From the psychology of intrinsic motivation to building a multimillion-dollar fashion empire and improving your relationships, here are a few book suggestions for this week. Drive by Daniel H. Pink
Looking to achieve high performance and satisfaction at work, school or home? This book helps us understand what motivates us, how serving intrinsic motivations and the need to control our own lives, produce new things and do better by ourselves helps us achieve our goals.
Daniel Pink explores three different types of drives which are Motivation 1.0: Our need for food and drink, a safe place to rest at night and the desire to reproduce; Extrinsic Motivation or Motivation 2.0: Rewards reinforce desirable behaviour, while punishment prevents undesirable behaviour, which is effective to some extent and lastly Motivation 3.0: Serving to intrinsic motivation – making or inspiring someone to want to be curious, creative and innovative.
Pink also examines the three key components of true motivation – mastery, autonomy and purpose. Mastery is having the desire to get better at their craft rather than just follow a firm’s rules and regulations. Autonomy is having independence and freedom from external control or influence. Purpose is doing meaningful and impactful work rather than pursuing meaningless tasks.
Mastery: When we are given the freedom to seek excellence and self-actualization, trusted with our jobs and encouraged to improve, we are able to enter a state of flow, completing tasks with elevated focus and passion. More importantly, when we believe we can grow and succeed we will put in more effort and work harder on our tasks.
Autonomy: When we are given the flexibility to make our own decisions with no managerial pressure we become highly motivated. For example, Google allows employees to spend 20 per cent of their time developing innovative ideas, which resulted in Google employees creating Google News and Google Mail. The team and manager we work with also impact our motivation levels significantly.
Purpose: When we work on meaningful work, grow personally, give back to society and help others we feel more empowered. Moreover, having a larger goal other than profits and money helps us feel happier and more satisfied in life. By making small contributions we can over time make a bigger impact and achieve fulfilling goals.
Read more on Amazon or Blinkist.
#Girlboss by Sophia Amoruso
Whether you are a college dropout, you quit your job, trying to find your career path or making a career change, it’s never too late to become who you want to be. This book helps guide women on how to achieve success in business today. Sophia Amoruso advises us to think about our natural strengths, personality and what we enjoy doing. She started her journey with a hobby eventually establishing her own clothing empire.
We each have unique skill sets that we can offer to the world. Once we figure out our strengths, we can build on them and work towards our goals. However, success comes from tests, trials and a few odd jobs. There’s no straight path to success. On the other hand, there are failures and setbacks which are inevitable. Amoruso went through failures, getting fired and quitting several jobs before starting her successful business. It wasn’t her lack of talent or drive but she wasn’t doing what was fueling her passion or motivations. If you find yourself struggling to stay motivated, think about what are your values, interest and hobbies. It’s also about the right job, team and environment that brings out the best in us.
As the saying goes ‘The only way to do great work is to love what you do.’ Once you find what you love to do, build on that skill, gain experience and become an expert in your field. In the beginning, Amoruso learnt everything on her own at the beginning from styling her own fashion shoots and selling clothes to offering women inspiring fashion experiences. In the process, she was able to build a loyal community and grow her customer base through word-of-mouth.
Amoruso also explains to communicate openly about our hopes and dreams so people can help us achieve our goals. Once we start asking people for what we want we can achieve goals. It’s also about thinking outside the box, breaking some rules without breaking the law, crossing a few lines and building something remarkable out of it. Most importantly, it’s about being confident in our abilities and putting positivity out into the universe to receive it back.
Read more on Amazon or Blinkist.
Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
Emotional Intelligence including self-awareness, self-discipline, self-motivation, empathy and relationship skills are among the strongest predictors of success. This book helps us understand our emotions and how emotional intelligence is just as important as a high IQ in achieving a successful and fulfilled life.
Emotions are important in shaping our thoughts and actions. They help interpret the feelings of others and predict their actions. Emotions also drive us to act, respond and react. Sometimes we can get extremely emotional leading to mistakes, clouding our judgement and disrupting our rational thinking. Once we learn to improve our emotional intelligence we can recognize our negative feelings, and reframe them instead of getting overwhelmed. More importantly, we can use various techniques to regulate our emotions and experience them.
Goleman states the first step of emotional intelligence is to recognize and name your feelings. When we are able to develop an awareness of how our feelings and triggers drive our behaviour, we can manage our emotions and achieve our goals. For example, if you have to do a certain task at work that you dislike and would rather spend time at a food event. Emotional intelligence can help manage these feelings and control our impulses. We could reframe it by looking at one area of the task we enjoy and leaving the entertainment for later.
Emotional intelligence helps us thrive in social environments and manage relationships better. For example, if an employee is making the same mistakes, communicating in the right way rather than hurting their feelings can inspire, motivate and encourage them to do better. Empathy and effective relationship management can also influence others and make them more willing to change.
Improving and developing emotional intelligence is critical to lead a happy and fulfilled life. How to develop emotional intelligence? A few steps are to listen and talk about how you feel, take a break to calm down during a dispute and for constructive conflict take responsibility to improve a difficult situation rather than blaming one another. As we understand our emotions we are able to communicate better, become less upset, and more resilient whilst learning to handle conflict better when it arises.
Read more on Amazon or Blinkist.
Men are from Mars Women are from Venus by John Gray
Building and maintaining good relationships whilst setting healthy boundaries with our loved ones is key to our well-being, happiness and mental health. It takes time to build good relationships and intentional effort from both sides. This book helps us understand the different communication and emotional styles between men and women, improving our relationships with one another. John Gray explains when we learn to respect each other’s differences we can build better intimacy.
When it comes to stressful situations women are looking for an empathetic ear and unconditional love from men. Whereas men prefer to be left alone when they are faced with problems. At times women feel confused and rejected when men withdraw from the situation, but once they understand each other’s ways of coping with difficulty it becomes easier. Next, men are motivated to be the best when he feels needed by women whereas women are driven when they are cared for and accepted.
Grey also states the six primary love needs. For men, trust, acceptance, appreciation, admiration, approval and encouragement are needed. On the other hand, women need caring, understanding, respect, devotion and validation. Women appreciate the little things such as words of encouragement, help when feeling tired and small gestures of love, whereas men want to feel appreciated, not criticized and be happy to see him. Overall, it’s about showing love and respecting each other’s emotional, intellectual and physical boundaries, to name a few.
Arguments can make or break relationships. Learning to communicate with one another with compassion and establishing relationship boundaries with clear limits can help your partner feel safe to open up to you. When negative emotions arise you can say “I feel frustrated, I feel disappointed or I am sorry.” When you learn to recognize unhealthy boundaries, it’s easier to leave before it takes over your life. For example, if your partner gets angry when you are too busy to spend time with them, they may be trying to control you. Lastly, asking for support from each other can help build a stronger relationship. We all need support, acceptance and kindness from one another.
Sonia Majumder 
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