Читать книгу Sports Psychology For Dummies - Leif H. Smith - Страница 62

Internal motivation is associated with participating in sports for the joy and satisfaction of it. You play because you love the game and you love competing.

The flip side of internal motivation is external motivation, where your participation in athletics is driven by outside rewards — for example, the praise you get from your parents, or a potential scholarship offer to a prestigious school. You may not enjoy the activity for its own sake — you’re more driven to compete by outside, external factors.

There is also a third type of motivation called amotivation, which is simply the lack of motivation to participate in sports at all. There’s nothing wrong with feeling amotivated. In fact, most athletes have, at one time or another, experienced periods when they lost all motivation to play. Usually, amotivation is associated with burnout and exhaustion. If you’ve tried to participate in certain sports and found that you simply don’t like them and lack motivation for them, you’re better off finding what does motivate you — another sport or a non-sport activity — and pursuing that instead.

We cover internal and external motivation in greater detail in the following sections.