This is an oversimplification, but basically there are two types of motivation: carrots and sticks. Carrots are rewards for good behavior and sticks are punishments for bad behavior (unless you hate carrots, like I do, in which case it is punishment or punishment. I don’t hate metaphorical carrots, though, since they don’t taste bad, so I’ll continue to use the familiar terminology.).
Not surprisingly, I have a preference between the two. Despite the fact that roughly half the people who walk into my studio say something along the lines of “Oh, a torture chamber!” I don’t actually punish anybody. (I do say, “I charge extra for that.”)
The biggest reason for this is that punishments don’t work. Fear and shame and all those negative emotions don’t make us want to do whatever it is that someone wants us to do; they just make us want to avoid the bad thing that will happen to us if we don’t.
Praise, on the other hand, and positive reinforcement makes us feel like we are capable humans, empowered to do hard things. It draws out of us our best selves. It feels good, maybe even good enough to make up for having to do things like burpees. It also doesn’t make us associate our workouts with Bad Things, which is far more likely to help us want to do it again.
Go play, you powerful humans, you!
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