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.

This is the first of two chapters that present the core ideas of Motivational Systems Theory (MST), along with supporting evidence that has continued to accumulate not only for MST concepts and principles but also for the broad range of motivation theories developed during the second half of the twentieth century that inspired the development of this integrative framework. Humans evolved to be goal directed, and motivational patterns are organized around goals and contexts. So, the first step in understanding human motivational systems is to dive deeply into the science of personal goals. Metaphorically, our core personal goals are the “leaders” in “motivational headquarters.”

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).

This history of the scientific field of human motivation is demarcated by several distinct phases, each of which evolved toward a new general hypothesis. We begin that history with the speculations of Darwin on the adaptive nature of certain propensities and emotional reactions. Early work by Karl Groos, Robert Woodworth, and others explored play and interest as important natural tendencies in primates and humans. Yet the advent of behaviorism, through both drive theory (Hullian) and operant (Skinnerian) schools, crowded out these ideas, instead focusing the field on how external reinforcements shape and maintain behaviors. The significance of cognitive mediators, especially people's expectancies and value for reinforcements soon became the focus of psychology’s cognitive revolution, as exemplified in work by Julian Rotter and Albert Bandura. Simultaneously, especially spawned by the work of Robert White, interest grew in the intrinsic motivations underlying much learning and development, leading to today’s focus on topics such as achievement motivation, personal goals, self-determination, and volition. Across this history we see the important role played by normal science and advancements in methods in both developing and ultimately revealing the limitations of preceding paradigms, leading to systematic growth, as well as ongoing debates within the field.