Are you an innie or an outie?

The framework that freed me from motivation guilt.

Not belly buttons. Motivation.

People who are internally motivated get things done by deciding they are going to do them. Their drive to act comes from within. Those are the “innies.” They are most prized in our culture, held up as a standard. I envy them.

Me? I’m an outie.

To get things done, I need external motivation, a prompt from outside of myself, not generated by yours truly.

For most of my life, due in part to the cultural bias I mentioned, I thought being an “outie” was a failure or a flaw.

My father was an innie. He was so internally motivated it was as if he lived by some inner clock that went off at precise intervals. Ed, my husband is also internally motivated. He can easily summon the energy to begin and complete nearly any project to which he puts his mind. And I’m pretty sure he wonders, at times, what the heck is wrong with me that I can’t.

But learning about neural wiring by studying the Enneagram, CliftonStrengths, Myers-Briggs, and other personality measures, has relieved me of what was deep shame. My brain is not wired in a way that allows me to motivate myself. I have other executive functions (and other fine qualities), but an internal “start” button isn’t one of them.