Negative motivation is pooh-poohed

[MarkKol]

Short story:

I traveled to my country's capital to get a license for my job, this was my first experience where I was alone in an apartment, exposed to a lot of women and socialization. This was a huge city, ~700K people. I decided to flunk the test cuz I wanted to explore the city. And then I came back home, I fucking hated my part of the country more than I usually do. I had anger attacks (first time), I cried out of misery for the first time in years because I was stuck in this shit part of the world.

And to some degree I realized that a 700k city isn't that big, It's actually small. My mind was blown, but I digress.

Recently I found out that I shouldn't suppress this anger or emotion, this anger is here for a reason. I'm in a shit place in life, I shouldn't be happy about it, I shouldn't ignore it. Why can't positive and negative motivation coexist?

Claiming that positive motivation is the only motivation one should harness is sunshine and rainbows, what you get as a result is: a lazy society. You can't even cultivate positive motivation if your life is mediocre. You haven't dealt with pain so you have no sensitivity and no desire.

I fucking hope that I get fired from my comfy office job for whatever reason, so I can be kicked in the ass. And I wish that on you too.

[caspex]

What I have noticed is that Negative motivation works better for lazier people. While positive motivation is subject to fear of failure, taking risk, etc., Negative motivation isn't subject to anything. You either do the thing or bear the punishment. and the human mind spends less energy in deciding to avoid punishment(often soon or immediate) than to continuously pursue a pleasure that is often far into the future.

[integral]

Get a job in the big city? 

[MarkKol]

15 minutes ago, integral said:

Get a job in the big city? 

Think it’s that easy?

edit: I’m not saying that I wont. I am planning on doing that. It’s after I found out that 700k is small that I wanted to prepare better and up my standards, move to Amsterdam potentially. Which is more ambitious because It’s also a different country with a foreign language that I don’t speak at all.

Edited April 5, 2023 by MarkKol

[Buck Edwards]

Negative motivation doesn't work for everyone. 

 

[Carl-Richard]

What is positive/negative motivation exactly?

[Buck Edwards]

1 minute ago, Carl-Richard said:

What is positive/negative motivation exactly?

Fat shaming is sometimes considered an example of negative motivation. 

 

[Carl-Richard]

46 minutes ago, Enlightement said:

Fat shaming is sometimes considered an example of negative motivation. 

Is encouraging people to lose weight positive motivation?

Edited April 5, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Buck Edwards]

4 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Is encouraging people to lose weight positive motivation?

Indirectly it is. It's a form of a push. It's positive when the person is being supported in their efforts, when they're pushed to achieve what they think is desirable and negative motivation when they're being disciplined, reprimanded so that they feel stressed enough to actually do something about the problem. 

Whether or not if any of these systems are going to be fully effective depends entirely on the way it's perceived and received by the person receiving the motivation. 

 

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Enlightement said:

Indirectly it is. It's a form of a push. It's positive when the person is being supported in their efforts, when they're pushed to achieve what they think is desirable and negative motivation when they're being disciplined, reprimanded so that they feel stressed enough to actually do something about the problem. 

Whether or not if any of these systems are going to be fully effective depends entirely on the way it's perceived and received by the person receiving the motivation. 

Forgive the dense rambling, but there is a point at the end:

There is this thing called self-determination theory, and it presents different types of motivation. You can visualize it on a spectrum from low to high autonomy (the degree to which a behavior is decided by the self): amotivation, extrinsic motivation, introjected motivation, indentified motivation, integrated motivation and intrinsic motivation. It seems to me that "positive motivation" leans more in favor of the types of motivation associated with more autonomy, while "negative motivation" is more the opposite.

Another thing is that it's possible for a given behavior to start off as being heavily "external" to the self, but then this behavior can be gradually integrated over time. For example, it's possible to perceive the behaviors associated with weightloss as something that people force onto you, which will often be felt as a negative experience (because people generally prefer their behavior to be self-determined), but then you can also internalize those behaviors such that they will feel less externally forced on you, and then you'll more likely associate weightloss with something positive.

The "best" form of motivation is intrinsic motivation, which is when a behavior is done because it's inherently fun or pleasurable. It's a bit in a class of its own, because behaviors that start off as being external to the self are not very likely to translate to intrinsic motivation through the internalization process as described above, but for weightloss in particular, it's possible to become more aware of how being fit and healthy is intrinsically pleasureable in itself, which can be a legitimate way to increase motivation. In this context, practices like mindfulness meditation are known to be linked to higher levels of intrinsic motivation, and it's arguably the very definition of becoming "more aware" in this case.

So there are many possible ways to alter one's motivation in beneficial ways that don't necessarily fit neatly into the "positive/negative" dichotomy

Edited April 5, 2023 by Carl-Richard