The article below teases out in detail the role of Self Determination in the pursuit of high performance goals. Whether in sport, your career, personal relationships or any other aspect of your life, Self Determination is an intrinsic force that creates momentum towards high performance goals.
Self Determination – The Force Behind High Performance
If you’re thinking about committing to a high-performance goal, or if you’re wanting to improve on the commitment you already have, you’ll need to make sure you’re energised by the ‘X’ factor of Self Determination.
Whether in sport, your career, personal relationships or any other aspect of your life, Self Determination is an intrinsic force that creates momentum towards high performance goals.
Ultimately, if you don’t have Self Determination, you’re not going to have the dedication and commitment to persevere through whatever it is you need to do, to get yourself performing at your best.
There’s a lot of ‘pop’ psychology out there making big claims on how to ignite the passion within to achieve the goals of your heart’s desire. While this stuff can get us pumped in the moment through all the hype… when the lights of the seminar hall turn off and we arrive home from the weekend retreat … the pump slowly deflates over time.
Real Self Determination, not the froth and bubble type, has the potential to prompt dedication and commitment towards any high-performance goal across any aspect of your life.
If you want to improve your performance in sport, work, relationships, or anything else, it’s time to get savvy with Self Determination.
As already stated above, Self Determination is an intrinsic force. What this means is, we can’t go asking anyone else to give it to us. Intrinsic means it’s a latent force that’s already there within us.
Finding that latent force of Self Determination can be difficult because it has unique qualities relating very specifically to the individual. Because of the unique individual qualities of Self Determination, it cannot be franchised, bottled and sold to everyone in bulk.
Whatever makes you determined won’t necessarily spark dedication and commitment in anyone else. Neither will someone else’s determination spark dedication and commitment in you.
Your Self Determination is unique to you!
The bottom line is, you are not going to get persistent, long lasting Self Determination from anything other than from within yourself. It’s about finding the latent force of Self Determination that is already there within you. Then, once you find it, you can start fanning it in to flame.
Great coaches and leaders will help you find it and then will help you fan it in to flame.
Self Determination – Ok, so how do I find it?
To find Self Determination you first need to understand what you’re looking for. Basically, the intrinsic qualities of Self Determination are made up of three parts.
These three parts are wired into our DNA, becoming clearly evident from the moment we’re born, coming together over time to create Self Determination.
These three parts of Self Determination are Competence, Autonomy and Relatedness.
Competence refers to the innate drive we all have towards self-improvement. The fact is, every single one of us is driven to build competence in doing ‘stuff’ and in getting better at doing that ‘stuff’ over time.
The desire to build competence in doing stuff and getting better at doing it, is also referred to as task mastery. Evidence of this innate drive to build competence and mastery is easy to see from a very young age. For example, no one has to tell an infant, “You’d better start learning to talk” or “You’d better start practising so you can sit up, stand up and walk”.
Infants are innately driven to master the tasks of sitting up, standing, walking and eventually… running.
What is planted in the DNA of every human is this intrinsic desire of wanting to get better, of wanting to improve, to build competence, capacity, and task mastery in doing stuff.
Unfortunately, not everyone understands or trusts this intrinsic desire we all have in wanting to build competence. To the contrary, some of us fall into the trap of thinking that our dedication and commitment towards anything can only ever be mustered from the pressure of external forces that prompt us, or, even worse, force us in to action.
Some high-performance coaches and leaders can get caught up in to thinking they have to make their squad, team or staff dedicated and committed to training, competing or working. The reality is… that’s not how Self Determination works.
Applying external forces to try and make someone self-determined is hollow and short lived. At its most extreme, it’s abusive. At the very least it always ends up squashing any hope of self-determined dedication and commitment to building competence and capacity on the job or in the sport.
Real Self Determination comes from tapping in to that intrinsic, internal, natural drive to enhance our competence.
Autonomy refers to the innate drive we all have towards self-agency.
This is where we are not only driven to be competent at mastering various tasks, skills and abilities, we’re also driven to choose for ourselves the sorts of tasks, skills and abilities we want to build competence in and master.
Make no mistake. Autonomous self-agency is a formidable intrinsic force. Just ask any parent of a two-year-old!
By the age of two our desire for self-agency becomes a high priority in our development and remains that way for the rest of our life. Prior to this age, most young infants can easily be redirected towards things the adults would prefer them to do. But what eventually becomes obvious, from within the growing motivations of the toddler, is their strong desire for autonomy.
Toddlers become naturally driven to direct their own behaviour towards those things they prefer to do. Stand in their way and you might be exposed to the mighty force of a toddler tantrum!
Close observation of the toddler shows they are more often than not driven towards those things they want to build competence in.
Ultimately, whether a toddler or an adult, we need to have personal choice and self-agency to be intrinsically Self Determined. When your actions are directed towards something you choose and want to master, Self Determination becomes an increasingly sustained force.
The implications of not having personal choice and self-agency are debilitating. Their absence only serves to undermine intrinsic motivation.
Dedication and commitment need to be directed towards those things you choose to gain competence and mastery in. Once this match of competence and autonomy merge, it builds on that important intrinsic force of Self Determination.
A great example of this combined dynamic of competence and autonomy is in the story of Sir Donald Bradman. Australian representative cricketer and one of the greatest cricket batsmen of the century.
Sir Donald Bradman once shared how his commitment and dedication to mastering the task of cricket batting emerged.
It all started when he was a child with his self-determined, autonomously driven, interest in hitting a ball up against the wall of his house with a stick. He shared how his unique interest in this task led very quickly to a strong desire towards greater task mastery of this ball hitting skill.
He talked about how excited he was as a child to get home from school, pick up the tennis ball, run outside, find a stick and start hitting the ball up against the wall.
He would practice for hours every day after school, finding great satisfaction in the sense of growing competence and task mastery in this new skill. His mother would call him in for dinner, but he’d be having too much fun trying to keep the ball bouncing between the stick and the wall for as long as he could. Eventually, as dusk set in, it’d get too dark to see the ball properly, so he’d go inside and have dinner.
His mother didn’t understand why he become so determined to master that specific task with the ball, stick and wall. In many ways he didn’t understand it either. All he knew was that he loved doing it and he enjoyed the satisfaction of getting better at it.
Sport Psychology calls this self-determined drive of Sir Donald Bradman’s childhood Harmonious Passion.
Harmonious passion is the biproduct of healthy Self Determination. Pep-talks should aim to help you find where that passion lies. They should not try to manufacture that passion for you.
Relatedness refers to the innate drive we have towards authentic and fulfilling connection with others.
This aspect of Self Determination refers to the intrinsic drive for connection. This component of Self Determination is a very subtle albeit very powerful force.
The intrinsic force of relatedness is considered so powerful because we can sacrifice so much to get it and lose hope in so much if we feel it’s out of reach.
From the moment we’re born, when our eyes see the blurry outline of another person’s face and we feel the touch of another person’s skin, we are intrinsically driven to connect.
The qualities of connection we strive for include things like a sense of belonging, a shared sense of living life together, mutual respect and feeling cared for and valued by others.
The intrinsic force of relatedness drives team dynamics and interpersonal relationships between team-mates, coaches and support staff.
Dedication and commitment to high performance goals are easier to sustain when our relationships with others are healthy and fulfilling. We are also freed up to take risks, make mistakes and fail in our attempts at task mastery when important relationships are secure.
Self Determination – Does it really need to be that hard?
Self Determination is a natural driving force that combines our innate desire for mastering tasks (competence), that we personally value and choose for ourselves (autonomy) in the context of enriched connections with others (relatedness).
Self Determination is not something we need to force out of ourselves. To put it another way, it’s not about trying to be determined about being determined. All that will do is create a gruelling knot of angst and frustration in our belly.
Self Determination is a natural driving force embedded in our DNA. If we find it hard to muster Self Determination towards anything, the problem is that we and others are getting in the way of it.
Self Determination is found through being mindful and respectful of who we really are and what we truly value and are drawn towards. When we let go of the external pressures of expectations, we begin to see that spark of Self Determination.
It seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? Letting go of expectations to be self-determined? But when we let go of expectations… whereby we let go of that pressure to prove something to ourselves and others… we are freed up to engage in those things we truly value and get a lot of satisfaction out of mastering. It’s only at that point we start to become a formidable force in Self Determination.
Hi everyone! I'm a psychologist who is passionate about the broad contribution this field can make to society. Ultimately, psychology is about living life well; whether in personal relationships, friendships, work, politics, local communities, society more broadly or your own personal wellbeing. Psychology covers it all! As a psychologist I consult regularly through my private practice on the Gold Coast in Australia and also internationally via Skype.
View more posts
Dr Clive 