Satisfaction – in your hands

How do I change my thought patterns?

We can change our thought patterns when we change the way we set our own goals.

Having a project that is yours, just yours to work on, has been shown to create an empowering feedback loop of satisfaction. It can alter your thought patterns and provide you with a greater sense of empowerment and achievement. So much of it is down to how you relate to the goals that you set for yourself.

Do you have a goal in your life right now that doesn’t involve anyone else having to work towards your goal? Something that is fully within your control to achieve?

There isn’t just one standard term for a project that you control fully from start to finish. There are a few ways of describing these type of goals.

The term ‘autotelic’ was created by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the guy who came up with the concept of ‘flow’. Autotelic is something you do for its own sake, where the process is the reward. Interestingly, these autotelic tasks are highly linked with satisfaction and intrinsic motivation, and not reliant upon external rewards (extrinsic motivation) or goals. The state of being itself is the reward and source of enjoyment, rather than the outcome. The term is often associated with the concept of being in a flow state, where individuals are deeply immersed and engaged in an activity

Are your goals self-generated and self-directed, or are they imposed externally? Are they rooted in percieved societal expectations? Sometimes the lines can blur. How do we define a consciously self-directed goal -v- an unconsciously externally imposed goal?

If we are looking for a deeper sense of gratification and satisfaction, then consider how you wish your reward circuitry to be stimulated… yes, there are differences. An endogenous goal is something you have come up with yourself. It hasn’t been imposed upon you from someone else.

Achieving an endogenous goal stimulates a dopamine release and those particular neural pathways learn that self directed goals bring results, so we create a positive feedback loop.

Rather than seeking externally stimulated dopamine releases which are less predictable and not within our control. Which neural pathways would you rather strengthen?

As we progress along our own self directed journey we can attain mastery orientated tasks. These are the actions that we take to gain a deeper skill and progress to the mastery of a subject. Finding our own definition of mastery is useful, so that we can hit our pre-determined markers we can maintain our intrinsic, rather than extrinsic motivation.

Goals that align with one’s true values and identity, are called ‘self-concordant’. This term was coined by Kennon Sheldon, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Correspondingly, pursuing these self-concordant goals is seen to increase well-being and fulfilment.

How can you reframe some of your goals so that they are self directed rather than externally motivated? By doing so, you can increase the likelihood of experiencing a greater sense of satisfaction.

Everyday ways to experience this self-directed satisfaction feedback loop

• Finishing a puzzle, a piece of art or writing
• Restoring a bike or building a piece of furniture
• Completing a digital product, video, or blog post
• Creating your own garden, playlist, or course
• Writing a letter or journal entry with no intended audience
• Completing physical challenges

If a task is yours, only you can shape it and you can finish it without needing approval or permission, then it is one of these tasks. Have fun. Societal approval isn’t all bad, but for our own well-being, we really do well having a project on the go, that is just ours to work on.