Living a Motivated Life

Book excerpt: What if, as psychologists and adult educators advocate, a person chose a life where his motivation for the work itself determined what he did? Living a Motivated Life: A Memoir and Activities follows the author through forty years, revealing how he selected vocational pursuits guided by his understanding of intrinsic motivation and transformative learning. As a compass for relevant decisions, these ideas gave energy and purpose to how he lived, and an instinct as sure as sight for the future. Written with nuance, humor, and unpredictability, this story renders how he came to appreciate learning for the pleasure of learning. Facing similar challenges as those of today’s first generation college students, the memoir narrates his unexpected college enrollment, his friendship with an ancient history professor, and his triumphs and travails as teacher, psychologist, human relations specialist, psychotherapist, and adult educator. This is the first memoir of someone who consciously chose to lead a professional life to experience flow on a daily basis. It is an important step in the integration and evolution of intrinsic motivation theory and transformative learning. But it reaches beyond this outcome, sharing how the author aspired to be better at what he valued and showing how he discovered and extended these ideas to others.