Motivation and Fear: What’s The Connection? 

Maybe you, too, are having these feelings and thoughts while scrolling through these funny work memes about stress. Maybe it was some event that triggered them inside you, or maybe it has been a slow and gradual process, but now you find yourself with very little of the motivation you used to have for your work and career. And it’s a tricky spot to be in.

Sometimes, even admitting that you relate to such stress funny quotes about work feels like exposing a secret, as our culture values drive and ambition.

However, according to career change expert Sara Young Wang, what we call motivation can actually be a harmful concept. And you losing it can be an opportunity to see this and open the door for change. “There is something else much more sane, sustainable and nourishing to orient one’s life; a real motivation that isn’t even motivation at all,” she wrote in Forbes.

“Before 2015, I lived my life with a ton of motivation driving me,” Sara Young Wang said. “It got me up every morning and propelled my day. I worked hard and gave ‘success’ my all. Rest and enjoyment of life were a distant consideration or something that would only come in the future. It was exhausting. So much so that I completely burnt myself out. By the end of grad school and three jobs later I crashed.”

Sara then took a look at what all that motivation was really about—fear. “From speaking with my coaching clients I can see that’s the energy behind many people's motivation in their work. To say, ‘I’m motivated’ can often really mean, “I’m afraid and I’m going to work hard to get this thing I think I need to be safe.””

Personally, Sara was generating all of her energy to work hard, strive and succeed from fear that she’s not good enough if she doesn't make something important and successful of herself.

“I didn’t have any genuine desire to do the things I was doing in my life. I was only doing them so I could meet the need of proving my worth through names on a resume or accomplishments,” Sara explained. “There was no authentic desire underpinning the motivation to get up every day, just a ton of fear.”

Maybe you don’t think of it in terms of proving yourself, and maybe these funny memes about work stress are merely a distraction to you. Still, maybe it’s a level of wealth you think will make you feel safe. Or maybe it's achieving something you think will finally win you your parents’ approval.

“It could be any number of things, but I bet if you look there’s some fear there that has been providing the fuel to your past motivation,” Sara said. “And while your motivation may be waning now from sheer exhaustion, that fear is likely still there and creating panic that you need to get your drive back ASAP. But, you just can’t. And that’s an invitation to look directly at the fear.”

Sara believes the fear is probably lying to you and making you deny yourself for delayed rewards that actually never come.

“First, look closely at what your fear is telling you. What is it saying you need to be or get? What does it say the consequences for failure are? Fear is more often than not, lying to you. [Try to see that] your thinking is not necessarily accurate. For me, the truth is that I already am enough. We are all already enough. No proving is ever required,” she said.

“Next, look at what your fear has been getting you to do and the lengths it’s been getting you to go. There’s usually an inner narrative that says something like, “I need to sacrifice myself, deny my needs, my genuine desires, my enjoyment of life for the future reward, for the thing I need to feel safe.””

But the thing is, according to Sara, the future you’re hoping for never actually comes. Even if you hit the mark, get the promotion, the job title, even the raise, you never really palm the feeling of security you're so desperately chasing. “The target just moves further out,” she said. “The fatigue from this hamster wheel is part of the burnout.”

“As I hit a wall I realized that no amount of ‘success’ would make me ‘enough.’ There’s always the next hoop to jump, there would be no end to this and to the sacrificing of the enjoyment of my life. No future rest, and no feeling of safety, ever. Yes, the burnout was demotivating, but what really pulled the linchpin out of me was seeing all this false logic I was basing my life on.”

But the beauty is that by recognizing the lies and false logic we’ve been following we can reclaim our life back from a lifetime of forced striving.

We have to shift from fear to enjoyment. “If we’re not going to move from fear anymore, what else can we move from? We’ve got to connect with the genuine desire that has been lacking. We can stop forcing ourselves to do things that are a means to an illusionary end and start doing things that fulfill our desires in the present moment,” Sara Young Wang explained. “You don't need motivation when you’ve got enjoyment under your sails.” 

“The inner narrative can instead say, “I’m excited to do this thing today because I genuinely want to for the sake of itself. And it will be immediately rewarding to do because it brings me enjoyment and satisfaction while I’m doing it.””

There is no promise of a delayed reward for your sacrifice because there is no sacrifice to begin with. “It’s a much more sane, sustainable, and fulfilling way to live,” Sara said. “You could say you're now motivated by the enjoyment, but usually, when we speak of doing things we like to do we don’t think of it in terms of motivation—we would never say ‘I’m motivated to pet my dog.’ You just do it because it feels good, it’s a natural and genuine movement for you to do. There’s something actually in it for you, as opposed to ‘motivation’ where there’s really nothing directly nourishing in it. You’re just doing it because of the mental narrative that someday it will pay off.”

Bottom line is, we have to stop denying ourselves and start honoring who we are, what we like, and what we’re naturally drawn toward, and how we want to spend our days. “You drop the shoulds, you drop the false fear-based storylines and instead of letting them push your desires aside, they come to be front and center. They’re the guide to what kind of work is going to feel good to you and get you excited to do,” Sara said. 

Think of what authentically feels good to you, even if it’s something as small as scrolling through humor work stress memes. The things that need to change for you to experience joy. Maybe you need to change jobs, change careers, change the nature of the work you're doing in your industry, shift the clients you work with. “You know best what you need to find that alignment, to find that spark. I'm just giving you the nudge to value it more and start looking for it,” Sara said. That's what you’re wanting to find, not ‘motivation.’ And maybe the ability to relate to these funny memes about work stress is an indicator of that.