What if the real driving force wasn’t motivation, but pleasure?
You are considering changing careers, but you are hesitant. You tell yourself: “I’m not motivated enough,” “I’m not cut out for training,” “I never stick with things for long.” What if the problem is misidentified?
It’s not about motivation in general. It’s about the pleasure felt in the action. What neuroscience describes as activation of the mesolimbic dopaminergic circuit, often referred to as the reward circuit.
The reward circuit: why your pleasure is your best guide
The brain is well designed. When an action makes you feel good, it lets you know. It rewards you. It reinforces the activated neural pathways, helping you to remember, concentrate, and repeat. This circuit—dopaminergic, deep, powerful—is designed to encourage you to continue doing what is good for you.
When pleasure is present, your brain releases dopamine, particularly in the mesolimbic circuit. This release encourages the repetition of behaviors associated with a positive experience, supports attentional engagement, and facilitates learning consolidation.
Steve Jobs put it another way: “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” This isn’t just a quote from an inspired entrepreneur. It’s a neurological principle.
This pleasure can be immediate (creating, passing on knowledge, repairing) or deferred (being able to buy a watch). But when it is based solely on future gratification (salary, promotion, purchase), it quickly wears off. The reward circuit only consolidates if the activity itself provides modest but constant pleasure.
In other words, you can endure a job that promises you a reward. But you will only persevere if you find pleasure in what you do, not just in what it brings you. This is where your ability to learn without wearing yourself out comes into play.
In a career change project, this circuit acts as a compass. It shows you less what is valued externally and more what is sustainable internally. And that may be your true driving force for the future.
It’s not that you lack desire. It’s that the activity produces nothing in return.
Appetence refers to what you enjoy doing over the long term, without depending on external rewards. What we refer to here as appetence corresponds, in scientific terms, to a stable form of intrinsic motivation: a source of engagement that supports learning and attention over time.
It is clearly distinct from what is often confused with it:
- The Competence: it is what you know how to do, but not necessarily what you like to do.
- Need: this is what you are seeking to fulfil or escape. Appetite, on the other hand, stems from a free attraction, not a lack.
- Motivation: it drives us towards a goal. Appetence acts without an explicit goal: it arises naturally, out of pleasure.
- Satisfaction: it disappears once achieved. Appetence, on the other hand, returns. It reignites action, with no defined end.
- Desire: often impulsive or fleeting. Appetite is stable, repeatable, reliable.
- Passion: intense and sometimes destructive. Appetite is modest, but sustainable. It does not exclude everything else: it integrates.
Appetence engages attention effortlessly, activates memory without constraint, and makes you want to do it again without being pushed. It doesn’t tell you what you ‘have’ to do, but what you can do for a long time without wearing yourself out. It naturally activates the reward circuit because it makes the effort desirable in itself.
Élodie, 44, has changed careers twice: ‘I used to think I was unstable, that I got bored easily. But one day, I realised that the problem was what I was doing, not who I was. When I found a job where I could see the results of my work, I finally stuck with it.’
Nicolas, 53, left logistics for social mediation: ‘Before, I didn’t understand why I couldn’t concentrate. I was good at my job, but I felt numb. Now, I’m tired, but alive. I feel useful, and my brain is working for me.’
What changes everything is not the difficulty of the activity, but how you feel in the moment you are doing it. Pleasure is information. A direction.
Think of a day when you felt absorbed in what you were doing. What tasks attracted you? What kept you going without being asked? And in your past experiences: what activities did you seek out on your own, even outside of your job?
Changing careers is not about finding the right box. It’s about finding the right circuit. The one that gives you energy, focus and endurance.
👉 Identify your appetences: they will enable you to become aware of the activities that produce dopamine, thereby creating a feeling of professional pleasure.
