Your goals and motivations are driven by your underlying values?the reasons you desire to achieve certain things.

Your goals and motivations are driven by your underlying values—the reasons you desire to achieve certain things. Values inform our thoughts, words, and actions, and they help us to grow, develop, and envision and create the future we want to experience. 

Now that you have viewed videos that covered goals, motivation, and values, you will reflect on your own goals, motivations, and values and capture your reflections to complete the Module 1 assignment. This assignment is about understanding your motivations for coming to the university and what drives you to accomplish milestones.  

For this assignment you will download the "What Are Your Motivations?" assignment template and use it to complete the three parts of the assignment. 

Part 1: The first step in better understanding your values is writing three to five goals for yourself. These could be personal or professional goals, and they could be short-term or long-term goals. Be sure to make them SMART goals.

Part 2: Once you have established your goals, think about what is motivating you to achieve those specific goals. Is it to get to a certain level in your career? Is it to achieve something you have always wanted for personal reasons? Is it to set a good example for your family or friends? The second piece of this assignment is to establish two or three motivations for each goal you have identified. 

Your motivation for doing anything generally stems from your values. Motivating forces could be values instilled in you from a young age or values you hold because of what you have learned or experienced. Your core values are those that drive your behaviors, actions, and words. They are the reasons you dedicate your time and energy to most things in your lives. They are your guiding principles. 

Part 3: Now that you have established goals and acknowledged your motivations, look at what is motivating you and write the underlying reasons for each goal: These are your values. There may be one or several values for each goal, and the values may be the same or similar for different goals.  

There are no wrong answers for these: They are based on you and your guiding principles. The purpose is to establish your values and to recognize what is driving you to accomplish milestones. 

Part 4: Now that you’ve established goals, acknowledged your motivations, and reflected on your values, it’s time to consider how to go about achieving your goals. There are likely several steps you’d need to take in order to reach your ultimate goals, but writing down the first step that you can (and will) take can help you to form a plan of action.

Part 5: Finally, you'll want to write two or more sentences about what you learned about your goals, motivations, and values from completing this assignment.

Once you have captured your goals, motivations, and values, as well as your action steps and lessons learned in the assignment template, upload your completed assignment to the assignment folder for Assignment 1: What Are Your Motivations.