Keys to Motivation: Insights from Sports and Education Psychology

0:00:01 – Announcer

You are listening to the National University Podcast.

00:08:59 – Kimberly King

Hello, I’m Kimberly King. Welcome to the National University podcast where we offer an holistic approach to student support, wellbeing, and success: the Whole Human education. We put passion into practice by offering accessible, achievable higher education to lifelong learners. Today, we are talking about motivation. And according to a recent article in Forbes Magazine, it’s about shifting your perspective.

People with a growth mindset develop more resilience than those with a scarcity mindset. With a growth mindset, you’re more likely to challenge yourself, achieve more, and become a creative problem solver. Also, your intelligence and abilities can be developed through dedication and effort. So much great information coming up on today’s podcast. Stay here.

On today’s episode, we’re talking about motivation and joining us as the program director for the Master’s of Science in Sports Psychology and PhD program in Sport and Performance Psychology at National University, Dr. Grayson Kimball. Dr. Kimball is also an adjunct faculty member in the Psychology Department at Northeastern University in Boston, as well as a mental performance coach.

He runs his own mental coaching sessions for the past 20 years. He also owns his own consulting business, GTK Sports, where he’s been providing mental coaching sessions for over 20 years to high performers in youth, high school, collegiate professional, and Olympic level sports. Outside of sports, Dr. Kimball is certified with the Association of Applied Sports Psychology, a member of the United States Olympic Sports Psychology Registry and is currently an experienced practitioner, non-certified mentor for AASP. Additionally, he has a passion for running and has completed eight marathons, coached charity teams for Boston Marathon, and authored the book, Grateful Running: Mental Training for the Long Distance Runner.

Also with us is Dr. Joel Goodin. He is an Associate Professor of Psychology at National University and Program Lead for Internship Coordinator for the MS in Educational Psychology, where he teaches courses and mentors dissertation students. Dr. Goodin earned a PhD in Educational Psychology from Florida State University, in addition to an MS and EDS degree in Counseling and Human Systems, a certificate in program evaluation.

He also teaches EDD candidates at Walden University part time, and previously coordinated research in geriatric medicine, taught psychology at Athens State University, Tallahassee Community College, as well as Florida State University. He received the 2020 Walden University Faculty Excellence Award, the 2021 NCUSSBS Outstanding Student Engagement, and teaching excellence for full-time faculty and NCU’s 2021 Presidential Recognition Award. He is currently the principal investigator of a John Templeton-funded grant to perform neuroscience research about the religious cognition and spiritual coping among people with Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Goodin is a leader and innovator with passion for academic excellence, righteous living, and serving others.

His research, expertise, motivation, emotions, stress, and performance, as well as character, resilience, and emotional regulation focused on mostly at-risk populations and health education. 

Thank you so much for joining us today. What an impressive background from both of you, and we welcome you to the podcast. How are you?

0:04:10: – Doctor Grayson Kimball

Doing great, thanks for having me.

04:10:59 – Kimberly King

Absolutely. Why don’t you fill our audience, and both of you can answer this, on a little bit of your mission and your work before we get to today’s show topic.

0:04:21 – Doctor Grayson Kimball

Sure, so I guess I’ll jump in first. As you mentioned in the intro, I’m the program director for our master’s in science and sports psychology and the PhD in sport and performance psychology. So I work with all of our students at the master’s level and PhD level, kind of helping them gain experience from a theoretical perspective in our classes but then also helping them, mentoring them from a practical side as well. So eventually, when they graduate our programs and start working as mental performance coaches, they have as much real-world experience as possible.

And then, of course, outside of my work at National University, being able to still do applied work in sport and performance psychology. So, again, working with athletes, I work with a Division III college with their athletics program and then I also do executive business coaching, and there’s a lot of crossover between using mental performance coaching for athletes and using them for non-athletes, because they’re still high performers. Same ideas, same strategy, same theories still apply, just making small little tweaks to them so it applies directly to the work that they’re doing.

0:05:41 – Kimberly King

Wow, that’s so impressive and I’m sure you have job security, because I guess it’s the yips, right? People go up and down no matter what they’re doing in life, so I think that you can use that across the board. Dr. Goodin, tell me a little bit about your mission and your work.

0:05:57 – Doctor Joel Goodin

Sure, a lot of my mission right now in life is to finish the grant that was mentioned. I’m putting together a book chapter and deadline, maybe tomorrow, hopefully so. But mission overall is helping doctoral students finish a dissertation. I do that for National University but I also do that, you know, as a sort of a consulting, educational, consulting firm for students at other universities and just try to coach them to success. Similar to what Dr. Kimball does, but much less formal and much more unofficial, for sure.

0:06:47 – Kimberly King

Wow. Again, where have you been all of our lives? Right, it doesn’t matter, I think, really in what you’re going toward, but to have somebody there cheering you on, on the sidelines but also motivating you and that’s what we’re talking about today is motivation, and so I’m going to start with you. Let’s see… Grayson Kimball, as a mental performance coach, how do you go about defining motivation with athletes and high performers?

0:07:12 – Doctor Grayson Kimball

So thank you for the question. It’s an interesting question because when many people think of motivation, they kind of look at it as a personality characteristic, like they’ll say something like oh, she’s a real go-getter. And I would always fire back with well, what does that mean, you know, as a go-getter, does that mean that you’re motivated? And so what I like to do is to kind of view motivation by two words the direction and intensity of one’s efforts.

So, for example, you know, somebody might say I want to run a marathon, so okay, we know where you are directing your efforts. That’s kind of part one, and then part two is the intensity of that effort. So how much effort do you actually put into training? Anybody can say they want to run a marathon, like I’m going to direct my efforts towards that, but then again, how much energy, how much intensity do I put into the training? And if there’s a disconnect between the direction and the intensity, you’re going to find yourself falling off. And of course, if there’s good symmetry between the two, you’re most likely going to see yourself pushing through. And then you know, hopefully, if it’s a marathon, you know crossing that finish line.

0:08:27 – Kimberly King

Wow, and it’s impressive. I was reading in your intro- how many marathons did I see that you’ve run? Is it eight?

0:08:35 – Doctor Grayson Kimball

Yeah, I’ve run eight. My career quote unquote might be over due to age and injuries, but you know, I still like to do a half marathon if I have the time. So I guess I have to cut it in half, but it’s still better than nothing.

0:08:52 – Kimberly King

Right, right and it does… Once you, get through that, it is a feat, right? I’ve only done one half marathon and I’d like to do more, but age can be a factor in that. So, Dr. Goodin, this question is for you as an educational psychologist, how do you approach motivation similarly or differently to those in sports psychology and really mental performance coaching?

0:09:17 – Doctor Joel Goodin

In education we’ve- and this is a sort of an overarching theme, I’ll sort of point out- we’ve optimized learning, learning atmosphere for structure but not for motivation, and that’s really what’s missing. So sport versus educational psych they have very similar frameworks, theoretical foundations. We share most of the same ones: self-determination theory, it’s one of the key ones that I use. But sports psychology has been applied and packaged for broad use and implementation to athletes, whereas educational psych has really no applied outlet. It’s often misunderstood. Many people equate it with school counseling or school psychology which both focus on therapeutic and testing emphases respectively, but instead, educational psych is focused on the educational system of those who teach, those who learn, and the context, that play a role in getting the best output.

0:10:25 – Kimberly King

And, like we were saying, it could be broad across the board. But it is interesting just to really kind of understand, coming at it, from the sports psychology to the cerebral, but it all is really, I think, the cerebral. I know we play tricks on our minds but that can affect everything in our lives. Dr Kimball, can you provide some context on the ideas of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and is one orientation better than another and are there benefits to either?

0:11:00 – Doctor Grayson Kimball

Sure, so, looking at motivation in those two ways, you have people that are extrinsically motivated, some who are intrinsically motivated. Then you actually do have some athletes and some high performers who are amotivated, meaning they just simply don’t care, like nothing intrinsically or extrinsically is going to like get them going. But you know athletes, high performers, who are extrinsically motivated, they’re driven by these outside and oftentimes uncontrollable factors, right? So an athlete may be motivated to play really well because they’re in a contract season, right? So it’s like at the end of this year my contract is up, I haven’t been playing well the last year or two, but it doesn’t matter because I made $50 million, but now I’d need that next contract and it could be my last contract, so that athlete is extrinsically motivated.

They don’t really care if the team wins or whatever. If I play well, I’m going to get that money. And that’s what’s driving me… versus athletes who are intrinsically motivated. They’re essentially driven by something that is internal and most likely far more controllable. So, again, to go back to that marathon example, they’re not running it to prove their friend wrong or to impress their girlfriend or whatever. They’re doing it because, I set a goal, let me see if I can actually achieve, you know, what I put my mind to. And athletes high performers who are more intrinsically motivated, tend to kind of see things through because they don’t want to let themselves down, because they’re doing it for themselves versus doing it for other people.

0:12:36 – Kimberly King

So Interesting. Thank you for explaining that.

0:12:44 – Doctor Grayson Kimball

Yeah, I just wanted to follow up with that. You had asked if there were benefits to you know, extrinsically or intrinsically right. So when you highlight, like you know, extrinsic motivation, you know you’re driven by these, you know uncontrollable external factors oh that must be bad, right. And then intrinsic, because you’re doing it for yourself. So that must, must, must be good… yes and no. Like sometimes an athlete or sometimes level of high performer, they might need some external spark, like to get them off the couch, like something to get them going. So in that sense it might be good to have some extrinsic, you know, factor playing a role. But if you’re way too reliant on external reasons to get you going, eventually you’re going to stop because it’s like why am I doing this, right? It’s got to be for me. So you know, generally speaking, intrinsically motivated is a little bit better than extrinsically motivated, but there are some benefits to having a little bit of both.

0:13:47 – Kimberly King

Okay, I was just thinking. I think last time I interviewed you both, I think I was saying the San Diego Padres really could use you guys. I’m just motivating our team, but when you see the slumps happen, can that kind of? Do you kind of go back and forth between extrinsic and intrinsic, like, do you have to? I can name a ton of players right now that you know they’re all going through the ups and the downs, but do you kind of utilize both of those?

0:14:16 – Doctor Grayson Kimball

Yeah, and you know, when you can talk to the athlete personally, you know, then you really get a sense and just asking them point blank, what’s motivating you right now, like you know what’s getting you going, and if it’s like, well, you know again, I really need to play well, so I get that contract, or I really need to play well today, so the coach doesn’t bench me, right, like those are all like outcome oriented. You know you just don’t really control all of that, you’re like, I don’t want the coach to bench me, I really got to step up my game. Okay, there’s that little spark. But now, intrinsically, what do I need to do within myself to, you know, be more positive and be more focused and all of these things that are going to then, hopefully, you know, motivate me to continue to, you know, perform better?

0:15:04 – Kimberly King

It’s so interesting. Dr. Goodin, what do you envision as the most strategic future for educational psychology, and could it be an applied field like mental performance coaching for sports psychology?

0:15:18 – Doctor Joel Goodin

Right. Thank you for that question. I wanted to tag on to something that Dr. Kimball said.

(Yeah please) Just like what I noticed and I think it’s important to point out, those intrinsic, extrinsic and amotivation. There’s actually a continuum between intrinsic and extrinsic that we don’t need to get into. That’s a sub-theory of self-determination theory, but it’s really interesting and I just was thinking about it, as you said it, Dr. Kimball, the sort of approach, avoidance, content in there, of I don’t want to get benched, that’s avoidance motivation, whereas approach, is I want to accomplish X, which is a different mindset and can definitely affect how we coach them and how they behave and perform. Going back to what’s the future of Ed Psych, we don’t have $50 million contracts for our students, not that I’m aware of, otherwise I would go back to school.

0:16:32 – Kimberly King

Right.

0:16:34 – Doctor Joel Goodin

You know there’s not- The extrinsic and intrinsic reward resource pool is much smaller. But I think that’s what educators and educational psychologists have to do is to tap into what it is, and sort of probably what Dr. Kimball does in every situation. What I do when I consult, um is you know, find out what their motivations are and just build those up, use those um based on those, meeting those. So the future of mental performance opportunity for education and educational psychology is sort of, you know, it’s open, it’s not there. It needs some leaders.

So I’ve studied those in medical careers for a long time. One very strong medical career is nursing. They’ve got great lobbyists, they’re well organized, they’re active and that’s done a lot for the nursing profession to give it I guess some clout, some power, and decision making, a voice in the room, a seat at the table, all that sort of thing. Educational psychology needs something like mental performance coaching to market themselves and show the obvious need for performance coaching to students and even to teachers. To market themselves and show the obvious need to the educational world K-12, higher ed, rather than just as needed for single individuals that want some tutoring or they’re failing a course so they could be consultants to educational systems nationally, by state, city, et cetera.

They need -I think I’d built some certification, training, uh to provide a clear service, and I would. I’ve already looked into this, and it’s built directly off the the sports psych roadmap, so to speak. I’ve looked at their stuff and basically just copy pasted the word education in. It’s not that simple, but there is a map to be followed. It’s fantastic and I’m jealous of it. I think that’s what’s needed for educational psychology, and I think Ed Psych is a good field and worthy of that sort of applied arm.

They need certification training. So, there are tons of students and teachers, districts, states, nations that are performing suboptimally. Think public education- and I’m not trying to insult any teachers or systems- I’m just saying there’s a lot of struggle, a lot of deficit. But they’re unaware that people like mental performance coaches in, like sports psych, could be used to help them solve their educational performance issues. I think we can change that.

0:19:42 – Kimberly King

And it’s so interesting as you’re talking about this, and it’s like almost it’s those incentives I think we build in and, for example, my son is a police officer and he’s 26, but he’s been a police officer for the past three years, but those incentives to climb the ladder, to do your physical fitness, and that, I think, is kind of what you’re talking about with the careers as a whole. You know, an upward ladder. I don’t know. I do want to ask both of you about the next generation coming up and what they’re incentivized by, which seems to me, if you just look at any headline, it’s about money, money, money, money and vacation time and this and that. So this is- that wasn’t necessarily on the list of questions here, but I am interested in finding out if you’re seeing a change and on how the next generation is being incentivized for motivation or motivated.

0:20:40 – Doctor Grayson Kimball

Well, I can speak just, I guess, on behalf of my kids who are almost 16 and 14, I think social media, again, there are definitely benefits to it, but the gratification of you know posting, you know your your football highlight right or your soccer highlight, and getting the likes right and like who’s going to see it next? And I almost feel like that’s where these kids motivations are now. Like can I be that next influencer, right? Like who’s going to pay me, you know, to promote their soft drink.

And like friends of mine, their kids are paid influencers and it blows my mind that you know every week they get a check for $3,500 because, like you know they’re doing this and you know they have 2 million people following them on that and you know, and not to age us, but it’s like it’s just such a foreign concept, I think to us because it’s like I want my life to be kind of private, like I don’t want to put it- I don’t have a big social media footprint because I don’t think people need to know everything there is to know about me, you can talk to me.

But I think those motivations have definitely changed because- you know, and there is a lot of money like out there to be had if you are the influencer or, again, can you get onto social media for the right or wrong thing? You know, because sometimes bad press is it’s still press.

I mean, obviously we all know what happened at the, that kiss cam. You know that concert, you know here in Boston, right, and it’s like those two- I mean, you know whatever you feel about them, that’s separate- but their lives are completely over like the way that they were. I mean completely different and who knows some of them they may benefit, you know. I mean financially from it, like you have no idea. But I just kind of see that trend with the younger generation.

It’s more about that online presence and just being visible, right, like being that TikTok candidate in politics, right? Or being that you know, you know YouTube athlete, you know, at 11 years old and everyone’s talking about you and it’s great, but by the time you’re 15 and you haven’t grown or whatever, nobody cares about you anymore, and that’s fine. But then what about the kid? That kid was the toast of the town and everything at age 11, 12, 13 and thinking he was going to be the next big thing, and now nobody talks about you.

So I don’t know what the long-term effects of those are, but again, it can definitely impact one’s motivation to want to go out and try to, you know, continue doing something.

0:23:40 – Kimberly King

No, and you know what? And again, sorry, this could probably be a whole sidebar conversation as I’m turning it into, but it is true everything you said. it’s what’s, this is where you guys come in to play with, or both of you gentlemen, because of the mindset for that motivation to keep it going. it’s, you know, we kind of have to ask, well, what’s next? Because you can’t be an influencer, can you, for the rest of your life? I mean, what’s plan B, just in case? if, you know, you can’t be kicking that soccer ball or the football forever. So yeah, to have that next, the next step. I don’t know if Dr. Goodin, you wanted to jump in on any of this…

0:24:17 – Doctor Joel Goodin

I had some thoughts. Yeah, we have to look at, and as consultants, Dr. Kimball may have different views, but you know, I don’t do a lot of trying to influence what the ethical, moral, lifelong value of their goals are and trying to sort of encourage them towards something better. But I want my students, the people I work with, consult for, whatever, to have meaningful lives.

And that’s something to think about with this social media, I think, um with influencing, I think, um, dopamine release is not motivation. Uh, it motivates us, but it is, it’s- It’s not a good reinforcer, it’s. It’s not stable, as as the, the kiss, kiss cam people that Dr. Kimball noted. You know, you’re the, the clicks can go away immediately, all those, all that dopamine coming in, all the likes can turn. You can still get the clicks, but it’ll be negative clicks and negative comments and it can potentially destroy your life.

I think we’ve got a very uncertain future, one where we’re sort of in a wild west of social media. And is that a meaningful life? To be an influencer? And then, as AI enters the picture, are the things that we normally do, like learning to think creatively, to be creative, to write songs, to write papers, to think critically as a PhD. How will AI replace these things and how can we leverage that? Not be scared of it, hopefully, but leverage it and adjust.

So there’s just a lot that’s going on, and it’s sort of like going back to what you said I think you’re in PR as well. Um, everybody sort of online is their own- they’ve opened themselves up, yes, to money, but to extra work, um, extra stress and pressures that also affect motivation. Like everybody who’s online has to play a political game. They’re sort of like little politicians, so to speak. At least people that aren’t very famous are- I’m calling little politicians. We have to be strategic about our presence. We have to say the right things. We have to, or there might be, you know, negative consequences or ramifications.

And so constantly thinking about that, as opposed to what Dr. Kimball said, is I think I don’t know if you said the word anonymity, but it’s just this sort of like you can talk to me if you want to get to know me. That is less pressure in many ways, because you’re not on camera all the time. You’re not posting your life out there for everybody to judge it. You get to sort of simplify, and I think there’s advantage there. So I’m not sure that I had a clear point, but those are the thoughts I had.

0:27:42 – Kimberly King

No, you know, and it’s true, it’s like for the masses. And then that constant upkeep where you’re right, you have to be your own politician or PR firm, you know, always constantly looking for your content. So that’s, that is a lot of pressure. So we’ll move around this a little bit now. But we often hear that motivated athletes are very competitive, and is there any science behind this assumption? This goes to you Dr. Kimball.

0:28:07 – Doctor Grayson Kimball

Yeah, so broadly speaking, I would say, yes, you know motivated athletes are very competitive. You know, for the most part, if you think about you know like the Tom Brady’s and the Michael Jordan’s, and you know those athletes. You know, super competitive and obviously you know super motivated to be the best that they can possibly be. They have what we would call a strong motive to achieve success, and actually, Dr. Goodin mentioned this earlier.

You have athletes who are motivated to achieve success, right, they’re thinking about okay, what are the little things I need to do to be successful today, versus the athlete that’s trying, that are essentially motivated to avoid failure. Right, it’s like, as long as I don’t double fault, I should be okay during my tennis match today, and I used to work with a lot of junior tennis players and that would be a very common goal that they would have. I would ask them right before their match, an hour before the match what do you want to do today in your match? And they’d say again if I limit my double faults, if I limit this if I don’t do that.

And I said, okay, you told me everything that you don’t want to do. But I asked you what you want to do. No, but I told you I don’t want. I said, yeah, but you did it again, like you’re telling me what you don’t want to do. And I said, all right, I know you don’t want to double fault. What do you want to do? Well, I guess, if I got to make sure I have a consistent toss right, this, this, that right, okay. So now you are motivated to achieve success.

And so there’s some evidence to suggest that when an athlete, a motivated athlete, strives for what we call task success right, everybody wants that positive outcome. But what are the little things I have to do? So when they strive for that task success, they tend to persist longer in adverse situations where somebody who’s motivated to avoid the first thing that goes wrong, they quit. Right. But again, if you’re motivated to achieve, you will kind of fight through that. And you know, motivated athletes, they seek out challenging situations.

Right, it’s like okay, if I want to get back into marathon running, you know, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to run the local 5k road race. Like it doesn’t do anything for me, right it’s- it’s not going to challenge me, it’s not going to push me, like I’m not going to train for it, like I’m not motivated for it. I need to do something a little bit harder, right? Maybe I do a 10 mile race, right? Or maybe I do the half marathon. So, again, you’re seeking out these challenging events and when you are performing, high achievers tend to give maximum effort when they’re out there. Because, again, this kind of goes back to that intrinsic drive- I’m doing this for me, because I want to feel good about myself and, again, if I end up impressing others, that’s the byproduct, right, but it’s more about what I’m doing. So you’re more likely to give max effort when you’re out there performing.

0:31:05 – Kimberly King

And again, I love that what you’re saying, because towards sports, but you know you can really apply anything, both of what you’re saying for a job interview or what- you know. You’re talking about how, what you it’s word semantics you flip the script on them. Script on them, when you asked what do you want to achieve rather than what don’t you want to achieve, and so I think you know you can apply that to anything in your life-

0:31:26 – Doctor Grayson Kimball

I see it a lot too with, like you know, sales reps, sales managers like that I work with.

Everything is performance based, and it’s like if they just had a bad quarter, right, and I meet with them at the beginning of the new quarter. Okay, what’s the goal now? It’s, you know, to not have a repeat of what just happened. Okay, but you’re thinking about all the bad things that just happened.

Are you really thinking about why you didn’t close those deals? Like was it you, was it you know the client, like there could be a hundred different reasons why. But again, what aspects of that do you have control over? What aspects of that could you maybe have done a little bit differently? And again, let’s motivate you to want to close the deal as opposed to let’s just hope I don’t screw up another one, because as long as I don’t screw it up, then I was successful. Right, but you’re still avoiding versus achieving.

0:32:21 – Kimberly King

That’s so important. Just to end quickly on that do you recommend writing down goals at all or just think you’re talking through them?

0:32:30 – Doctor Grayson Kimball

Oh yeah. No, we like to use this stupid little moniker: ink it, don’t think it, right. And it’s like and you can ask someone you know they’ll tell you 50 things that they want to do today. Ask them two days later hey, what were those 50 things you wanted to do the other day? Oh, wait, right, you don’t remember. And again, just write it down. You see it, it’s on paper, and then there’s nothing better crossing off that thing. I did it, it’s done, right, and versus just thinking about it you’re not even going to remember half the things that you were trying to do.

0:33:02 – Kimberly King

Good, okay, ink it, don’t think it. I’m going to remember that. Dr. Goodin. What motivational factors or variables would be different if mental performance coaching or cognitive performance coaching were leveraged in educational context?

0:33:22 – Doctor Joel Goodin

Okay, Well, thank you for that question. Well, so these are arguably less enjoyable performances for many people. A lot of people don’t enjoy school, and for good reason. There’s lots of deficits that we could improve. They’re less enjoyable performances much less crowd applause, especially as teachers deliver lectures. Sport can be enjoyable. Athleticism as a career can lose its intrinsic motivation, but perhaps there’s still some. In education, the heavy lifting is done by the extrinsic motivators. A lot of times, grades, praise, awards for students, pay, job stability of getting those degrees… and also for teachers. While some coaches will try to encourage their athletes to you know, go have fun like you used to in this game, there’s less of that nostalgic intrinsic motivation for students to lean into. There’s less of that playful – Athletes sometimes get reminded of like remember why you love the game. Most students never had that emotional connection to homework. [Laughter.]

0:34:38 – Kimberly King

Remember why you love homework.

0:34:43 – Doctor Joel Goodin

For most students, homework, assignments and tests are tasks that aren’t enjoyable, and rarely ever have been, so that’s where that stands.

0:34:52 – Kimberly King

That is a really good point, Dr. Kimball. What are some characteristics of high and low achievers?

0:34:55 – Doctor Grayson Kimball

So there are definitely differences between the two and again, this can apply in sport, education… You know this is certainly more of a blanket topic here. So high achievers to kind of go back to what I was just talking about with being motivated to achieve versus motivated to not fail so high achievers, generally speaking, are motivated to achieve success. They tend to focus more on feeling proud about what they’re doing when they are successful or when they fail because, again, a lot of people go, high achievers, they must never fail. No, everybody fails. But they attribute their successes and their failures to stable or internal slash controllable factors.

Like you know, living here in Boston, obviously, watching the Patriots when they were the Patriots, you know it was fun. But I really enjoyed listening to Tom Brady’s interviews after a game, if they won or if they lost, he would always say you know, you guys won, you know 38-0. We practiced really hard, we had a great game plan going in, we executed, we did this, we did that right.

Then, if they lost the game maybe it was a blowout, maybe it was a close game you know he would say you know the reason that we lost today we didn’t execute as well as we could have. You know, we could have been a little bit more dialed in here. We had opportunities that we didn’t take advantage of. Never blaming other people- referees, weather, bad calls, you know, like all of that stuff.

So these high achievers, when they succeed or when they fail, they basically take responsibility for both. They tend to adopt more task-oriented goals, again, more about the little things that they need to do and, generally speaking, they have high perceived competence. Like I know I’m good at this, like I may not be the best and to go back to Tom Brady not the fastest quarterback, didn’t have the strongest arm, but arguably the greatest quarterback ever. Right, why? Because he has a very high level of perceived competence. I know that I can do A, b, c, d, e, f and G. You know better than most people.

The low achievers, right, they’re motivated to avoid failure and you know, as long as I don’t double fault today, I should be OK. They focus more on shame. You know, no one’s going to like me and like all of that stuff. When they are successful or when they fail, they typically attribute it to the unstable, uncontrollable factors. So- and I’ve seen this like, even when an athlete wins, it’s like oh my god, you know what happened? Well, the other team, they just didn’t play well. Well, what about maybe you actually played well? No, no, no, it’s just the other team. So, like they can’t even take credit for when they are successful. Um, they tend to adopt more outcome-oriented goals right, I better not lose or I have to win, right, everything is very outcome-based. And they have very low perceived competence.

And you know, these are little things that you can pick up on just by having discussions, you know, and they don’t have to be like in a formalized, you know sit down session, just you know I would talk with an athlete, you know, just walking down, you know the street and just, and I’ll ask them, you know, questions on purpose. But I want to, I want to hear how they answer it Right, and I can tell right off the bat high achiever, low achiever, right, because he’s the he or she is talking about doing A, B or C. This person’s talking about I hope this doesn’t happen and that team is this. And so you can, once you kind of get a sense of where they are, then you can ask more. You know, more specific questions and then, you know, come up with ideas and strategies that might help them either continue that high achieving route or, you know, changing that low achieving mindset and slowly kind of shifting them to a healthier outlook.

0:39:10 – Kimberly King

That’s a good practice. Now, when I hear interviews, I’m going to be thinking high or low to your, just from those that tip. Dr. Goodin, do you want to say something?

0:39:20 – Doctor Joel Goodin

Yeah, let me tag on to that. So you know Dr. Kimball’s talking about locus of control. Really, is it internal, external, is it controllable, uncontrollable? And if it’s external and uncontrollable, or either one, really- you don’t have power as a person. You can do your best, but you’re not assured success. And the more certainty, the more control you have over your own success, the more powerful you’re going to feel, more self-efficacious, and then the more motivated you’re going to be by that to attack whatever it is.

And so I think there’s something, one word I like to say, is to fail successfully. Um, it seems counterintuitive, but everybody fails. As Dr Kimball said, we need to fail in the right way. Fail, get back up, fail, learn from what we, what, from what went wrong. Um, and it’s that, honestly, that makes a high performer, that the people that have failed a lot and learned the right way how to respond to those failures.

0:40:33 – Kimberly King

I like that too. There’s so much we can learn when we fail and recognize it. Back to you again, Dr. Goodin. What can educational psychologists do to motivate students?

0:40:46 – Doctor Joel Goodin

So we can work with teachers and school administrators, develop content and contexts that merge content and experiences that are intrinsically enjoyable, like, combine material with experiences that are actually fun or meaningful. Even small tweaks, puzzles, choices, surprising facts- those can trigger curiosity and motivation. Showing the realistic, practical use of what they’re learning. That’s always useful. That can be even exciting and motivating. Feelings of adventure, surprise, curiosity, gamification, as I mentioned, puzzles. Those experiences- the more experiences they can have rather than feeling like they’re just in a boring process that can also build into motivational aspects such as the relatedness emphasized by Deci and Ryan, which in self-determination theory.

So, in addition to what Dr. Kimball said earlier in relation to intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, Deci and Ryan identified the psychological needs for motivation founded on autonomy, competence, and relatedness. And I meant to mention that relatedness and how that’s changing with social media, and whether that’s really a feeling of connection… or not. And one thing if we have time, I’ll mention relatedness and motivation in relation to AI later on.

0:42:19 – Kimberly King

It sounds like that movie that came out. But yeah, we can swing back around and talk about that, because it is the wild, wild west, as you mentioned earlier. So to be continued on that. But, Dr. Kimball, are there any specific theories that you see or that you use with athletes and high performers to help them better understand that, their own motivations? You kind of talked a little bit about this where you asked them, but do you have any other thoughts here?

0:42:45 – Doctor Grayson Kimball

One thing that I noticed.  And now, god, it’s almost been 25 years that I’ve been doing mental coaching, which I can’t believe. It’s been that long. And as much as I hope that my clients learn from me, I learn from them too. And so just things that I’ve noticed over the years is that, you know, if you’re teaching a class, you know, on sports, psychology or whatever you know. Having the students understand theories, you know, behind any topic. If it’s motivation, leadership, you know, whatever.

When you’re meeting with an athlete, you know, or a high performer, as much as they just want to know, hey, like, what’s the strategy? Like how can you help me? It is important that they have some kind of theoretical understanding of, like, where is this coming from? But I still try to make the theory very practical. So, for example, there’s what’s called attribution theory and achievement goal theory, and I mean there are more, but like, I like those two because I find them very practical.

So attribution theory basically is just asking that, when an athlete has an outcome, you know, to what do they attribute to the outcome? And it’s basically looking at stable factors and controllable factors, right. So when the athlete, you know, kind of says something like, yeah, you know, I was able to perform well today because of my talent and my ability, right, either as an athlete, as a doctor, as a sales rep, whoever that high performer is. That talent, that ability, that’s a stable factor that doesn’t really change much day to day.

Now. Two years from now, you could be a much better doctor than you were today, right? Or two years from now, you could be a much better athlete than you were today. But from today to tomorrow, nothing really changes in terms of your talent and your ability. So that’s a stable factor. You kind of control that. And then when we look at like causal categories, right, like, was it an internal or external cause, right, that attributed to that, to the outcome? So it could be you know again, you know, yeah, we won today, it’s only because you know the ref made a bad call. Well, ok, well, that’s an uncontrollable factor, right versus no, our game plan, our execution, you know our communication, all of those things which are completely controllable. You know that would fall under that. You know controllable causal factor. So getting the athlete just to understand like stable, unstable, like you know controllable, you know not, it gives them some kind of baseline to kind of you know build that, you know, that motivation.

Achievement goal theory, again, looks at the type of goals that people set, right. So, again, are they more task goals versus outcome goals? And what we find is that athletes who tend to set more task-oriented goals, the focus is on personal performance, like how did I do today compared to yesterday? So I’m basically it’s a self-comparison. Once again, I kind of control that, not how did I do today versus how my teammate did yesterday? She’s different than I am, right. Or she’s taller or stronger, like I can’t compare myself to her, right, it’s got to be- I got to compare myself to myself, right. And so those are those task goals which, again more controllable, typically lead to a stronger work ethic and again, when things get challenging right, you’re more likely to persist, right, during that adversity because of these task-based goals.

The outcome goals, again, this is where you’re comparing yourself to others or, again, basing your self-worth off of the outcome. If I won, that must mean I’m really good. If I lost, it means that I’m really bad. But we know that there’s so much more to it. But very often athletes, high sales reps, whoever their self-worth is tied into the outcome, which again, we don’t control. That. So that’s not necessarily a good thing. So because of that, you can certainly see a decrease in feelings of competence- oh, maybe I’m not really good at this. Definitely see a decrease in effort. Why even try if it’s not going to matter, right? And then your overall confidence goes down and once you kind of lose or change that confident mindset, your motivation to kind of keep going, you really start to question whether it’s actually worth it. But again, a lot of that goes back to the types of goals that somebody is setting.

0:47:37 – Kimberly King

Interesting it’s so- you know, the theory behind it all. I guess we don’t always think about that. So when you are laying it out in a way that I think when we’re struggling, and you have really thought you know what is really motivating you, I think that just that will really spell things out. What Dr. Goodin theories do you pull from and what should you know about them?

0:48:10 – Doctor Joel Goodin

Well, the same theories. I think I haven’t really talked to Dr. Kimball lately about what theories he’s using the most, but I think our theories mostly come from the same places, and we didn’t necessarily name all the theories that, you know, everything he says I’m like, oh, that’s from control value theory or expectancy value theory or you know, attribution theory- he mentioned. You know these are most, if not everything, hopefully, of what we’re saying is from the literature, from theory, from things that are being researched, and I think that’s important.

Self-determination theory, and I mentioned that there’s a continuum between intrinsic and extrinsic and even beyond extrinsic, there’s sort of this amotivation that Dr. Kimball mentioned, and I think, just as you think about that, Deci and Ryan have loads of information and resources for any scholar. If you want to look into one theory, one motivational theory, self-determination theory is a good one and there’s so many resources online. I just wanted to stop and say that.

So we have- they say generally that we have not just intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation and that continuum between them, but psychological needs that need to be met: autonomy, relatedness, and competence. Another theory that I pull from to understand expert, expert performance and try to get my students and anybody I talk to to whatever level of performance they want to achieve, typically the best they can, expert. That places a little less attention on motivation and more on expert performance, but it ties in very well. Sometimes we need to do a task or project when we don’t have motivation, so we need to be volitional, basically forcing the effort from ourselves without losing quality, and that can be very hard to do from ourselves without losing quality and that can be very hard to do.

Deliberate practice theory evolved from the late Dr. Anders Ericsson’s research on experts of all types: chess players, athletes, musicians and so that’s a theory I lean on a lot in addition to the motivational theories. So that’s a theory I lean on a lot in addition to the motivational theories, and I think it ties in well and has the same components, but with less of an emphasis on, here’s how this is motivation.

0:50:50 – Kimberly King

Right, Dr. Kimball. What are some practical strategies that you tend to use with athletes to help facilitate an appropriate motivation?

0:50:59 – Doctor Grayson Kimball

So I think the most important thing, with any type of strategy that you recommend, you can easily just kind of like go to a textbook and say, oh, let me do this, this and that, but it’s really, it really needs to be specific to the athlete. That’s why getting to know them, their personality, what makes them tick, but you know, generally speaking, I think it’s really important to understand that no one can really motivate someone to do anything, right, which is why I like the way that you frame the question, how can you help facilitate motivation?

So, you know, people say, oh, you know, and I and I’ve had this happen- Athletes come to me and say, like I have no motivation to help me, right? And I jokingly say, I can’t. And they’re like well, what do you mean? You know you’re a sports psychologist, that’s what you’re like supposed to do. I said why am I supposed to do that? I said the motivation needs to come from within, right. So you know I can facilitate it. I can give you some things to start thinking about, but ultimately, if you’re not going to want to do it, you’re not going to do it right? No matter how, you know, uplifting my, my, my message is. But first thing I would do is I would encourage you know, then to think about that intrinsic, extrinsic motivation.

You know, again, just simply asking them point blank, what’s driving you to do what you’re doing? You know, I would see this a lot with you know, marathon runners. You know, when I was coaching the charity teams for the Boston Marathon, they’re all running the marathon for an unbelievable reason. It’s like you’re raising money for cancer research, you know, whatever it is, which is fantastic.

But when you wake up in Boston on a February Saturday morning at 5:30 AM, because at eight o’clock you have to meet at whatever location to go out and run 17 miles and it’s 16 degrees outside, raising the money is one thing, but why are you really, really, really doing this? Like, you can raise, you don’t have to run a marathon to raise money, you can just donate money, Like, why are you running the race? What is that true reason?

And for anything you’re doing, what’s the true reason behind it? So getting them to understand that, to me, might not sound like you know your typical strategy, but it can really kind of set them up to have a successful experience, because they start to realize, okay, I’m a little too extrinsic, I need to be more intrinsic, and you can kind of find that balance.

And then the other, I guess idea or strategy that I would recommend is to have them critically evaluate their goals. And this gets back to we were talking to before. Again, are they task-oriented goals? Are they outcome-based goals? Right, things that I have control over, things that I don’t have control over, right? Things that I have control over things that I don’t have control over? Because, again, the more they are in control of what they’re doing, even if they fail at it okay, that was on me, I need to do that better. And now I’m even more motivated to improve on that and prove to myself right, that I can get better. So, again, identifying intrinsic and intrinsic, extrinsic. Again, identifying intrinsic and intrinsic, extrinsic, motivational, you know, thoughts and then just the goals that they tend to set. Those would be two very basic but effective and practical strategies that all types of high performers can start.

0:54:37 – Kimberly King

And you said practical that’s the word I was going to say as well where you get really granular and you just say, why is it? And really spell it out, and it does sound- It may sound simple, but I think that’s what gets into the psyche. Dr. Goodin, tell us more about how deliberate practice it might also fit into a motivated effort.

0:54:59 – Doctor Joel Goodin

Right, I’ll tag on to what was just said and then I’ll move to that. But just to say that- a lot of my students get stuck, they get disheartened. Athletes do the same thing, we all do. And reconnecting to what are the real reasons you’re doing it to just reflect on what Dr. Kimball was saying If you can reconnect to why you’re really doing it and that true meaning behind it, instead of oh I used to enjoy this just because it was fun, now I’m doing it for the paycheck or the clicks or whatever it is, so that can reinvigorate us.

To your question, Anders Ericsson found that there are some essential consistent patterns among high-level performers. The highest level, practice does not make perfect- unless we practice very strategically, and he sort of spelled that out. What is strategic practice? And this is motivational because it tells you what will work. And knowing what will work is very motivating. A lot of my students that start a dissertation don’t know how, and when I start to give them a roadmap that they can understand step-by-step processes, they start gaining self-efficacy, confidence. They start feeling more confident and thus motivated. So practice doesn’t make perfect unless we practice strategically.

And the experts he studied (Erickson) were focused, that’s first of all they put away their distractions. They put away- if they had cell phones, which they probably didn’t- it depends on when the research was done, but they try to put all that away and I encourage all my students if you want to be a high performer, try to limit distractions by putting those things away. Have balance in your life. Close things off, put your phone on silent or in the other room. Put away distractions. Prioritize gaining skill and experience, As people, as these high performers practice their art, they reflected on their progress, much like we do, like with the Pomodoro technique, every 30 minutes- are you accomplishing what you want to? Give yourself feedback.

But they also called for additional feedback from like expert mentors, guides, like coaches or teachers. You need those people that have this long trajectory of experience and expertise. They often know what high performance looks like and they can see what you’re missing more easily than you can identify your own deficits. Whatever motivates you, should effectuate a certain level of expertise, and those who master an academic skill or concept or sport can become the guides, and here’s why it becomes automatic. They see the big picture much more easily, just as like when we were learning to drive cars. I think we- I don’t know if we all drive cars, but I do. I know how to drive a car and it was so hard when I started, right, and I did a lot of things wrong. It was difficult, but now it’s automatic for me. I don’t have to think, press the brake, watch out for that red light. When it becomes automatic, you see the big picture rather easily. Driving a car was initially hard and we focused on which pedal to press and how hard and thousands of other variables, but most of us drive quite well while focusing on other things. Now we become expert drivers. Some of us do, at least.

Um, in chess movies like Searching for Bobby Fisher or the recent show not so recent now, maybe, uh, The Queen’s Gambit those expert chess players could glance at a chessboard- like I remember her, just like walking past the chessboard and being like you need to make that move or just moving it herself, right? They could glance at a chess board immediately see what the pattern was, what needed to be done.

So as we practice deliberately, focused, reflective and with expert feedback we can make our understanding and efforts toward task success more automatic, and that’s motivating. And when it starts to get easier, it’s more motivating. We can enjoy it more. The less we struggle, the more we can enjoy it. We feel some momentum and momentum is a whole different area of motivation to talk about. Very interesting in sport. To me, the possibility of reaching expertise and high achievement is very motivating, especially for something that matters. To me, that’s an integral factor.

1:00:03 – Kimberly King

And I like your analogy with driving a car, because we really don’t think about how you drive a car anymore once you learn that expertise. You just go and then, like you said, you can be really- you can do several things. So that is another very practical way to just like slow it down and, I guess, keep track of all the, of all the wins, I suppose, right, those little things. So, Dr. Goodin, you did talk about this early on, about the AI. How do you see motivation as it relates to AI? Are we going to have this conversation now?

1:00:40 – Doctor Joel Goodin

Yeah, I just wanted to make a few points. I’ll wrap up and then you do what you need to do. But so AI is really interesting. Obviously, it affects the relational aspects- AI and motivation, so it can take tasks over for us. It can give us increased competence, feelings of competence. It can give us feelings of assisted support which could lead into relatedness. It can give us something to talk to and actual information which can increase competence and relatedness.

One thing to think about, I think, for humans is not only what it’s like for humans and how AI affects their motivation. But you use AI best or better, if you start thinking about what motivates AI? The answer is nothing. AI is not concerned about time. It has a job to do. It does it.

The facts are the facts and you cannot guilt or shame it into working faster or better. It will pretend to have human emotions and say, oh man, sorry about that. It won’t say those words, probably, but it will sort of express regret or like I let you down; it doesn’t have emotions, it doesn’t care.

And so the more we understand, and I think we’re in a world where we have to talk about AI, the more we understand how to use AI to our benefit, and that it’s not motivated by any shame or guilt. It’s only motivated by processing our directives and within the constraints of the rules and training it was built under, and so you can’t motivate it. All you can do is give it very clear directives, and understanding the difference between AI motivation, or lack thereof, and human motivation can really help us look at sort of a meta view of what is human motivation? If AI can’t be motivated, that helps us understand human motivation a little bit, because we have that comparison. So that’s the gist of sort of my thinking on it, the very foundational essence of what’s going on there, but it’s very interesting to think about AI and how to use it successfully.

1:03:38 – Kimberly King

Yeah, but I do understand what you’re saying that AI doesn’t have an emotion and it just needs to keep moving the ball forward with that directive. It is interesting. We are in the wild, wild west right now. You have any final thoughts, Dr. Kimball, on that?

1:03:53-Doctor Grayson Kimball

It’ll be interesting to see how AI does affect sports psychology and mental performance coaching. There’s some little side projects that I’m working on right now with a little group that’s doing an app for tennis players. And every time I speak with them, say, you can develop us some content, that’s great. And then the AI will blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it’s like, like right over my head. But I’ll be curious to see, you know, just like within this little project that I’m working on how these coders and these people, how they do integrate the whole AI piece, you know, into, you know, mental performance coaching, you know, specifically for tennis players.

So I think it’s still a little untapped, you know, in terms of what it can do. And I’m sure there’s a lot of benefits, but like, I probably speak for most of us. We don’t want AI to take our jobs away. So, you know, again, I think there’ll be, you know, some good use for it, but hopefully there’s still the human element, you know, that needs because I think that’s a big part, at least in sports, and not to go off on a tangent about that. But we also know in sports, everything now is data-driven, right.

Every coach who makes a call in a game, it’s, well, the data says this, you know, like as the jokingly say, you know, around here in Boston, like with the Celtics and the Red Sox, the nerds down in the basement that are crunching those numbers, right. And it’s like, yes, there’s value to that.

But what about your gut instinct when you’re actually watching the game in that moment, and your gut is telling you, he’s playing really well tonight, give him the ball versus no, but the best percentage is to have this guy come off the bench because he shoots at this. It’s like, okay, but like in the moment, what’s going to happen? And I just hope that, you know, natural instinct, the gut instinct isn’t taken out of every decision that’s made because the data says this or AI told me to do that.

1:06:16 – Kimberly King

I 100% agree, and to something that you said earlier along with being in the moment and just being able to make a call for what you see and what’s happening, but also, just as you said, the human factor and getting to know your clients or your, you know, whoever you’re working with, that’s that hopefully will never be replaced by AI, because we need that, I think, and along with the critical skills, so, so interesting.

What a great conversation today. I really appreciate your time. If you want more information, you can visit National University’s website. It is nu.edu. And again, thank you so very much for your time today, Dr. Goodin and Dr. Kimball (Great, thank you. Pleasure),

You’ve been listening to the National University Podcast For updates on future or past guests. Visit us at nu.edu. You can also follow us on social media. Thanks for listening.