the following subroutine: “when an adult takes you aside to talk to you about anything related to ‘living up to your potential’, start crying.”
I find this has enough emotional truth to be funny. I’m not the only person who’s found that pep talks work backwards—they damage motivation rather than improving it.
I think the underlying connection between “living up to your potential” and pep talks is someone charging in, claiming that they know your mind better than you do, and trying to hijack your intrinsic motivations, not that I have boundary issues or anything like that.
I’ve found the appeal of pep talks is in what they say about the pep-talker. It’s basically a way of saying “I like you, I want to cheer you up, I acknowledge that you’re not at your best but I don’t look down on you for it”. It’s nice that someone would say that. “Your meds will definitely kick in soon, you’re not doing so bad, go for a walk and you’ll feel better” is eye-rolling bullshit, but Doctor Reassuring Patient is adorable, and a mercifully easy script to navigate.
For pep talks, I dislike them because they rely on the “I have this image of you” approach. The motivator is trying to get you to think they think you’re great—if you don’t agree, you will want to live up to the expectation regardless, as the alternative is disappointment, and disappointment hurts. For me, this gets me thinking about ways to win, which gets me back to my thoughts about not being very good, and thus the cycle is reinforced. I might try harder, but I won’t feel good about it, and I’ll feel paralyzed quickly, once it becomes apparent that whatever extra effort I’ve tried putting in hasn’t elevated me to “great” and that disappointment is inevitable.
For me, positive pep talks (as opposed to those I see in military movies but never experienced myself, where people are told they’re spineless trash and elevated from there) end up having a negative effect when the motivator (the fear of disappointing someone who believes in you) punishes me emotionally before the effort is actually over. Of course, this probably stems from the fact that, as you point out, few people would actually believe someone praising them and change their self-appraisal just based on that; thus, we end up trying to fulfill expectations without believing that we can.
My model of pep talks is quite different. I assume that the pep talker is trying to give an infusion of motivation so that they can wind me up and not need to push any more.
In my case the usual reason they’re demotivating is that I usually know that they think I can do it; they’re just spelling out their model of me. Usually the model of me is so bad that I’m led to further discount their opinion, but they’re signaling that they care which makes them more likely to be painfully disappointed in me. Basically those motivation talks are more than one kind of legitimate bad news. I don’t need a script to be upset by them, but sometimes scripts make me care more. Childhood is one big lesson that your purpose in life is to impress and entertain adults. It can be very hard to shake.
I find this has enough emotional truth to be funny. I’m not the only person who’s found that pep talks work backwards—they damage motivation rather than improving it.
I think the underlying connection between “living up to your potential” and pep talks is someone charging in, claiming that they know your mind better than you do, and trying to hijack your intrinsic motivations, not that I have boundary issues or anything like that.
I’ve found the appeal of pep talks is in what they say about the pep-talker. It’s basically a way of saying “I like you, I want to cheer you up, I acknowledge that you’re not at your best but I don’t look down on you for it”. It’s nice that someone would say that. “Your meds will definitely kick in soon, you’re not doing so bad, go for a walk and you’ll feel better” is eye-rolling bullshit, but Doctor Reassuring Patient is adorable, and a mercifully easy script to navigate.
For pep talks, I dislike them because they rely on the “I have this image of you” approach. The motivator is trying to get you to think they think you’re great—if you don’t agree, you will want to live up to the expectation regardless, as the alternative is disappointment, and disappointment hurts. For me, this gets me thinking about ways to win, which gets me back to my thoughts about not being very good, and thus the cycle is reinforced. I might try harder, but I won’t feel good about it, and I’ll feel paralyzed quickly, once it becomes apparent that whatever extra effort I’ve tried putting in hasn’t elevated me to “great” and that disappointment is inevitable.
For me, positive pep talks (as opposed to those I see in military movies but never experienced myself, where people are told they’re spineless trash and elevated from there) end up having a negative effect when the motivator (the fear of disappointing someone who believes in you) punishes me emotionally before the effort is actually over. Of course, this probably stems from the fact that, as you point out, few people would actually believe someone praising them and change their self-appraisal just based on that; thus, we end up trying to fulfill expectations without believing that we can.
My model of pep talks is quite different. I assume that the pep talker is trying to give an infusion of motivation so that they can wind me up and not need to push any more.
In my case the usual reason they’re demotivating is that I usually know that they think I can do it; they’re just spelling out their model of me. Usually the model of me is so bad that I’m led to further discount their opinion, but they’re signaling that they care which makes them more likely to be painfully disappointed in me. Basically those motivation talks are more than one kind of legitimate bad news. I don’t need a script to be upset by them, but sometimes scripts make me care more. Childhood is one big lesson that your purpose in life is to impress and entertain adults. It can be very hard to shake.