The Authentic Inner Compass as an Important Motivational Experience and Structure: Antecedents and Benefits

This chapter focuses on the sense of having an authentic inner compass (AIC): the perception and feeling of knowing what is really important to one, because one has explicit and articulable self-guiding core preferences that feel voluntary and authentic. These core preferences reflect foundational values and personal inclinations, and long-term goals derived from them. The experience of having an AIC is presented as one of five facets of the meta-need for authentic self-direction (i.e., autonomy), which together promote optimal realization of more specific basic needs and personal inclinations. Research shows that the experience of having a firm AIC promotes true volition to engage in activities and contexts enabling AIC realization, vitality, sense of meaning, resisting negative peer pressures, and other optimal-functioning indicators. Educational and childrearing practices promoting or hindering AIC development are presented. The emphasis on articulable authentic core preferences underlying the sense of AIC reflects a view of autonomy as authentic intentionality and agency.