Will Work for Praise

I don't really know how to start this post but it's been something on my mind for a while so I'll go ahead and share it! Small disclaimer: the purpose of this post is not to say I have a serious problem, or to say this way of thinking is right. Really it is to laugh at myself because of the things I think sometimes.

In my Motivation and Management class we have been working through the book "Punished by Rewards," by Alfie Kohn. It has been fascinating, because he spends his time explaining research that shows extrinsic rewards, or rewards that come from others, actually do more harm then good. Then shorten decrease our performance and internal desire to accomplish the very task we received a reward for. I can accept that pretty easily, but he actually lumps praise in there with the external rewards. Now there is a distinction between praise and encouragement. In order to fully understand his position I recommend reading the book or at least this article, which is like the readers digest version.

I decided I want to try eradicating praise form my daily speech, which has been very hard. I bit my tongue a lot. I also decided I would try to ween myself off the need of praise. So for about a month now I have been trying to let the praise I recieve roll off my back without taking it to heart. I have come to learn I am a praise junkie, and I am going through withdrawals.

During Sacrament meeting one Sunday I thought to myself, "I really want a boyfriend so he will sit and tell me how wonderful I am!" I haven't wanted a boyfriend for a very long time, and now that I wanted one was it for companionship. No. A deeper connection with another human. Nope. Was I looking to take another step toward eternal salvation. Not even close. I wanted a boyfriend so he could talk to me, about me. Oh, come on...

Another day I had a really embarrassing experience with a guy I worked with. I was trying to explain why I had made a mistake which offended him and my attempts to be sincere came out extremely awkward and uncomfortable. Finally I gave up and power walked out of there. I was immediately on the phone with a friend, telling her all about it. She has been really good about not enabling me, aka not praising me. I ranted and purged all of my scrambled embarrassed feeling, and then I said, "But I just want him to tell me it's okay, and that I am fantastic awesome, fascinating, and amazing!" Jill reminded me that was not going to happen, and that I needed to be the one to tell me that. It has taken me three weeks to finally feel proud of the courage it took apologise, and not desperately want his approval.

I'm not writing this blog to tell everyone to stop praising me, because well, lets face it I want it bad. This post is more to express my surprise at how difficult getting sober really is. There have been several days when I had to stop myself from calling some and asking them to tell me everything they like about me.

I'm getting better at it, so please don't feel like you have to censor yourself when you talk to me. Because really I'm the one who needs to changes in my personal thinking, not the rest of the world. I keep laughing to myself as I think about the past month. Who knew you could actually go through praise withdrawals. Learn something new everyday!