Subtle Self-Coercion
This post is about “subtle self-coercion”. I came across this concept when listening to a podcast sent to me by a friend. In the podcast, the founder of the monastic academy talks a bit about coercive motivational systems.
Motivational systems are the techniques and action patterns you use to enable your own actions: ways you set things up so that you get shit done basically.1 These can be classified into a dichotomy (or scale) with coercive strategies on one end, and non-coercive strategies on the other.
Coercive strategies are usually internalized from school/nagging parents2. When you motivate yourself using coercive strategies, you start using words like “should”, “must”, “force” and similar. A basic example is not wanting to go up in the morning, and then telling yourself that you must go up, “forcing yourself” up.
I used to employ coercive strategies a lot more in the past, powering myself through commitments using willpower. I had problems with consistency, where my habits were kind of fragile, shattered by any little piece of turmoil (such as winter, stress on the job, sickness, moving, etc). I think the frailty was caused by the effort I needed to keep up; any temporary distractions lead to me “losing control”.3
Nowadays, I’m leaning more towards non-coercive strategies. I get shit done by making sure I want to get shit done, and then let intrinsic motivation guide my path. This brings us to a kind of forcefulness I’ve never noticed/thought about, the thing I call “subtle self-coercion”.
Subtle self-coercion occurs whenever is “push through”. I might get started doing something I really enjoy, only to find myself slowing down after 30 minutes of work. In the past, I would often “push through”, re-committing through an act of will. Nowadays I’m trying a new tactic: checking in with myself to sense where the dullness/resistance comes from.
Usually, it’s something physiological that’s blocking me; maybe I need to grab a sandwich or a powernap before going on. Sometimes the block sits in my motivation system; then I need to dig down and sense into why I’m doing the things I do. I can often connect to an underlying core value (such as getting more skilled, contributing to others, reducing suffering, etc).
There are subtle ingrained coercive action patterns everywhere. Best of luck finding yours.
I’m very careful not to say “make yourself do things”, because of the forceful connotations
this is a guess on my part
I also think this made me harsher on others, due to the echo principle. Also, it’s interesting that letting myself do what I wanted led to behaviors that were bad for me; a really suboptimal way of doing things.