Toxic Striving, page 7
When you judge yourself as bad for something, whether big or small, pause and think critically about that judgment. Do you truly believe that you’re a bad person, or is it more accurate to say that you feel guilt or remorse over whatever you just said or did? Is your guilt a reflection of the fact that you did something that conflicted with your values and went against the type of person you want to be? For example, did you snap at your partner, and now you feel guilty because you value kindness, and that wasn’t so kind? Or is your guilt a conditioned response to what society taught you to care about, but deep down you know it doesn’t really matter? For example, maybe you had a friend visiting and you chose to skip your morning workout to have breakfast with them. Is your guilt truly an indication that you did something morally reprehensible, or is it a response to being taught you’re supposed to exercise every day?
If you can develop a more neutral self-perception and see yourself as just human, not good or bad, you can treat each moment as a new moment in which to decide how to behave. In any given moment you have infinite options for where to put your focus and resources. If you can stop fixating on which choice is right and which is wrong, and stop attaching good and bad judgments to yourself in the process, you have flexibility to do whatever is authentic to you in that particular moment, knowing it can change across time and circumstances. The best you can do is consider how you wish to behave in the current situation, and attempt to behave that way, knowing sometimes you’ll stray or be unable to follow through despite good intentions.
Nobody deserves to be defined by how they feel in a given moment, how much they produce, or what accolades they achieve. Your health and wellness practices don’t make you better or worse than anyone, nor do your behaviors around work and productivity. You aren’t what you eat. You aren’t your bedtime, bank account, or job title. You aren’t even your personality traits, which can intensify or diminish based on mood, energy, and circumstances. We’re living organisms, not machines. I have never actually valued someone more because they ordered a kale salad or worked eighty hours in a week. Most of us value our loved ones simply for being themselves, not for what they produce or achieve. True well-being doesn’t come from how well a person is “optimizing” according to arbitrary, narrow, and elitist standards. True well-being is subjective and context dependent. What adds meaning to your life might be different from what adds meaning to mine, and might change over time. Regardless, your worth as a living being does not increase or decrease for any reason.
At our core, all humans want to matter. Mattering is “an ideal state of affairs consisting of two complementary psychological experiences: feeling valued and adding value” (Prilleltensky 2019). You can feel valued by your own self, by others, and by your community. You can also add value to your own self, others, or your community. These are important elements of feeling fulfilled and whole. When you receive the message, intended or not, that you matter only if you fulfill some set of metrics, you begin chasing things that don’t mean anything significant to you or to the people around you. You come up feeling empty and disconnected from both yourself and the important people in your life. On the other hand, if you surround yourself with people who don’t emphasize empty metrics and value you for the same things you value in yourself, you can fulfill this need for mattering.
Having a clear sense of your values, or the qualities and characteristics you wish to embody in your daily life, will help you fulfill your need for mattering. When you fulfill your need to matter, you build a strong and stable self-worth. That means your self-worth won’t depend on your mood and won’t get shattered if you make a mistake or experience a setback. Understanding what matters to you at a deeper level will help you make choices that aren’t based on external measures or desire for approval. Interestingly, when you live according to your values, you also find yourself connecting more deeply with people who share and appreciate those values. Chapter 5 will focus on the process of figuring out your personal values, so you can reorient yourself toward them as you continue to move through life. Your values will guide you not with moral judgment or labels of “good” and “bad,” but with clarity and compassion.
Part 2:
Taking Back the Steering Wheel
Chapter 5.
Redefining Your Values
Wellness and hustle cultures promote extrinsic motivation, which involves doing things to satisfy an external force or obtain external reward (like praise, a good grade, or a paycheck). Extrinsic motivation is woven into the fabric of our culture, from the classroom to the boardroom. It starts from a young age. Children are rewarded with a weekly allowance in exchange for household tasks. They earn an A-plus in the classroom and stickers on a behavior chart. At first, it’s exciting for a six-year-old to see stickers filling their chart. Eventually, it’s not so special. Plus, they learn that the reason to act a certain way is to get a reward. Although extrinsic motivation may work in the short run, its effects wear off over time.
On the other hand, when someone is intrinsically motivated, they pursue the inner satisfaction of successfully completing a project, mastering a skill, or knowing they added value to their family or community. The child clears the dinner table not to earn a gold star, but to get the internal reward of feeling like a helpful and important member of the family. This is a path toward mattering, that sense of belongingness that is so important for building self-worth. Feeling valued both by oneself and others helps a child build resilience in the face of wellness and hustle messaging.
Many of us are afraid that without extrinsic motivation keeping us accountable we’ll never accomplish anything. However, the research paints a different picture. Research on employee motivation indicates that when people are intrinsically motivated, they are more engaged in their work and more willing to take on responsibilities (Edirisooriya 2014; Cho and Perry 2012; Grant 2008). Having a strong sense of intrinsic motivation is associated with greater job satisfaction, more persistence, and lower likelihood of quitting (Cho and Perry 2012). In the classroom, using external motivators to get kids to complete tasks may even backfire. Research has shown that grades and rewards can hinder the learning process (Baranek 1996). Meanwhile, when a student is intrinsically motivated, they learn faster and actually want to learn because they enjoy the experience of growing and advancing.
On the reality television show Survivor, participants compete in challenges to win rewards like food, tools to improve camp life, or immunity from being voted out of the game. During a particularly grueling physical challenge, one competitor, a self-proclaimed couch potato with little athletic prowess, struggled on the obstacle course while her competitors nimbly ran, climbed, and swam their way through. Her performance was the clear reason her tribe lost the challenge that day. Yet afterward, rather than slink away in shame, she continued running the course, although the prize was already claimed. When she finally got to the end, the emotion on her face was undeniable. It was clear that for her, finishing the challenge was not about external reward or the external validation of her teammates; it was about proving something to herself. This is the power of intrinsic motivation; it allows us to prove ourselves far more capable than we could ever imagine.
Like most things in life, motivation isn’t all-or-nothing. No matter how internally driven you are, you probably still need a paycheck in exchange for your work. No matter how satisfied you feel by a job well done, you still need others to acknowledge your contributions sometimes. However, when extrinsic rewards are overemphasized, we end up pursuing things that may not be personally meaningful. When you pursue goals that you find genuinely fulfilling, not just ones you think you should pursue, you tend to stick with them even when they’re hard. The key is figuring out what’s important enough that you’ll still care about it even with no trophy at the end. You can do this by exploring which of your choices are intrinsically driven.
Imagine you have two friends, Graciela and Liz, who both wake up at the crack of dawn to go running. Graciela took up running in college and enjoys the consistency it provides to her weekly routines. She has since run two marathons and is amazed by her body’s ability to build endurance for long distances. Running makes her feel strong and powerful. Although she isn’t always in the mood to run, Graciela still pushes herself because she likes how she feels afterward. Running gives her an energy boost that she carries with her throughout the rest of her day. She isn’t rigid about it; on mornings when she could use more rest, she skips her run. For Graciela, running enhances her quality of life.
Liz, on the other hand, dreads her morning runs. Liz took up running to try to lose weight after having her second child. Now, her husband gets the kids ready for school each morning while she clips on a fitness tracker and pushes herself along, silently calculating how many calories she needs to burn to compensate for the chicken nuggets she ate off her toddler’s plate the night before. Liz hates running, and hates that to fit it into her day she has to miss quality time with her family. She wishes she could eat breakfast with her kids; she can picture her daughter giggling at her husband’s silly dance while he flips pancakes, and feels a pang of sadness for missing these precious moments. Still, Liz believes that running is the better choice, and the price she must pay for her postpartum body.
Although Graciela and Liz run the same distances with the same frequency, their relationships with running could not be more different. Graciela’s relationship with running is mostly positive, as she is motivated by her values. Liz runs as an attempt to control her body size. She is motivated not by her own values, but by externally imposed ones. In fact, one of the reasons Liz resents her morning run is that it takes her away from something that she does value—the chance to spend quality time with her loved ones.
From the outside, nobody can tell whether you’re running (or doing anything else) because of intrinsic motivation or because of external pressures and expectations. Only you can know the truth, and the truth lies in your values. Values are the qualities that you deem as most important to you. These are the characteristics you strive to embody in everyday life. One way to uncover your values is to think about how you’d want people to describe you at your funeral—caring, adventurous, thoughtful, trustworthy, and so forth. Some of the words that come to mind for how I hope people will remember me are “warm,” “authentic,” and “supportive.” What comes to mind for you is yours alone—no right or wrong.
Another way to clarify values is to consider experiences that bring you a sense of purpose or fulfillment, such as love, learning, friendship, nature, or spiritual growth. You can uncover your values by paying attention to what lights you up. The things that excite you aren’t random; they reflect your unique passions. A deep desire to travel and try new things could stem from valuing variety, adventure, or curiosity. Similarly, the things that rile you might upset you because they conflict with your values. Anger when learning of war or upheaval could point to values of peace, harmony, or cooperation.
A value is a direction, not a destination. If you value kindness, you don’t just behave kindly once and you’re done. Kindness is the path you’re seeking to follow every day. If you accidentally say or do something unkind, you realize that you strayed off the path and recommit. Valuing kindness doesn’t mean you do it perfectly; it means committing to being kind over and over again. Each new moment presents you with a new opportunity to behave kindly.
When you’re behaving in alignment with your values, you tend to feel more satisfied with your behavior than when you’re acting in ways that go against your values. The tricky part for those of us stuck in toxic striving is that we focus so much on living in accordance with whatever we hope will get us approval or acceptance from others that we don’t always know what feels personally meaningful. A key aspect of what makes something a value is that it is subjective, meaning there are no values that are universally correct or incorrect. Nobody else gets to tell you what you value or how much something matters to you.
What Do You Stand For?
This exercise is designed to help you clarify which values you most want to embody and represent. Using your journal, write about a time you behaved in a way that you’re proud of.
What did you say or do?
Was it difficult for you to act that way? Why or why not?
How would you describe your behavior in that scenario? (For example, did you behave in a way that was courageous, generous, authentic, assertive, friendly, patient, loyal, intelligent, mature? You can use more than one word to describe your behavior).
What is something you find rewarding, or something you would be upset about if you were told you could never do it? (For example, traveling, spending time in nature, spending time with particular friends or loved ones, painting, listening to music, participating in a religious or spiritual event, being a parent, hosting a celebration)
What is it that makes those experiences rewarding to you?
Now read the following list of values. Circle five or six of the words that resonate with you as personally meaningful. They may be words that capture the significance of the experiences you described above. If you find it meaningful to spend time with your partner, perhaps you value family, connection, or love. If you find it meaningful to draw or paint, perhaps you value creativity, self-expression, beauty, or art. If you identify with any values that aren’t on this list, write them in the spaces at the end.
Adventure
Achievement
Acceptance
Assertiveness
Authenticity
Autonomy
Beauty
Boldness
Charisma
Community
Compassion
Connection
Cooperation
Courage
Creativity
Critical thinking
Curiosity
Dedication
Discipline
Emotional maturity
Fairness
Faith
Family
Flexibility
Fitness
Freedom
Friendship
Fun
Generosity
Gratitude
Health
Honesty
Hope
Humor
Inclusivity
Integrity
Intentionality
Intimacy
Justice
Kindness
Leadership
Learning
Logic
Love
Loyalty
Nature
Open-mindedness
Optimism
Organization
Patience
Peace
Perseverance
Presence
Reliability
Resilience
Respect
Responsibility
Self-awareness
Self-development
Spirituality
Stability
Strength
Supportiveness
Tolerance
Trustworthiness
Warmth
Variety
Other:
Other:
Other:
Other:
Now, list all five or six of the values you identified, big and bold, all in one place.
What If You Value Health or Hustle?
Maybe your tendency for striving is not just the result of your conditioning. You may reflect and discover that yes, you do value achievement. The same can be true for health or fitness. Yet even if you find that deep down, you value some of the same things that the culture at large promotes, you may not value them in the same ways. Consider not only what you value, but how you define those values.
For example, wellness and diet culture define “health” in a specific way: eating exclusively nutrient-dense foods, getting physical activity, and maintaining a body free of disease and signs of aging. While nutrients and physical activity can absolutely enhance someone’s life, that doesn’t mean that anyone is obligated to define health in these terms—or even to value health at all! Maybe you subscribe to a definition of health that includes mental health, healthy relationships, or financial or spiritual health. Maybe a healthy life for you involves safe sex, wearing a seatbelt, and managing stress. Just because wellness culture twists health to be only about a specific set of metrics (including many factors not in our control), that doesn’t mean these are the only ways to honor health.
Similarly, if you genuinely value productivity, discipline, or achievement, how do you define these concepts? Hustle culture defines them as waking up early, jam-packing your schedule, and working long hours. Maybe for you, productivity means regularly creating things that contribute to a larger purpose. Maybe you value discipline, but not in the form of denying yourself pleasure. Perhaps for you, achievement involves tapping into that adaptive form of perfectionism we explored in chapter 2. Many people value learning and self-development. Hustle culture distorts these into harsh mandates, but they do not have to be this way.
The bottom line is that only you get to decide what you value, and how you choose to honor your values each day.
