Eudaimonia

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A community about happy living. Thoughts and praxis about long-term wellbeing, contentment, and personal fulfillment.

A place to post profound, preferably long-form thoughts and discussions about such concepts which might not easily fit in other communities.

Probably will remain just a community for the admin to post stuff they found interesting, but feel free to post some stuff you find that matches or start discussions.

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No memes
No toxic "wholesome" content.
No smug, "dunking" or "better than thou" posts about others. (Community is meant to focus on personal improvement and fulfillment, not negativity and how we're doing it better.)
No woo-woo, spiritualism and religion. (Community is not about spiritualism and new age mumbo-jumbo and things like "The Secret". It's a purely materialistic and secular space.)

founded 1 year ago

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it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good. (lemmynsfw.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3132208

it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good.

Not that anybody asked, but I think it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good.

It's a necessary emotion. There are reasons we have it. It makes everything so. much. worse. when you use it wrong.

Shame and guilt are DE-motivators. They are meant to stop behavior, not promote it. You cannot, ever, in any meaningful way, guilt someone into doing good. You can only shame them into not doing bad.

Let's say you're a parent and your kid is having issues.

Swearing in class? Shame could work. You want them to stop it. Keep it in proportion, and it might help. (KEEP IT IN PROPORTION!!!)

Not doing their homework? NO! STOP! NO NOT DO THAT! EVER! EVER! EVER! You want them to start to do their homework. Shaming them will have to opposite effect! You have demotivated them! They will double down on NOT doing it. Not because they are being oppositional, but because that's what shame does!

You can't guilt people into building better habits, being more successful, or getting more involved. That requires encouragement. You need to motivate for that stuff!

If you want it in a simple phrase:

You can shame someone out of being a bad person, but you can't shame them into being a good person.

It was nice to see this put so clearly. This election cycle has left me exhausted and demotivated, and this hits it square on the head.

stolen from https://grungekitty-77.tumblr.com/post/754482938951892992/fun-fact-that-was-literally-what-inspired-me-to

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

This rings quite true, without deep examination on my part anyway.

And also if it's true when dealing with other people, it's true when dealing with yourself too.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

not quite sure some of the conclusions are true but overall decently accurate read

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