In his book The Right Stuff, Carter Cast states that motives are the source of all energy.  We must understand our motives!A rewarding career has its foundation in understanding where your talents and vulnerabilities lie and what motivates you.  They drive you forward allowing you to perform well.  Your needs are the foundation of your motives.  When they are met you feel happy and energized.  If they are not, you will feel a cognitive dissonance and anxiety.  You will feel demotivated – detached and unengaged.  We remain motivated when we work by the five fundamental factors of:  achievement, affiliation, power, autonomy, and purpose.Our motives drive us forward allowing you to perform well.  Your needs are the foundation of your motives.  When they are met you feel happy and energized.  If they are not, you will feel a cognitive dissonance and anxiety.  You will feel demotivated – detached and unengaged.  We remain motivated when we work by the five fundamental factors of:  achievement, affiliation, power, autonomy, and purpose.AchievementThe need to constantly improve your performance and to accomplish challenging goals that are meaningful to you.  If you’re highly motivated by achievement, the chances are good that you prefer working in environments with clear performance indicators, where your progress is tangible and can be seen on an ongoing basis.  You are likely a person who seeks feedback in order to improve and advance.  You are probably a person who sets clear goals, organizes your work effort, and measures your progress.AffiliationThe need for maintaining close, friendly relationships with people; the desire to belong to a group and to be liked, preferring collaboration over competition.  If you’re highly motivated by affiliation, you are probably a team player who is a good listener and sensitive to perspective of others.  You are likely skilled at building team spirit to accomplish goals.PowerThe need for having an influence on others, can be expressed either personally or institutionally.  People oriented toward personal power generally seek status and recognition and try to control others, while those with an institutional power drive try to organize the effort of a team to further the company goal. If you have a strong power motive, at your best you seek to empower others and work to accomplish group goals.  You are effective at influencing others toward your end goal and are able to work through organizational hierarchies to figure out how to complete complex, cross functional initiatives.Autonomy The desire to have control over your work and the ability to determine what direction to pursue.  If you’re highly motivated by autonomy, the chances are good that you prefer to have discretion over your task, your time, your method, your team.  It means you’ll have a high degree of discretion over how you structure and complete your work.  Seth Godin describes this as someone who picks their boundaries.PurposeThe need to be part of something bigger than yourself.  You are likely drawn to organizations that have a guiding mission that connects your work to some social good that aligns with an important personal value.  The purpose is bigger than the product. Dan Pink in drive says that purpose driven people seek companies who use profits as the catalyst rather than the objective.  If we are taken care of, then we become driven less by extrinsic motivators (money) and more intrinsic motivators like becoming increasingly skilled at something we enjoy doing….something we feel provides value to others and meaning to us.