Fear as a Motivation
We bundle our fears and make it our God – Anon
Two years ago a Psychology teacher once asked my class if we thought fear was the best motivator. I replied with a no, reasoning that humans are rational creatures and after a certain point are bound to stop acting (or performing well) on the basis of fear alone.There need to be other motivators, such as emotional remuneration (praise) or perhaps monetary.
Maybe I’ve gotten more cynical since then or maybe growing up just means giving into your fears, because guess what … all our actions (no matter how rational we may deem them or ourselves) have a basis in our “fears”.
We fear starvation and poverty so we work. We fear emotional blackmail so we give in to the demands of others. We fear failure and that sometimes leads us to not trying at all. We fear our inner thoughts and impulses.We fear both the unknown and the known. We fear the consequences of our actions. We fear that we’ll end up alone or die a miserable death. We fear death and yet in some ways we are afraid to live life.
We fear that we will be cowards when the situation demands bravery, courage and strength.We fear guilt so we try to please others, to be the “better” person.We fear that our best efforts will not be good enough. We fear that people are as judgemental of us as we are of them. We fear that this is as good as it’s ever going to get.
We live in fear of the day we will let this all consuming fear, that kills us a little each day, turn us into a shell of the person we were destined to become.
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i only fear hopelessness
i never saw it this way but u have got a point
this is just one way to look at things…..quite a pessimistic view i m sorry to say. i m not saying that fear does not drive most of our actions but sometimes its the end result that makes us do things in a particular manner. we may work to achieve a good standard of living rather than just because of the fear of starvation….as one can survive poverty and starvation with a ‘low level’ job too but one tends to opt for a proper profession. so its not only the fear of starvation that makes us work. i mean just as an example.