Exploration and Effectiveness

I am Vishaka Thakur, a 19-year-old commerce graduate. I feel very restless all the time. I cannot sit at one place and be satisfied with doing the monotonous things over and over again. The same type of movies, eating joints and same conversations with friends bore me to no extent. I go out for vacations to different places, explore new hobbies and areas of development for myself constantly. As a result, I have become more knowledgeable. However, even then my restlessness has not gone down. I feel that there is something I have not achieved and I have not fulfilled my true potential. Am I too demanding and if true, is this an abnormality? Please advise.

The motivation for exploration is one of the most persistent and powerful motives of all. This motivation helps to seek variety in stimulation, to process information about the world around us, to explore and to be effective in mastering the challenges from the environment. Needs to know and to be effective persist throughout life and are difficult, if not impossible to satisfy. Even when our biological and social needs have been met, we continue to seek contact with the environment and to engage in restless and relentless activity. Because they are so persistent and seem to exist to one degree or another in everyone, these needs to know and to be effective are often considered innate, a part of the human species heritage. In a sense, these motives are behind our greatest human accomplishments and also, unfortunately, our greatest fiascos. We just cannot seem “to let well enough alone”. We put a lot of time, effort and money in looking at things, traveling, and exploring the environment. We visit new places and points of interest; we watch television, motives, sports contests and plays; we read newspapers, books and magazines. Stimulus needs and the need to explore are largely behind these activities. We also get “tired of the same old thing”. In other words, what satisfied our stimulus and exploration needs soon no longer does so, and we seek something new. Some people – “sensation seekers” as they are called – are prone to search for especially exciting stimuli and situations. And even if we are not sensation seekers, most of us seem to have a need to seek new, or novel, stimuli. Stimuli from the environment arouse all of us, and each of us has an optimal level of arousal which we seek. Sensation seekers have very high optimal levels. Being at or near the optimal arousal level is pleasurable; too-high or too-low levels of arousals result in feelings of displeasure. Moderately novel (one that is different from what we expect) and complex (one which contains a relatively great amount of information for us to process)  stimuli are especially good at increasing the arousal level towards the optimal, pleasurable level. The exploration motivation helps us to act competently and effectively when interacting with the environment – our effectance. Effectance motivation plays an important role in human behaviour. Goals are reached, but effectance motivation is not satisfied; it urges us towards new competencies and masteries. Instrinsic motivation is a person’s need for feeling competent and self-determined in dealing with the environment. Extrinsic motivation is directed towards goals external to the person like money or degree in education. Extrinsic rewards have their uses in guiding behaviour in business and in college, but reliance on them can sometimes stifle intrinsic motivation and impair performance. With extrinsic motivation, people may adopt a strategy of doing the minimum needed to get by instead of working hard for the fun of it, creatively and for the satisfaction that comes from the mastery and deep understanding of a problem. Thus by working against our motives to know and to be effective, extrinsic motivation can sometimes reduce a powerful aspect of our motivation.

Vishaka, these ideas about exploration and effective motivation are to help you understand yourself better. As you are in young adulthood – the prime of life, the needs that you have are justified and proper. It is not an abnormality. You are best suited to explore your potential. The only care that you need to take is whether you abandon the tasks due to difficulty in achieving the goals and because it is uncomfortable for you. If that is so, you will have explored many areas without actually moving ahead from your place. Do not be afraid of failures. In the process of exploration, there is no concept of right or wrong.