Carrot and Stick

Hello wonderful people! I'm happy this morning. I was so stressed during the week but last night I got a good night's sleep and although I woke up earlier than I expected. I felt rested and relaxed because it was Saturday! That means, no meetings, no work etc except house work though.

As I have mentioned earlier, Saturday is the designated day for thorough house work, kinda like a weekly spring cleaning. I didn't feel like doing any work as I wanted to just lazy about in bed lol but I tried to prepare myself and mentally plan how to go about doing the chores. Can you guess what happened when I stepped out of my room? I found that my mum had woken up earlier and done all the work. I was so grateful, I almost cried. No one except my mum can help out like that and I'm so glad to have her. As an appreciation, I ran to the stores to get the things she liked and prepared her favourite breakfast. Now, we're both happy.

It's funny how motivated we become when we are in the right frame of mind and in an accepting environment. If I had woken up to my mum yelling at me, I woke have been in a bad mood and I would only do what I needed to do, nothing more. But this morning, my mum doing my chores made me feel cared for. The fact that she didn't complain that I stayed in bed longer than usual made me feel grateful and all of this gave me the strength and motivation I was lacking before to go out of my way to do things. I went from store to store under the sun and I almost didn't feel it because I was happy. When I got back, I barely rested, I headed to the kitchen and started cooking for us since we are the only two at home currently. We ate while watching a movieshe likes. I don't really enjoy watching the same types of movie as her but watching them with her just makes it more interesting because of the way she reacts to them and her commentaries too.

Let's talk about positive and negative reinforcements. Ever heard of the carrot and stick theory. This theory talks about the use of punishment and reward. It's origin is unsure bit it talks about holding a carrot in front of a donkey to make it move ahead faster in hopes of eating the carrot, the carrot is then given to the donkey when it gets to its destination as a reward. Meanwhile, another donkey is being hit with a stick when it fails to move ahead faster as a punishment. The donkey that gets the stick will ride faster because it doesn't want to be punished while the donkey who chases the carrot will run faster so as to get the reward of the carrot.

These two methods of motivation have their negative and positive results based on how they are used. For the carrots, it involves the use of positive reinforcement. With this method, one will feel hyped and encouraged to work because there's a reward at the end. With this, everyone is happy because they get what they want. But what happens when the subject does not like the reward anymore? Or when they start asking for something better because they already feel entitled to getting that reward? Here, they could easily get spoilt.

For the stick, when punishment is used to let someone understand that something is not done right, it brings about a sense of accountability and encourages one do the work properly without having to be coerced with gifts but what happens when the stick is used all the time or as a first resort. When that happens, the subject becomes unhappy and their morale will be low.

I believe the carrot and stick should be used simultaneously but not always. There can be an in-between sometimes where people talk through things, figure out what went wrong and how to avoid it happening again.

What are your thoughts on this?