Use the Power of Positive Shame
When it comes to accomplishing you tasks, it is one thing to tell yourself that you are going to do something and it is another to set up a system to get your task done. You do not want to rely on willpower. You do not want to rely on having to be in an energetic, productive mood.
You want to set up your systems to win. You want to make it that you get leverage on yourself.
When people are in a productive, energetic mood, they are more likely to set lofty, ambitious goals.
That’s good.
What’s not good is setting lofty, ambitious goals that rely on you being in a productive energetic mood. We have to prepare for the ultimate downturn, for the unproductive moods, and for the low-energy days.
We have to set up our goals and our systems so that, even when we do not feel like getting out of bed, even when we do not feel like going to the office, even when we do not feel like sending those outbound emails, we get up and we do it.
One powerful tool for making progress on goals and tasks, even when you are not feeling up to it, is positive shame.
(H/T to The Mission reader Ronnie Farris for using that phrase in a recent response and inspiring this post.)
Positive Shame Versus Negative Shame
“What? Shame can be positive?”
Of course.
Normally, when we think of “shame,” we think of puritans assigning scarlet letters to people or owners rubbing their pets’ faces in droppings. We think of people (or animals) being made to feel bad about something they did or did not do in order to conform them to an outside rule.
Positive shame is used to make people conform to their own rules. It is a negative incentive to do something — to help enforce certain behaviors in the hopes of avoiding the pain of being shamed.
Positive shame is akin to fatherly advice. When you are hurting yourself and your father snaps at you to cut it out, he is positively shaming you. But it need not come from a paternalistic place — it is something we can impose upon ourselves.
The way we make positive shame work is by broadcasting our rules to others and asking them to hold us accountable.
You may feel okay letting yourself down, but how do you feel letting your friends and family down and having them let you know you did so?
Want to launch that business by the new year? Tell your friends you’re going to do it. If you don’t do it, you look like a flake.
Want to lose 10 lbs over the next month? Announce on Facebook you’re going to do it and ask people to hold you accountable.
Want to get your life together and stop being a mess? Tell everybody you’re going to start self-efficacy exercises.
Shame does not have to be a dirty word.
Use it for accountability.
Set up the game to win.
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