Shame and Self-Judgment As Motivators

While most of us use them pretty freely, shame and self-judgment are pretty crappy motivators. 

Because the action you take is actually fueled by you trying to escape the shame and self-judgment. Usually by trying to achieve your way out of it. By getting the promotion. The new job. The title. The degrees. The relationship. The body. The habit streak. 

So then when you achieve, it doesn’t actually feel good–at least not for long–because your brain already has a longstanding habit of telling you that you are never currently good enough. 

And the path to the achievement also never feels good because you are constantly feeling ashamed and judged.

Ouch. That’s a lot of feeling bad. (I get it. I lived this for so long.). And it makes hard to sustainably rely on that shame and self-judgment to motivate yourself because you know this is the result. 

Here’s the thing.  

You can get the same results and feel better. You can also get even better results if you use different motivators. 

You cannot, however, achieve or succeed your way into self-love or even self-acceptance. If you could, it would already have worked. Because you are very good at succeeding and achieving. 

The same brain that you used to shame yourself to get where you are is going to continue to shame you no matter what you change externally.

You will always create more of what you already believe. 

UNLESS

You change the way you talk to yourself. 

The way you think about yourself. 

The way that you treat yourself. 

The less shame you have the more actual change you will have. 

You might even find that you don’t want some of the changes you thought you did. 

Instead, they were just an ineffective tool you were using to try to finally feel good about yourself. And you can feel good about yourself right now.