The 3-Step Formula for Motivation and Happiness

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1:33There's no safe like SimpliSafe. From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers, a show in which entrepreneurs do what entrepreneurs do best, solve unexpected problems in their business. We were completely wrong. And I'm just like, it's not selling. It was like, we have to start from scratch. Watch. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.

1:58Every so often, my six-year-old son will get really frustrated. He'll have wanted to do something and I'm telling him no, and now he's angry and throwing things and I am at a loss at what to do and I'm frustrated and I'm thinking, ugh, why won't this kid just listen? And this is when my wife will look at me and she will say three words that instantly clarify the situation. Those words are self-determination theory. Self-determination theory. My wife says this because she knows how to speak my language. Self-determination theory is a psychological concept that revolutionized our understanding of human motivation.

2:38And ever since an entrepreneur introduced it to me many years ago, I have been obsessed with it. It is the single most clarifying insight into human behavior that I have ever come across. It helps me understand myself better and why I am either unmotivated or motivated at work or really at any point in my life. It helps me understand the people I work with. And yes, it even helps me understand my kids. And so I have started to talk about it a lot and bring it up in conversation. I share it with founders who I advise. I talk about it at home. This is why my wife will repeat it back to me. And starting this year, I decided to make self-determination theory a regular part of my keynote talk.

3:20To me, this is like the biggest thing that I can do with an idea. I'm often hired to give talks to corporate teams and trade associations. So I'm traveling around a lot, speaking to hundreds or thousands of people at companies like Clorox and Google and Pfizer and Crocs and more. I have a really high bar for the ideas that I share on a stage like this. They need to be impactful, but also a joy to listen to and to tell. And I recently reworked my talk to include self-determination theory. So today, I want to share that segment with you so it can reach even more people. This is something I have never done in the more than 400 episodes of Problem Solvers.

4:01I'm going to play for you a segment from me on stage talking about self-determination theory and how it can help you better understand yourself and your team during times of change. I'm really excited for you to hear it, and it is coming up after the break. Okay, we're back. So, all right, before I play this segment from the stage, I want to give you a little context. In my talk, which is about how to thrive and find new opportunities in times of change, I begin by saying this. The most successful people are the most adaptable, and they become adaptable by developing a unique personal relationship with change.

4:39And to do that, to develop a unique personal relationship with change, you must rethink fundamental things about the way in which you work and your relationship to your work. And in my talk, I offer five things to rethink, your identity, your needs, your reactions, your process, and your words. And then I go through each. Here now, I'm going to play for you the section on needs. This particular recording that you're about to hear came from a talk I gave in Houston earlier this year for a division of General Electric. I'll come back at the end, but for now, here it is. Here's me on stage. Everyone in this room has the same three basic psychological needs.

5:20And that's not me saying that. That's the core insight behind self-determination theory. Self-determination theory is a psychological concept that was popularized in the 1980s and revolutionized our understanding of human motivation and happiness. Self-determination theory holds that all people have the same three basic psychological needs. And when you have them, you have the foundation for motivation and happiness. And when you don't, you don't. And this is important to understand because when change comes to our work, it disrupts our access to these three fundamental psychological needs. So by understanding what they are, we give ourselves a roadmap to finding them when we need them the most.

6:06But before I tell you what they are, let me tell you what it is like to lose them. Years ago, I was working at another magazine, and it was going through a lot of change, a lot of directional change, a lot of leadership change, and then suddenly, I developed a very serious Twitter addiction. very serious, I needed to know all the tweets. I would show up in the morning, and I would spend the first hour at my desk just looking at Twitter, and then I would go to meetings, and I'd be sneaking looks at Twitter, and then I'd go back to my desk, and I'd interrupt myself every five minutes to look at Twitter, and then I'd go home, and I'd be having dinner with my wife, and I'd be looking at Twitter, and my wife would say, please stop looking at Twitter.

6:49And I wish I could tell you that the solution to this problem was listening to my wife. Usually is. But in this case, the solution to the problem was that I was fired. Or, as consultants like to call it, I was made available to industry. So I was made available to industry, and I got a different job that I liked more. And suddenly this Twitter addiction disappeared. And I didn't understand that moment in my life until years later, when an entrepreneur introduced me to self-determination theory. And the more in which I studied it and applied it to the moments in which I was most or least motivated, the more in which everything clicked into place.

7:36So it is now time to tell you what your three basic psychological needs are. I remember them by the acronym ARC. It's just a nice, simple way to remember it. ARC. A-R-C. Here they are. A is autonomy. You need to feel ownership over the decisions that you make. R is relatedness. You need to feel good relationships with those around you. And C is competency. You need to feel good at what you do. Autonomy, relatedness, and competency. These are your three basic psychological needs. And I love that term needs here because needs don't go away. If you are hungry and you go to the refrigerator and it is empty, do you stop being hungry?

8:27No, you just go somewhere else to get the food. And that is what we do with our three basic needs as well. If we don't find our needs fulfilled in the most productive ways, we will go elsewhere, despite how unproductive it may be, to fulfill them. And once I understood this, what happened to me back at that job when I developed that Twitter addiction started to make a lot more sense. I literally just applied ARC to that experience. Let's go through it. So here I am. I'm at this job. It's going through a lot of directional change, a lot of leadership change. And suddenly I developed this Twitter addiction.

9:11Well, let's think. Did I have the autonomy that I needed at that job at that time? The answer was no, No, I did not because I was having a lot of decisions handed down to me and people weren't listening to my ideas. Did I have the relatedness that I needed? No, I didn't because I was so annoyed at how things were running that I wasn't making an effort to connect with my colleagues except for a guy named Rob who also hated being there and he and I would get lunch every day and just bitch about the place. We've all had that friend. And did I have the competency that I needed? No, because I had two bosses and neither of them could agree on what belonged in the magazine.

9:45my ideas were constantly getting killed. But now let's look at Twitter. Did I have the autonomy that I needed on Twitter? Why, yes, I did, because I was able to say and do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. Did I have relatedness on Twitter? Yeah, sure. I was meeting people who had shared interests and we were connecting. Did I have the competency that I needed on Twitter? Yes, because I could say what I wanted and people would like and retweet it, and that felt good. Autonomy, relatedness, and competency. And I don't just tell you this to show you about when things go wrong, but rather because as I have studied this, I've discovered that this is an incredible self-diagnostic tool for you and for your teams and for anybody that you're working with, because they're all human beings and they all have the same three needs.

10:34You know, when something is changing and we suddenly feel confused, frustrated, a lack of motivation. It can feel really big and amorphous. You don't even know where to start. Where's the problem? How do I start to fix it? But this now gives you a literal checklist to go down. You can ask yourself, do I have the autonomy that I need in this situation? Does my team member have the autonomy that they need? If I'm implementing new software and somebody is resistant to it, do they have the autonomy that they need in this situation? If the answer is no, then how can that be fixed? What solution can drive a greater feeling of autonomy?

11:12The same is true in relatedness. The same is true in competency. When you start to think like this, you start to give yourselves very specific actions for things that used to feel amorphous. Because here's the thing. Our work is and will always change. change, but our needs never do. So when you understand your needs, you can get what you need when you need it. All right. So that's the segment. And then I go on and share other things on stage, but let me circle back to how I started this episode, which was talking about parenting. You know, on stage, I'm talking about self-determination theory as it applies to work, but it really applies everywhere.

12:00I mean, when my wife says self-determination theory to me, when my kid is upset, it reminds me two things. Number one, that even as a child, a human being wants these things. My kid wants to make his own decisions. He wants to feel good at things. He wants to feel connected. And if I'm not allowing him to do something, which, hey, too bad. You may not be allowed to do it, but that doesn't mean that he's going to like it. It might mean that he feels a loss of autonomy and I should recognize that and maybe find some other way to help him find the autonomy that he needs. And also it helps me understand myself in those moments.

12:39Why am I frustrated? I'm frustrated because I don't feel like I have much autonomy in this situation. I'm anchored to a six-year-old's demands and I don't feel competency because I can't figure out how to solve the problem. And I certainly don't feel relatedness because who do I have a nice connection with at this moment? Nobody. It just feels isolating. But you know, all these things are fixable, and it's worth stepping back and just asking, how do I get ARC? And how do I make sure that the people who I am with and supporting, how do I make sure that they feel it too? Self-determination theory, something to think about.

13:17I think about it all the time. By the way, if you would like to work with me, I would love to hear from you. I can give you more information about speaking and what I could do for your group or event. You can find more about that work at jasonpfeiffer.com speaking. Jason Pfeiffer is J-A-S-O-N, F as in Frank, E-I, F as in Frank, E-R.com speaking. And that's our episode. But hey, let's keep the conversation going. I write a newsletter called One Thing Better, where each week I offer one way to be successful and satisfied and build a career or company you love. You can find it at one thing better dot email.

14:02That's a web address. Just plug it into a browser. One thing better dot email. And if you respond to any of those emails, I'll get it. And I promise to reply back. Problem Solvers is a production of Entrepreneur Media, and it comes out every Monday morning. So make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss an episode. Thanks to the team at Entrepreneur and particularly Deepa Shah for production. My name is Jason Pfeiffer. See you next week.