This chapter might be euphemistically called a summary of the book “in pictures,” as it includes all of the key graphics used throughout the book to represent the core ideas of MST (including summaries of goal content themes, different kinds of emotion patterns, and personal agency belief patterns), TSP (including representations of the TSP Theory of Motivation and Optimal Functioning and the TSP Theory of Life Meaning), and principles for motivating self and others. This chapter was designed to provide readers with a quick summary of the book’s contents and an easy way to recall key ideas related to the challenge of motivating self and others.

This chapter provides a nontechnical introduction to the components of human motivation (goals, emotions, and personal agency beliefs) that capitalizes on the intuitive understandings that readers already have about motivation from their own everyday experience. This is done through thought questions that encompass motivation of both self and others. The concept of “motivation at its (human) best” – what we call Thriving with Social Purpose – is also introduced as an advance organizer for the chapters to follow.

The next step after getting a feel for what “personal goals” are and how they work is to understand the other two components of motivational patterns (emotions and personal agency beliefs) and how goals, emotions, and personal agency beliefs operate as a “leadership team” in motivational headquarters. Learning how these components of human motivational patterns (always) work together to direct, organize, and regulate thought and action provides the conceptual foundation for constructing a theory of motivation and optimal functioning that can inform efforts to help people be more successful and experience enhanced levels of well-being and life meaning. This chapter also introduces the concept of equipoise – a system-wide requirement for optimal functioning – while also explaining how MST concepts can be applied to motivation at the level of human collectives (Group Motivational Systems Theory).