Having previously been supremely convinced of this way of thinking by reading The Last Psychiatrist, and having lived by it for the last few years, I do now suspect it’s possible to take it too far.
I think the desire for status—the goal of being able to say and think “I am this type of person”, and be recognized for it—is a part of the motivation system. As you say, some (most?) take it too far. But if one truly excises this way of thinking from themselves, they’ve kind of… excised part of their motivational system!
I think you’ve anticipated this point, because you say
>”But what if I really want what’s in the mines? Sometimes you have to do unpleasant work to get what you want.” Absolutely, but when you’re honest about it, you’ll correctly recognize those situations as life-consuming work, and that’ll affect how you relate to the task. You’ll say, “I want to find three pieces of gold,” instead of saying, “I want to work in the mines.” And so you won’t expect to feel alive or rejuvenated or joyful from the work itself.
But I’m not so sure that replacement maintains the motivation that the identity-based motivation gives. For example, when I was training for and fighting in amateur boxing, I trained and ran all the time. During runs, especially sprinting, where I was tired and wanted to quit, I would say out loud (or even yell) things like “this is easy for me because I’m a fighter!” If I had instead been thinking “this sucks but I have to do it anyway because the payoff is worth it”, that would have felt a good deal less motivating.
Or, I don’t know, maybe in marital and relationship fidelity. I am not a person who cheats; it would be a stain on my soul if I cheated. “I must never be a person who cheats.” This makes it easy to not cheat. This identity-based rule works well for me, and I don’t think replacing it with non-identity thinking would be safe for me personally.
But again I think I do agree! And most normal people would probably be better off from the advice to do more things they want to do, and less things they want to have done. But to readers who have already gone down this road… don’t feel like you need to take it all the way! Preserving some identity-based motivation is good and important.
Great comment, and I will have to think more about this. Your examples do seem to support the utility of self-identity-based motivation.
I think maybe my statement “you can’t lie to yourself if you know it’s a lie” is forcing a frame where self-talk is either a genuine attempt at truth, or a lie. But with “this is easy for me because I’m a fighter” and similar statements, it seems they can be received by the mind in a different way—more like as self-fulfilling prophecy.
I guess it’s an open question for me then, where to use that kind of self-talk. On one end is the danger of becoming miserable in pursuit of an identity that was actually kind of arbitrary, and on the other end you miss out on maybe the most powerful kind of motivation.
Having previously been supremely convinced of this way of thinking by reading The Last Psychiatrist, and having lived by it for the last few years, I do now suspect it’s possible to take it too far.
I think the desire for status—the goal of being able to say and think “I am this type of person”, and be recognized for it—is a part of the motivation system. As you say, some (most?) take it too far. But if one truly excises this way of thinking from themselves, they’ve kind of… excised part of their motivational system!
I think you’ve anticipated this point, because you say
>”But what if I really want what’s in the mines? Sometimes you have to do unpleasant work to get what you want.” Absolutely, but when you’re honest about it, you’ll correctly recognize those situations as life-consuming work, and that’ll affect how you relate to the task. You’ll say, “I want to find three pieces of gold,” instead of saying, “I want to work in the mines.” And so you won’t expect to feel alive or rejuvenated or joyful from the work itself.
But I’m not so sure that replacement maintains the motivation that the identity-based motivation gives. For example, when I was training for and fighting in amateur boxing, I trained and ran all the time. During runs, especially sprinting, where I was tired and wanted to quit, I would say out loud (or even yell) things like “this is easy for me because I’m a fighter!” If I had instead been thinking “this sucks but I have to do it anyway because the payoff is worth it”, that would have felt a good deal less motivating.
Or, I don’t know, maybe in marital and relationship fidelity. I am not a person who cheats; it would be a stain on my soul if I cheated. “I must never be a person who cheats.” This makes it easy to not cheat. This identity-based rule works well for me, and I don’t think replacing it with non-identity thinking would be safe for me personally.
But again I think I do agree! And most normal people would probably be better off from the advice to do more things they want to do, and less things they want to have done. But to readers who have already gone down this road… don’t feel like you need to take it all the way! Preserving some identity-based motivation is good and important.
Great comment, and I will have to think more about this. Your examples do seem to support the utility of self-identity-based motivation.
I think maybe my statement “you can’t lie to yourself if you know it’s a lie” is forcing a frame where self-talk is either a genuine attempt at truth, or a lie. But with “this is easy for me because I’m a fighter” and similar statements, it seems they can be received by the mind in a different way—more like as self-fulfilling prophecy.
I guess it’s an open question for me then, where to use that kind of self-talk. On one end is the danger of becoming miserable in pursuit of an identity that was actually kind of arbitrary, and on the other end you miss out on maybe the most powerful kind of motivation.