What motivates you?
One of the finest discoveries of that lump of unnecessary reflection, that social psychology was in the 1950s, is Bandura’s concept of ‘self-efficacy’. Of course the concept had a history in less flashy theory and experimental work – on regulation of behaviour and so on – but Bandura has always made his own ideas paramount over predecessors.
Briefly it states – forgive oversimplification – that if one believes one can do a task, it is likely that you will be able to do so. Moreover, the more you believe you can do it, the more successful you will be. Now in development by psychologists like Carol Dweck, it might seem that the process is neither so immediate as magical as this sounds. She found that people who believed that intelligence was an unchangeable given rather than the product of work and experience tended to to live a life of fulfilled self-prophecy and of self-limitation.
The implication is clear. Motivation varies via the willingness to engage. Waiting to be motivated prior to experience is a recipe for disaster. Rather ENGAGE. For motivation will follow through the process of learning that is not mere habituation but learning and self-development. One introjects the project so that it becomes part of you.
So that’s my take. “I am not interested in that” always means “I refuse to engage in that’ and I do not understand that and I do not wish to change anyway”. Rather sit like a lump and talk about truth as if it were external to my engagement with it. Sartre? Never. Lol. Xxx
Much love
Steve
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