes that we organize in a convenient playlist that give any new listener a great way to understand everything we do here on the show. Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started.

Starting point is 00:02:31 In case you missed it, earlier in the week, I interviewed Dr. Lucia Aronica, a lecturer at Stanford University, an instructor in the Stanford Genomics Certificate Program, who has dedicated her career to unraveling the intricate dance between nutrition, genetics, and epigenetics. Her research and teaching have illuminated the profound impact of our daily choices on our genes and overall well-being. And if you liked BluChi's episode or today's, we would truly appreciate you giving it a five-star rating and review, ensuring this show with your friends and family.

Starting point is 00:02:59 These ratings and reviews go such a long way into bringing more people into the passion of Stark community, and I know we andguess love to hear from our listeners. Today, it's an absolute honor for me to welcome Dr. Richard M. Ryan. Richard is not just any psychologist, he is one of the world's top 25 scientists. The most cited psychologist today, and the co-founder of the Self-Determination Theory, which has revolutionized our understanding of human motivation. This groundbreaking theory is the bedrock practice in organizations, clinics, and sports teams all around the globe. Dr. Ryan is currently a professor at the Institute for Positive

Starting point is 00:03:32 Psychology and Education at the Australian Catholic University in North Sydney, where he has been cited as one of Australia's top researchers earning him a spot on the Australian's lifetime achievements leader board. In our conversation today, we delve into the essence of what makes us feel like we matter. Exploring the core principles of self-determination theory and how psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are integral to our mental health and overall happiness. We discuss how these needs fuel our intentionality, shaping our actions and behaviors and pursuit of a life filled with purpose and meaning. Dr. Ryan will provide us with insights into how we can cultivate a sense of mattering and purpose in our lives. We will explore the continuum of motivations from intrinsic

Starting point is 00:04:12 to ex-transient and how these forces drive our actions and impact our well-being. Furthermore, we'll delve into the world of neuropsychology and learn how cutting edge research has substantiated the principles of self-determination theory opening up new possibilities for understanding the complex interplay between our brain and behavior. So without further ado, let's dive deep into the mind of Dr. Richard Ryan and explore the profound impact that feeling valued having a sense of matter and living with intentionality can have on our lives. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me, be your host and guide on your journey

Starting point is 00:04:42 to creating an intentional life. Now let that journey begin. you're so welcome and I cannot wait to dive into self-determination theory in more detail, but I want to give the audience some background. So you originally met Edward DC when you were a graduate student. And if I understand it correctly, at the time the two of you met, you were studying how people handle change. What brought the two of you together to start studying human motivation and wellness? The Chauvin's map we were actually doing some clinical work together using Gestalt therapy techniques.

Starting point is 00:05:31 So we had some discussions about his work on intrinsic motivation and its connections with just the general ideas about human autonomy, which was an area of interest to me. And I think we just saw that we had some common thinking. And we thought that the phenomena of intrinsic motivation that he was exploring was going way into understanding that people are pretty active. People can make a change in their world. And then there are certain environments in which that's more likely to happen than others. And we wanted to study that. That you brought up intrinsic motivation. When I think of the study of motivation and that specifically, I can't help but thinking of the two of you. If the audience doesn't know about the two of you, you guys have hundreds of thousands of citations to your credit, not to mention hundreds of articles and books and now through organization that you've developed even more beyond you.

Starting point is 00:06:21 Did you ever think that when you started this, you would be known as one of the world's top 25 scientists? No, that certainly wasn't an intention behind any other work. I do think that both Ed and I back in the, in the, I have to understand this in the historical context of the late 70s, early 80s, that we thought there needed to be another point of view besides the dominant behavioral and cognitive behavioral view at the time in which people were Tons to the environment or manipulate the environment to manipulate people's behavior But instead we were interested in kind of the internal

Starting point is 00:06:53 Drivers of behavior the things that people were really after when they're passionate about something when they're engaged in something What are the things that have people sustain their engagement over time and activities? Those were the kind of things that interested us, not how you could reward or punish people to do certain things, which was a dominant paradigm at the time. And the two of you came out with a book in 1985, titled In Trans-Eck Motivation and Self-Determination

Starting point is 00:07:19 and Human Behavior, and you highlighted in it the importance of high quality motivation and enhancing an individual's experience and performance. And I liken it to just like our body needs nutrients, like oxygen and clean water to stay healthy. Self-determination theory says we also have to have basic psychological needs that have to be met for our mental health and well-being. Can you explain the three core tenets of autonomy, feeling competent and being connected with others and why that's so important to mental health and happiness? Well, John, I like the way you begin with the metaphor of there are some kind of nutrients that we need

Starting point is 00:07:55 in order to be able to flourish. And certainly, we have physical nutrients, vitamins, other kinds of things. But psychologically, people are at their best in environments where they can get certain psychological needs satisfied. other kinds of things, but psychologically, people are at their best in environments where they can get certain psychological needs satisfied. And one of them is the need for competence. We're never really motivated in an environment where we feel overwhelmed by the challenges

Starting point is 00:08:14 that are there or where we feel like we don't know what to do next, where we don't have a structure or we don't have the skills to negotiate the environment. Motivation dies directly. And that's been at the center of many theories of motivation. But more than that, we also need to feel that what we're doing is something that we can authentically stand behind, that we endorse, that we want to be engaged. The more we have that volition and sense of willingness

Starting point is 00:08:36 to do something, the more we put our whole spirits into what we're doing, the more we're wholeheartedly engaged in an activity. And that's a secret of self-determination why it's really important is because when you have that sense of autonomy in your activities, you engage in a way that's more fully satisfying is also higher quality performance.

Starting point is 00:08:54 And I think we just add another thing, which is I think we all flourish better in environments where we feel interpersonally supported and have some sense of relatedness with others. If you don't have a sense of belonging or a mattering or being included in what's going on, it's really hard to get grounded in the sense of purpose and of why you're there.

Starting point is 00:09:12 So really these things are synergistic, that sense of competence, that sense of autonomy, that sense of relatedness. They're all really important in people being really satisfied in what they're doing and then doing it at their best. Well, thank you for explaining that. and I'm going to go through another 101 topic, and that is in self-determination theory,

Starting point is 00:09:31 you describe a continuum of motivations ranging from intrinsic to extrinsic. For the sake of the listener, can you elaborate on how these different types of motivations can lead individuals to act, and the distinct implications each has for performance? I'm sure, you know, when you think about motivation, a lot of people think about motivation is an all or nothing thing. You have a lot of motivation or you have just a little. But I think a distinction we would make in self-determination theory is that it really matters and what's

Starting point is 00:10:03 motivated you or why you're doing what you're doing. You can be highly motivated because external pressures are on you. And we can see that could be a pretty powerful motivation, but if you're acting only out of external pressures, then as soon as those pressures go away, so does your motivation. In other words, the motivation is dependent upon you are responding to these external pressures. And so it's not a sustainable kind of motivation unless the environment keeps pressuring and pressuring, of course, and then you get worn out and burned out. Another kind of motivation is interjection.

Starting point is 00:10:32 When you're trying to please the other people around you or live up to some kind of really strongly rigidly internalized standard that you have, this too is a pretty big driving force for people. I want to, you know, make my father proud of me, or I want to do the things that will impress my boss. If this is what's motivating you, it can also be a high driving force, but also you're really susceptible to being off courses on the things that are authentic to you. It's also can be highly conflictual, because that may not be something that fits with your own values. And you're also dependent upon that approval being there, and when it's not, motivation can really flag.

Starting point is 00:11:08 More sustainable is motivation that comes because you really value what you're doing, and you understand the purpose behind it. So that sense of value in our activities is really important to what we call autonomous motivation, a willing engagement in what you're doing. And another form of autonomous motivation, what we already talked about John is intrinsic motivation when you're doing it just because you also enjoy the activity itself. People are most the highest quality motivation when it comes out of these last two things. They're doing something because you have a sense of purpose and value in it and doing something because

Starting point is 00:11:37 you have interest in it. These things really are what we want to cultivate in a workplace or in a classroom or on a sport field or anywhere else that we're trying to foster motivation in people. Well, in my own journey, it was interesting because I ended up going to the Naval Academy coming out of that served in the military and I was very much inundated with the latter two, the feeling that what we were doing, there was a purpose to the activities that we were doing, and also that you, three-year inherent worth and in serving with others,

Starting point is 00:12:14 had us a desire to show up at work, a desire to help people when we got deployed. I really like the way you say that, and it's important, I think, for people on the show that autonomy is not about doing whatever you want. It's about doing something that you highly value, something that you stand behind. And it sounds like your service was like that. You really felt like what you were engaged in was something of worth. And that's highly motivating. It was and so it was very interesting for me and I'm sure veterans

Starting point is 00:12:42 and other people probably feel the same way. When I went into the corporate world, it was almost 180 degree difference. What I found was that we were being rewarded for was getting to the next level or getting a bonus or achieving this title or doing this project so the company could make more money. And it was just such a difference for me. I felt like a fish out of water for a while. And my question to you is that in many ways, some of this has changed, but a lot of it remains the same.

Starting point is 00:13:19 Do you have a good feeling for why there's so much disengagement across the workplace today? In what you were just describing, the reasons that people can be really passionate and engaged in work is because they're finding intrinsic satisfaction in their job. They're finding a sense of purpose. They're finding interest and value in it. But a lot of times, I think organizations lose the thread on that. They try and motivate through external incentives. They're organized around a bottom line formulation

Starting point is 00:13:48 which crowds out a consideration of those intrinsic satisfaction of the employee and their workplace. Some workplaces, as you say, are really good at creating a climate where people can feel that sense of autonomy over their work and interest in what they're doing. But others are creating an environment in which people feel controlled

Starting point is 00:14:06 on a regular basis, don't have that overall sense of purpose. Don't see what the company's doing that's serving a larger good. And that really undermines that engagement at work. Yeah, I remember I've told this story before, but it's been a while. When I took my first job at Lowe's, I was hired in as a vice president to take over this function over infrastructure and operations. And I remember about the first week into it, I met with the head of HR and she sits me down and she goes, I just want you to understand where your group lies.

Starting point is 00:14:38 And she goes, we recently did an employee engagement survey and out of, you think, 1,800 stores, all the distribution centers, corporate functions, probably 2,500, 2,700 departments across the company, we were second-last in employee engagement. So I go out and as anyone would do, I start talking to the customers of the group and everyone saying, your group is the worst, no one's got any motivation,

Starting point is 00:15:06 they don't do anything, et cetera. But then I started to spend time with the people. And I remember I'd go in to the people who are on the call center and the operation center and the middle of the night. I talked to everyone from the person working on the data center floor to directors in the organization. And I came to a startling realization that I'd say only about 10% of the employees

Starting point is 00:15:31 knew why what they were even doing mattered in any shape or form. And none of them really understood how their jobs impacted the corporate strategy in any way. You think that is something that's common? I think that's really common. I think understanding what the role you play and the significance and why your role matters

Starting point is 00:15:53 is really a helpful thing in terms of people finding engagements and work. When you can see the place that your contribution makes in the overall success of a corporation, you can feel some ownership of that and feel some part of that larger endeavor. And I don't think that it's communicated enough. This is not just true in organizations, by the way. I think of the number of classrooms where students aren't told why they have to learn something or why something might

Starting point is 00:16:17 be important to learn, but nonetheless they're told to learn it. It's a similar thing as an incorporation where you're told to do something, but you don't really understand how it fits in with the overall purpose. That sense of a rationale for why we're doing what we're doing is part of what allows us to willingly engage in something and without a rationale, none of us really can have that sense of authenticity and intentionality in what we're doing. Thank you for bringing that up and I wanted to take this just one layer deeper. And that is many of the theories of motivation that I was brought up in emphasize the quantity of motivation, and you found that the qualitative differences

Starting point is 00:16:53 also matter. So the theory I'm most used to using for my corporate days was goal setting theory. Can you go through how self-determinate nation theory and it complements that, but is different from goal setting theory. Can you go through how self-determined nation theory and it complements that but is different from goal setting theory? Well goal setting theory is really related to self-evicacy theory and the idea in goal setting theories if you can set really challenging goals that people will be motivated to achieve them. And I think as a general proposition that's true but then we have to say

Starting point is 00:17:24 about what goals and set by who? And if I have goals that, again, I can endorse that I understand the reason behind them. I understand the purpose that I'm engaging in those goals. That's really going to help me fully put my heart into those goals. But if I'm just setting goals because they've been externally mandated, they've been externally set. I don't really understand the purpose of it, then even if they're challenging goals, that's not enough. So self-determination theory would say, it's not just the setting of goals or the level of goals. It's also the reasons behind the goals. And in fact, the reasons behind the goals will probably have more predictive value than just the level of challenge set.

Starting point is 00:18:01 Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Just setting your goal for the goal's sake is irrelevant. Unless you really have a basis for why you need to do it in the first place. Exactly. The goals are useful because they allow us to have a benchmark and feedback and have a sense of progress. So they have a place in motivation. I don't want to deny that, but they have to be set in the context of what's behind a person's motivation or what's driving the activity itself. And a goal setting is just a piece of that action.

Starting point is 00:18:30 So there has been a lot of books now written on habits, whether it was B.J. Fog's original works on this to Charles to more recently James Clear. How do you find self-determination theory interplays with habit formation and habit loop? We make a distinction in sub-termination theory between behaviors that are automatic for us and those that and among those, which ones are really ones that we would want to retain and which ones are ones we wouldn't. We might have some habits that when we reflectively look at the move that we say, well, I wish I didn't have that habit. It's a problem and it's in my way. And then of course, we have to then

Starting point is 00:19:11 agentically engage in the things that would have us break that habit. But we have a lot of habits too that when we reflect on them, we say, I'm glad I have that habit. I'm just going to give a prime example. If I drive a standard car, which is pretty rare, but I like a standard car, if you pretty rare, but I like a standard car, if you're driving and you hear the hum of an engine, you automatically shift the gear in the car. It's a habit, but it's one that you would say, yeah, I'm glad I have that habit. I'm glad I'm

Starting point is 00:19:35 attuned to that. So habits are something that might be something that's actually well integrated into us and reflect that just smooth functioning. We don't want to have everything being conscious in this all the time. But sometimes a habit can be something that reflective way we don't want. And then we can take action to undo that habit. I'm going to take this a little bit further. As you and I were getting on the podcast today, I told you that one of the most fundamental issues I think that's plaguing the world today is an existential lack of significance or meaning. People just don't feel like's plaguing the world today is an existential lack of significance or meaning. People just don't feel like they exist in the world and I recently have been looking at a lot of the research that Gordon Flat has been doing on anti-mattering. Considering the

Starting point is 00:20:15 principles of STT, can you elaborate on the significance of feeling valued and having a sense of matter, and especially as it relates to our overall well-being and how engaged we are with our lives? Sure, I think STT says that we are built to seek out and be happy with certain satisfaction. So, satisfaction is a feeling competent in what we're doing, satisfaction is a feeling connected with other people and satisfaction is in doing things that feel authentic and real to us.

Starting point is 00:20:47 When we have those things happening, when we have that sense of connectedness with other people, when we feel like we're doing things that are using our abilities, I think this is a deep sense of satisfaction. And it's really all that we need. And I want to say something about matter is not about being famous, it's not about having a worldwide impact, it's about having in your immediate environment, the capacity to feel love, the capacity to grow, the capacity to learn, the capacity to do things that you value, just in one's own environment. And I think when you have that, then you have a deep sense of embedded ness and a deep sense of meaning. I think when you don't have those things, then you can have a sense of being unanchored in the world,

Starting point is 00:21:28 and alienated in the world, and lost in the world, in ways that you described. And I think there's a lot of that today. You know, I don't think you can find the kind of authentic satisfaction outside of real human relationships. And I think it's important that we see that they're often right in front of us.

Starting point is 00:21:44 I was so glad that this past year Bob Waldinger came out with his book The Good Life because I think it was a great time for the world to understand that Harvard study at an advanced aging and that importance of relationships and what we do. So, thanks for bringing that angle up. I want to do explore this a little bit more through a number of things that are happening in the world today. One of the big things that people are exposed to is social media. And I have a 19 year old and a 25 year old, and I always worry about how they're being influenced as they're growing up by what I see on social media is people not trying to live up to being what I would call an everyday hero,

Starting point is 00:22:27 someone who is serving humanity, trying to make it better. They're trying, it seems like we're trying to emulate these super influencers. Yeah. What bearing do you think that has on what's happening to people and how can people use SDT to try to combat that? No, I mean, first social media writ large is just the environment in which all of us exist these days.

Starting point is 00:22:50 If you're in the modern world, you're in an environment where you're exposed to a lot of social media. And then there is a generational effect here. We were just finishing a study that showed that in terms of social media, of course, the Gen Z has the highest usage of social media, so they're the most exposed to it. I think it's important to say that screen time

Starting point is 00:23:09 was highest in boomers. So that probably suggests that they watch more TV, but Anamatsu, which is a worse influence on that. I don't know. But the social media, when the large studies on social media haven't really shown that there's some general main effect where some exposure to social media is somehow bad for people. I don't think it's that so much.

Starting point is 00:23:30 It can be polarizing. And I do think we have a lot of these figures that, as you say, are not trying to be everyday heroes, but are trying to just draw attention to themselves. And I think social media is a magnet for those kinds of personalities. And when you're in gate, you're seeing kind of the extremes of humanity.

Starting point is 00:23:46 And of course, the big mistake can be, because that's actually humanity out there as opposed to a character of it that we're doing at the time of track clicks. I totally see where you're coming from. I think a bigger issue that's facing us is what is going to happen with the evolution of AI, robotics, et cetera. And about eight years ago,

Starting point is 00:24:09 before I even went down this path of creating passion strike, I was working in a startup called Picket Fence and we were trying to disrupt the real estate industry. And the company was a little bit ahead of its time for what technology could do at that time, but what we were really trying to do was replace the realtor with AI. And it wasn't so much that the technology couldn't do it. It was that the user interface wasn't at that point available in a way that people would feel comfortable dealing with completely AI versus having a real person to work with. It's interesting because when I think of that, I do think that this is an

Starting point is 00:24:53 industry that's going to get completely disrupted. When I have looked at the business case for companies like Uber, their whole business model is predicated someday on not having a human being in the car driving it. It's based on autonomous drivers. And so when I see these studies saying that three to 400 million jobs are gonna change over the next decade, it's really scary. And it can cause people to have really deep feelings of how can I be intrinsically motivated at all

Starting point is 00:25:27 when I have no control over my future? It would be some of your advice to people who are gonna be experiencing this in the future, which literally is most of us. First, I agree with your assessment of the capacities of AI to take over a lot of jobs that we have. And in a way, I think that the industries are designing things in a way that's going to be even more possible. And Oopers have good example of it, but there's just lots of examples, even a lot of the

Starting point is 00:25:55 academic work that somebody like me can do. AI can do very well. One of the other pieces that you raises, one of the limitations AI in the past was its lack of capacity to interact in a human way with people to really be responsive to the things that humans want. But AI shows itself to be increasingly trainable to have a kind of interaction that I even can do things like support autonomy, support competence, and support relatedness.

Starting point is 00:26:22 And a lot of the work that I've been asked to do recently has to be to evaluate AI systems in terms of how one of the characteristics they bring to the interactions they have with humans in the service of really increasing their engagement and their capacity to do these jobs. We are handing a lot of, I guess you could say, a human work over to AI, the history of humanity has been one of handing over work to machines and then picking up new forms of work, hopefully, that are important ones. Do people have no control over their future?

Starting point is 00:26:53 I do think there's a lot of people who have to look ahead in their own profession and see what the implications of AI are. But we can't really get away from the fact that this progress is going to be there, and that's going to be a part. One of the things that I think about is that as a society, if we increasingly are able to offload all these tasks, is that demand some kind of reorganization the way we think about labor and hours per week. For instance, we know that a four-day week is better for people's mental health, physical health, it's even better for the economy, it's even better for people's productivity.

Starting point is 00:27:27 Maybe we can begin to take advantage of some of these technological advancements to improve the human condition, which after all, they should be doing. Yeah, it's interesting. A lot of the stuff that I've looked at from the Confidence to bookings, Gartner, others, when you look at their graphs, they show this curve that's going to the extreme over the past 30, 40 years of members of the population who have joined companies that they consider large. So these are 250 or more employees. Now, obviously, companies like Amazon,

Starting point is 00:28:04 Lowe's, etc. will have hundreds of thousands of employees. But what's interesting is during that same time period, the number of small businesses and entrepreneurs has gone down almost in a reciprocal amount, which to me is really showcasing this disintegration that we've had of the middle class and many Western cultures. And where I'm going with this is when I'm talking to my kids about where I'm telling them to focus in the future, I am telling them that in this new world where you're going to have technology hitting you, you're going gonna have these jobs being replaced. There are a couple things for you to consider. And one of those is to take control of your own path

Starting point is 00:28:51 as you were saying. Ultimately, we are built here to learn. We need to constantly be learning and that's something that they need to be focused on. But more important than that, I tell them that one thing that AI is not going to be able to replace is how to be curious, creative, and your overall productivity. And then on top of that, emotions like kindness, being compassionate, gratitude, how do you

Starting point is 00:29:17 think people should start thinking about those things? Because if we ever allow AI to replace our creativity and our emotions, that's to me when things get really scary. Do you think I'm on the right path here? I have a lot of reactions to the things you're saying, John, but one just brings me to some of the work we've been doing recently with nurses and medical professionals and the high rates of burnout that they're experiencing. When you talk to people in those professions, one of the reasons that they're in those professions is because they're places where you can be really human, where you can help other people,

Starting point is 00:29:51 where you can have that sense of purpose and kindness for other things. And increasingly, the more corporatized the medical profession has become and hospitals have become, the more we see under staffing, we see profit taking at the cost of the people's ability to give the kind of care that's itself satisfying. So I'm just coming back to, there are some professions that are inherently human professions where, you know, we really need to have that compassion

Starting point is 00:30:19 for other people and where we get satisfaction from that compassion. And I think what I hope is that we start to value those a lot more as a society, and start to reward those positions accordingly. And I don't mean just reward them financially with higher salaries, create conditions under which people can really experience the satisfaction. Those professions should have in them, whether you're a doctor or a nurse or a caregiver and a home for aging people.

Starting point is 00:30:44 You want to be able to experience the satisfaction of caregiving and that means that you need to have the context and the circumstances of it. So I hope it was free up resources with AI from some kinds of tests in those organizations. We start to dedicate some of those resources towards creating better human environments. Because we value those across the site as no matter who you are, whether you're richer poor, you want nurses to be attentive to you when you get into the hospital, whether you're richer poor, you want to be in cared for, I mean, emergency situations. So there's all kinds of situations where it matters to everybody that we take care of our human caregivers.

Starting point is 00:31:18 No, I'm so glad you brought that up because my fiance is a nurse practitioner and her specialty is primary care. And for a while, she was doing that. But in the clinic, she was working in because of the small amount of money that insurance gives these offices to do physicals. They have to do dozens and dozens a day. So her typical patient load somewhere between 20 on a good day, 30 on a really hectic day. So when you boil that down, it really spending about 15 minutes per patient. And for her,

Starting point is 00:31:52 it just gave her this strong sense that she wasn't really serving her patients because you really have two options. Either you're sitting in front of a patient, typing on your computer because you're trying to get all the notes into the chart, or if you're sitting in front of a patient typing on your computer because you're trying to get all the notes into the chart, or if you're someone who's conscientious about it, you're taking the time to be with the patient as much as you can, and then they're having to do all the charting after their actual day is done, which is what happened to her. So she found herself working 15, 16 hour days and just never getting a break and so it just accumulated. So completely agree that environment plays such a huge role.

Starting point is 00:32:33 And it brings us back to some of where we started our conversation, which is that what motivates people most of the time in workplace is as a sense of purpose and being able to use the abilities they have towards some end that they can endorse and and when corporations and when bureaucracies crowd out those satisfaction, they crowd out motivation as well. And that's why we see the high attrition with its in professions like teaching, professions like nursing, professions like medicine, because were crowding out those satisfaction. Thank you for bringing that up. Richard, I wanted to ask you one of the things that you have gone into is understanding behavior through conscious and non-conscious motives, such as desires, fears, values, and goals as we've talked

Starting point is 00:33:19 about. Can you explain a little bit how those underlying forces shape our actions and how understanding this more clearly can be applied to bringing about more meaningful behavior change? Sure, I'm just going to take an example before we were talking about the different kinds of motivations that can underlie behavior and one of those kinds of motivations categories, I guess we could say, it's called interjection. And this is when we're living our lives trying to fulfill maybe the standards that were somebody else's standards that we who's approval we want or maybe we even turnalyze some standards, but we haven't really reflectively thought, well, why am I pursuing these things so hard? I'm going to give an example here. I have a former patient who she was really a top performing musician and all life, she had been told that she was going to be a great musician.

Starting point is 00:34:07 And indeed, she had some talents in that regard, but she had never really effectively chosen that at all. And she was really doing it toward the end of fulfilling everybody else's dreams that maybe weren't her dreams. She had to explore for a bit, whether that was really her. And that meant in some ways letting go of her music for a bit, so that she could re-explore who she might be with a respect to it and then come back to it with more of a sense of ownership

Starting point is 00:34:33 and authenticity and what she was doing, which in her case she particularly did. Sometimes people will find that the values they're pursuing aren't really their own values, and it's time to let those go. Sometimes they find, well, I didn't really have the right reasons for them, but as I look deeper, these are the things I want to hold on to as values. Sometimes they more internalize them, but these dynamics that go back to say conditional regard of parents or parents who like gave you love

Starting point is 00:34:58 an affection when you lived up to their standards, they can really drive a lot of behavior later on that turns out to be not very authentic. And that's why I think being curious about why we do what we do is really important in life because sometimes we find out that our goals are not really our own goals. A lot of our research has shown that when people, for instance, place a lot of value on, say, material success in life or on getting famous or on having really attractive looks, these things, they lead to more unhappiness. And even when you attain them, they don't lead necessarily to more happiness. But when you put value on things like having deep relationships with other people and giving you to your community, not only do people have more happiness when

Starting point is 00:35:40 those are the things that they value, but when you attain them, they really increase happiness. And so there are some goals that even when we have them strongly, they turn out not to be very basic needs that is fine. And so this is why I think it's really important to reflect on what we're after in life and make sure that they're the things that really matter. I'm going to change directions on you a little bit. And one of the favorite episodes that I've done on the show

Starting point is 00:36:05 is I interviewed my friend, Dr. Jay Lombard, who is a neurologist. And he wrote this great book, The Mind of God. And what Drowham to write it was, he specializes in treating patients with ALS and trying to find a cure. But he said when he first started using F-M-R-I to him was finally looking into the soul,

Starting point is 00:36:26 he would say, of a person. And I wanted to ask you, has MRI and F-MRI substantiated and expanded your understanding of SVT? Yeah, it has in some ways. When I think about looking at activation sites in the brain, I don't really think of looking deeply into the soul of people. I think of looking at the mechanisms through which the soul is operating.

Starting point is 00:36:49 I guess I would put it a little bit differently. And I think for instance, we know a lot when people are engaged in activities willingly and with autonomy, they tend to be more activated in certain areas of the brain, like the medial prefrontal cortical areas are more engaged when we're doing something that is intrinsically motivated.

Starting point is 00:37:06 We have more activation and lateral prefrontal cortical areas. So one of the beautiful things about and other scanning techniques is it allows us to refine our hypotheses and also verify if we think certain conditions are activating intrinsic motivation. We don't only have to look at it behaviorally, but we can also look at it neuropsychologically. I think as a set of methods, it's really been helpful in deepening the science of intrinsic motivation and self-determination.

Starting point is 00:37:34 Do you think it's validated some of the work that you've done as well? Yeah, I do. For instance, there's been some really good experiments on the undermining effect of rewards on intrinsic motivation. So if you look at the reward areas of the brain, which is a primitive way of putting at it But those get activated whenever you get rewarded for doing an activity

Starting point is 00:37:54 But they are also activated when you're just doing something because it's interesting because things are internally rewarding and so some of the research Especially more recent research and neuropsychology has really been showing that we do have a set of internally rewarding experiences that are behind a lot of our activities. When people are doing something benevolent, when they're doing kind things for other people, they're also feeling a straddle activation. They're showing activation in the reward centers of their brain because something satisfying has occurred for them. I think in this way, it's very much supported the general tenets of self-determination theory.

Starting point is 00:38:30 And that's what some of my research showed is that it actually was validating some of the findings which is pretty clear. And I want to go back to this conscious and non-conscious motives. I have my own book coming out here in February in one of the chapters. I go through what I call is the pinball life. And I make this assertion that so many of us are on auto pilot or auto missity where we're like a pinball. We're just bouncing off everything around us. And it takes real days like that, John. Don't we all. I'm sorry, go ahead. No, we all do.

Starting point is 00:39:10 It's how do you get that focus and sustain it? It's how do you get into that flow state and stay there for a longer period of time? My question for you is when people, I happen to interview Michelle Seager, who you might know, she's at the University of Michigan, and is a member of your centers as well. We had a really great talk about her book, The Joy Choice. What it fundamentally came down to was the power of microchoises in our lives. And that when we get into this autopilot mode, it's how do you get back into consciousness so that the microchoises that you're making

Starting point is 00:39:49 are ones that are leading you more towards your intrinsic drivers and ultimately your life goals. Have you studied microchoises and what emphasis do you put on them? Well, I haven't studied microchoises in particular, although I'm aware of her book, and I also that it I think those things do matter a lot. I think the place that we have the big interface with STT is about the work on mindfulness and being aware of what it is that you're up to. So you described a life of pinball where you're just reacting to everything going

Starting point is 00:40:19 on around. And of course, that chain will be uninterrupted unless you step outside of the pinball machine and reflectively look at what's going on. And when we think about that, we think about that as an open receptive awareness of what's occurring. Now, people use the term mindfulness to describe that. We measure mindfulness and we show that it's deeply related to having more autonomy in life. If you can be, take that reflective stance with respect to things that gives you the space to make better choices moment to moment. So when we get down to those micro choices, the more we can bring awareness to them,

Starting point is 00:40:53 the more we're gonna make the ones that are the most fitting with our own values and with our own interest. And we're gonna reject the ones that are less fitting. So without that mindfulness, we're just pinfalls reacting to things around us. And so we think stepping back that engaging in awareness,

Starting point is 00:41:09 especially periodically, reflecting on those choices is really important to self-regulation. I couldn't agree more. And it's a big part of what we try to teach on this podcast and many of the behavior scientists that I've run on the show to reinforce that. There's another principle with an STT that I think also applies here.

Starting point is 00:41:29 So we talk about the role of mindfulness and self-regulation, but also, and this is going to be jargonny again, but I'm sorry, because that's the way our science suddenly operates, but we call it integrative emotion regulation. And that simply means when you're having strong feelings about something positive or negative, that's a cue to step back and pay attention to them. See, what are they telling us?

Starting point is 00:41:51 Not to jump in and be controlled by them, but rather to be able to say, my emotions are strong here, they're giving me a message. Let me think about that and receive what that is. So taking interest, we call it interest taking sometimes in emotions as they arise, helps you integrate those and make better choices with respect to them. So mindfulness is particularly important in a moment where there's strong feelings and that's when you would probably take interest in

Starting point is 00:42:15 that and be informed by them. A lot of people think about emotion regulation is tamping down your emotions and how we think in this SDTT now it's more about listening to them, more about knowing what are they trying to tell you and then making choices with that in mind. Well, thank you for sharing that and you probably didn't know this about me, but I actually have spent a lot of time in Australia. I used to work for a company there called Lennelys. Australia. I used to work for a company there called Lennlis and we used to... Where did I last try it? Sydney. So we used... Yeah, we used to be right there in the heart of it all. You're probably familiar with the round building right in the heart of Sydney. That used to be our headquarters. Oh yeah,

Starting point is 00:43:01 no, yeah, right down in the central business district. That's great. Yeah, he's a great city of love, spent in time there. And the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education where I am just has a lot of great scholars. So I've been able to learn from some really great thinkers around me and there's pretty high standard for the scholarship there. So it's been a very positive change for me to go there. That's what I was wanting to understand

Starting point is 00:43:23 and work out with some of the things that you're studying now. Well, that's something that has a lot of different applications and then there's both basic research and then those applied studies that we do with it. So some of what we're doing is looking really at some of the things like you were talking about before the neuropsychology of motivational processes in the brain. So really at that micro level, but really all the way up to how our different societies better at supporting their citizen's basic psychological needs than others. Why is well being higher, for instance, in Finland than it is in say the United States,

Starting point is 00:43:56 or why is it higher in Germany than it is in Ghana? These are questions that we can ask from self-determination theory standpoint of what are the societal mechanisms through which people's basic needs, and including their psychological needs, yet fulfilled. So, that's at the macro level and pretty much everything in between. A lot of our work recently is, is a grant work recently is focused on caregivers for the elderly. So we know that's a high risk population. There's a lot of a tradition in that population. So we want to look at one of the conditions of their work and how can we improve them to have them more engaged in providing higher quality care. So you can see that

Starting point is 00:44:36 there's an applied thing and then there's things that are also basic research. So we're all over the place. Now it's so interesting. I recently did a solo episode on the finished concept of SISU, if you're familiar with that. Yes. And as I was researching it and going down the rabbit hole, it's so interesting how in finished society, they based their whole education system on the core tenets of SISU,

Starting point is 00:45:01 and how different that is, and how we in America are teaching our kids, because they're really trying to emphasize life skills almost from the time these kids are out of diapers and really this need for I don't know what's like super resilient super grit and how foundational that is to overcoming obstacles as you live through the brutality of life. So I can't wait to hear more about those studies. Well, Richard, you've now been doing this for decades. Where do you hope to see John for pointing that out, is it? Yeah, many decades, it's true. I'm sorry. I know.

Starting point is 00:45:42 Oh, no, and it's incredible to see where it's going. When I started going through the list of scientists around the world who are now part of your institute, it was like a laundry list of people I want to interview. But more importantly, it just shows you how much your theory has taken off. Where do you hope to see this go in decades to come? Well, first one of the important things is I don't think it's my theory or it's not at DC theory. It's really self-termination theory and at this point it's really co-owned by quite a community of scientists. We have our tri annual meetings and there's a good 800 people

Starting point is 00:46:21 who showed up at the last meeting from 40 countries around the world. There's a larger network than that. So these are the people who are really owning and driving self-determination. There I feel privileged to be in a position to be shepherded again. They have that. And since Ed is fully retired, and I'm not that far behind him in that regard, I'm glad that there's this community of younger scholars that are ready to take their reins and the leadership over using this framework in the ways that it can be used.

Starting point is 00:46:48 So that's my hope for the theory over time, the Center for Self-Termination Theory is gonna mainstay that keeps while all those scholars networked together and as part of what I wanna do is just make sure that's still able to function over time, which is clearly gonna be able to do. Well, and I thought I'd end on this question. I was doing my research to prepare.

Starting point is 00:47:09 I was happy to see that one of the interviews you did was with my friend, Scaperick Hoffman. I can't think about Scott without thinking about Maslow. So what is the correlation between STT and self-actualization? First of all, I have a lot of respect for Abe Maslow. He was a floor runner in the field by recognizing that there were needs that went beyond physical needs and external reinforcements that had to do with the fulfillment of life. And when we think about self-actualization, we think about that true fulfillment of the human potentiality. It's just that I think STT is a more specific vision of what that entails.

Starting point is 00:47:47 We don't have a hierarchy of needs. We said there's some basic psychological needs that really work together synergistically to produce a fulfilling life and a fulfilling engagement into domains that you're active in. So I just think I hope to think that we're the modern versions of some of that humanistic psychology, but with a really strong empirical base as both a constraint and a driver of our growth as a theory.

Starting point is 00:48:11 So I think that's a bit of a difference. Yeah, well, one of the things I love that that Scott has told me is, Aslow never even came up with the pyramid. That wasn't even because that was a bunch of consultants from Deloitte or Mackenzie who put that thing together. So I love that he reframed it as a sailboat, which I think is a great analogy for sure enough. Yeah, absolutely. determination theory. Obviously, you've got your books, which I'll have in the show notes, but where would be self-determination theory central that we can send them to? The absolutely best place to find out about self-determination theory is at self-determinationtheory.org. So if you just spell that as one word, self-determination theory.org, that's a website where we provide a lot of the papers,

Starting point is 00:49:03 the information, the theory, and lots of resources for understanding the theory and seeing where it gets applied. You can look up basically any topic on that page from education to organizations to is the first time I really found out about STT was when I was reading Drive by Dan Pink, somewhere on 2009, 2010. And I know that he leveraged a lot of your research in that focus. Well, yeah. No, I think there's been a few popular writers who I think really, one of the sad things about me is a scientist of course is I'm not doing many popular books. When I write, I think it's a good treatment for insomnia most of it but I'm glad that there are popular writers like

Starting point is 00:49:50 Dan Pinkow recently there's been a few popular books that I've really liked that are out there so you'll see those on the website the subsforbernation theory dot org website okay well Richard thank you so much for joining us today it was such an honor to have you on the show I'm telling thanks for having me on this show. It's really nice talking with you What a phenomenal interview that was with Dr. Richard Ryan and I wanted to thank Richard as well as the self-determination theory Organization for the honor of having him appear on today's show links to all things Richard will be in the show notes a passion struck Com please use the links that we put on the website to purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show. I'll proceed to go to supporting the show. I also wanted to give you a reminder that my new book Passion Struck is available now for pre-order. And if you sign up on the Passion Struck website and put in your order code, you can get access to some fabulous free gifts,

Starting point is 00:50:38 totaling over $300 that I provide you, including eBooks on motivation, as well as how to take deliberate action in your life. Videos are on YouTube at both our main channel and John Armeils on our Clips channel at PassionStruckClips. You can sign up for my personal development newsletter, Live Intentionally, at PassionStruck.com. You can catch us on all the social platforms at either PassionStruck Podcast or John Armeils. You can sign up for my work- newsletter work intentionally on LinkedIn and advertiser deals and discount codes and one community place at passionstark.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support this show. You're about to hear a preview of the passionstark podcast interview that I did with Maria Maninoffs

Starting point is 00:51:17 an American television presenter podcast host and author. Maria hosted extra and e-news was a TV correspondent for the Today Show, Access Hollywood, and also recently co-hosted the Miss Universe 2023 pageant. This is a deeply personal interview that I did with Maria about her high points and low points in life and how she managed her emotions as well as her health throughout them. We have to take a lot more ownership over the healthcare situation in our lives because the doctors are overwhelmed. You know your body better than anybody at the end of the day.

Starting point is 00:51:49 You have to keep fighting for answers. You have to keep pushing. If something isn't feeling right, you've got to keep going and getting a new doctor. If your doctor is maybe gaslighting you, and that's happened to me too, you just have to keep pushing. If the pain persists, so should you. You've got to keep looking. Remember that we rise by lifting others. So share the show with those that you love.

Starting point is 00:52:08 And if you know someone who is interested in understanding all things motivation, then definitely share today's episode with them. The greatest compliment that you can give us to share the show with those that you love and care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can love what you listen. And until next time, go out there and become Passion Struck.

Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Dr. Richard M. Ryan on Exploring the Heart of Human Motivation EP 386

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