Fear is a Great Motivator

Given the choice between a chocolate chip cookie and broccoli, the cookie wins.  Every time.  Unless I’m training for a bikini competition.  Fear of public humiliation is a great motivator for me.

I was taking a management seminar and I asked the teacher if it was better to motivate employees with positive reinforcement (praise, raises, etc.) or negative consequences (written reprimand, steps towards termination, etc.)  He said when positive things don’t work, fear is a great motivator.  The example he used was this:

“If it’s 2 a.m. and I woke you up to tell you that there was a $50 bill in your driveway, what would you do?  After wondering why I’m in your house at 2 a.m. you would probably thank me for the nice information and go back to sleep.  But if it’s 2 a.m. and I woke you up to tell you a gang has been smashing the headlights of every single car on your street and they were three cars away from your car right now, then what would you do?  Probably get out of bed, move the car and call the cops.  How much do headlights cost?  About $50.  Fear is a great motivator.”

Do you know what I fear right now?  I fear that since my next competition is a few months away I’m going to slip back into old habits and gain weight again.  So I went looking for some “before” pictures and found this one.

It was taken in January.  I was miserable.  And, no, I wasn’t pregnant, I just was fat.  Almost all of my weight goes to my stomach first because God has a sense of humor.

Either that or because somewhere in my genetic makeup the Vikings needed to store fat while they were pillaging and plundering and my DNA never got the tweet that the ship has landed and we have HEB to store food now.  But I digress.

 

 

 

So now I pull up an “after” picture.

Ah, much better.

And now given the choice between the cookie and the broccoli, Ima choose broccoli.  And you?

 

 

 

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