When you need to motivate yourself to do something, do you think about how good you’ll feel once you’ve done it, or do you make yourself feel bad about not having done it yet?
Consider something as ordinary as going to the gym. You wake up knowing you should exercise, look in the mirror, and begin criticizing your body. You think about everything you ate over the weekend, how little you’ve exercised lately, and how disappointed you are in yourself for letting things slide. Eventually, you feel guilty enough to drag yourself to the gym, complete your workout, and return home with some relief. At least you went. At least you did something about it.
Now imagine waking up on the same morning and thinking about how much better you feel after exercising. You remember the energy you have afterward, the improvement in your mood, and the satisfaction of taking care of yourself. You may still be tired or reluctant to get out of bed, but you know from experience that you’re usually glad you went. You go to the gym, enjoy your workout, and return home feeling good.
I often use this example with clients to illustrate what I call feel-bad motivation and feel-good motivation. Both approaches get you to the gym, but they reinforce different psychological associations. In the first, you create enough discomfort that taking action becomes a way to relieve it. In the second, you anticipate something rewarding and strengthen that expectation through experience.
The distinction becomes interesting when we consider how often we use these strategies throughout our lives, and how rarely we question where they came from.
Why Shame Is Such a Powerful Motivator
Shame is closely connected to our sense of worth and acceptance. As children, we depend on other people for care and emotional security, and we become attentive to the behaviors that bring approval or disapproval. Those early experiences can shape how we evaluate ourselves long after we become independent of the people whose approval once seemed essential.
Unlike guilt, which generally concerns something we’ve done, shame involves a more global negative judgment about who we are. Missing a deadline can become evidence that we’re incompetent, and neglecting a responsibility can leave us feeling fundamentally inadequate. The emotional consequences extend beyond the practical problem that needs to be addressed.
This helps explain why shame can be such an effective motivator. The discomfort creates an incentive to act, and completing the task may temporarily relieve the negative feelings. In behavioral psychology, the removal of an unpleasant experience that increases the likelihood of a behavior is called negative reinforcement. If completing a task consistently relieves feelings of inadequacy, we may become accustomed to relying on those feelings to initiate action.
The relief, however, doesn’t necessarily change the underlying beliefs about ourselves. Finishing an assignment may quiet the fear of being incompetent without helping us develop greater confidence in our abilities. The next responsibility can reactivate the same concerns, leaving us dependent on a familiar cycle of pressure and temporary relief.
How We Learn to Motivate Ourselves
Think about how your parents motivated you growing up. What happened when you brought home a disappointing grade or forgot to complete a responsibility? Were you encouraged to understand what went wrong and try again, or did you become preoccupied with avoiding their disappointment? When you accomplished something difficult, was there room to enjoy your success, or did the conversation quickly turn to what you could improve next time?
These experiences can influence the internal conversations we develop as adults. A child who learns that mistakes bring criticism or threaten parental approval may become highly motivated to anticipate problems and avoid disappointing others. Eventually, that external pressure can become an internal voice that continues to enforce the same expectations, even when the parents are no longer involved.
This doesn’t mean that demanding parents necessarily produce shame-driven adults, or that every instance of criticism has lasting consequences. Children are influenced by temperament, relationships, school environments, and countless experiences beyond the family. But the emotional atmosphere surrounding achievement can help explain why some people associate responsibility with satisfaction while others experience it primarily through anxiety and the fear of falling short.
It can also be useful to consider what happened when you succeeded. If accomplishments were treated as expected and mistakes received considerably more attention, you may have learned to focus on what remained unfinished rather than appreciating what you had achieved.
The Relationship Between Motivation and Success
Some of the people who rely most heavily on fear-based motivation are also extraordinarily accomplished. They have developed impressive discipline, professional competence, and the ability to perform under considerable pressure. Because this approach has accompanied their achievements for so long, they may believe it is responsible for them.
This creates an interesting dilemma. Someone who recognizes that their internal dialogue is harsh may still resist changing it because they fear becoming complacent. They worry that without the pressure, they’ll stop working as hard, lose their ambition, or become less effective.
But consider whether that pressure actually created your abilities or whether you developed those abilities while also experiencing it. Years of education, practice, persistence, and experience contribute to competence. The fact that fear accompanied those efforts doesn’t establish that it was necessary.
There is another aspect of this pattern worth examining. Imagine spending weeks preparing for an important presentation, worrying that you’ll embarrass yourself or disappoint your colleagues. You prepare extensively, deliver an excellent presentation, and receive enthusiastic feedback. Yet afterward, your dominant feeling is relief that nothing went wrong.
You may have been so focused on preventing failure that you gave yourself little opportunity to experience the satisfaction of performing well. The presentation was successful, but the emotional reward consisted largely of escaping an anticipated negative outcome.
Over time, this can create a difficult relationship with achievement. Each new responsibility becomes another opportunity to fall short, while successful outcomes provide only temporary reassurance. There is always another expectation to meet, leaving relatively little room to appreciate what you’ve accomplished.
Developing Feel-Good Motivation
If you’ve relied on pressure and fear of failure for much of your life, another approach may initially feel unfamiliar. You may understand the appeal of feel-good motivation while finding it difficult to access when faced with responsibilities you’ve historically approached through anxiety or guilt.
One way to begin is by paying attention to the positive consequences of things you already do. After exercising, notice how you feel physically and emotionally. After completing an assignment, allow yourself to appreciate the satisfaction of having done it well. Before beginning something difficult, consider what you might enjoy about the process or what you’ll appreciate once it’s completed.
Initially, the familiar anxiety may still appear, and you may continue acting partly out of guilt or obligation. But by deliberately noticing and anticipating rewarding experiences, you begin creating additional associations that can influence how you approach similar responsibilities in the future.
The deeper work often involves examining the beliefs that make internal pressure feel necessary. If you’ve learned that being satisfied with yourself leads to complacency, allowing yourself to enjoy an accomplishment may produce anxiety. If you associate rest with laziness, taking an afternoon off may feel uncomfortable regardless of how much you’ve accomplished. Understanding these beliefs, including the experiences that shaped them, can help you begin questioning whether they still serve you.
The same principle is useful in parenting. Consider how you encourage a child to complete homework, practice an instrument, or follow through on a responsibility. You can emphasize the consequences of failing, express disappointment, or criticize their lack of effort. You can also help them recognize the pleasure of becoming more capable, the satisfaction of finishing something difficult, and the freedom that comes from having their responsibilities behind them.
Children need expectations, accountability, and appropriate consequences. They also benefit from developing their own appreciation for effort and accomplishment, rather than depending primarily on the desire to avoid disapproval. The way we respond to their mistakes and successes, along with how we speak about our own, helps shape the motivational habits they carry into adulthood.
A Question Worth Asking Yourself
The next time you’re struggling to get something done, pay attention to the conversation you’re having with yourself. Consider whether you’re drawing on the anticipated benefits of taking action or creating enough discomfort that you feel compelled to act.
You may discover that you’ve been relying on the same motivational strategy for much of your life, perhaps one you learned long before you had the opportunity to question it. And if that strategy has helped you accomplish difficult things, it’s understandable that changing it might feel uncomfortable.
The question is whether you need to continue making yourself feel inadequate to accomplish the things that are important to you. You may already possess the discipline, competence, and persistence required to follow through. Developing another source of motivation can allow you to draw on those abilities while experiencing more satisfaction in the process and greater enjoyment of what you’ve accomplished.
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