On the first round, I stood about 6 feet from the trash can, and I missed the trash can totally when throwing the ball of paper. My confidence level was reasonable before shooting, I was setting my goal higher than desired to see if I could actually achieve the goal. I didn’t make it because I set my goal too high and stood too far away…my aiming isn’t up to par. My confidence level shot down to absolutely nothing when I had to move back 5 more feet from that spot, and I didn’t make the goal again.
I was setting myself up for a loss of intrinsic motivation right from the start, when I stood too far back than desired from the trash can. My confidence decreased after the first time missing it, and even more when I missed it the second time. I blamed myself for lack of practice at shooting at targets. The issue was controllable, even though that wasn’t enough to really motivate me. I attributed my missed shots to internal causes, but they were controllable, so if I had any value in learning this skill more, I’d be intrinsically motivated to keep practicing shooting crumpled paper into trash cans.
I think you got the message intended from this activity, or one of them, which is that it's important to set reasonable goals. If you challenge yourself TOO much just to look good, etc, that sets you up for losing motivation. If you set a series of small reasonable goals, and observe your success each time, your self efficacy will increase.
ReplyDeleteI think that is very interesting because I can see how if you set small goals for you, and you succeed then you're self efficacy will increase. It is more helpful than setting up unreasonable goals that are hard to achieve and when these goals aren't met, than it can make you lose your confidence. This has happened to me in the past and I've learned that setting smaller goals and taking baby steps is the way to go.
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