Rewards and Incentives

I have always believed that rewards or punishments should not be given so easily as a form of motivation or threat in dealing with people.

But boy! Am I doing the exact opposite?

I tend to always promise something in return to the person who has done me a favor or I promise unnecessarily to my children just so they get things done more promptly for my convenience' sake.

I know very well that being obedient to parents is an old virtue and obeying parents doesn't really have to be incentivised with rewards but then I do it quite a lot anyway.

Am I only memorizing virtues? Or I just lack effort in executing what's really proper?

On the other hand, I tend to threaten my children or other kids with something that may lead me to achieve my goals more quickly.

The effects of such threats are not very favorable in the long-term . Instead of developing self-confidence, the children may develop fear and contempt for you and even other people.

The sad thing would be, what you sow in others' minds will grow right in front of you and you will discover whether they are good harvest or not.

Talking to others with respect will instead do the trick of earning respect and good regard from others. As they say, respect begets respect.

Even so, there are times when rewards and punishments are usable for the good of every player in a social context.

This is especially applicable to work places.

I remember when my sister resigned after just a few weeks of being accepted as a teacher at a particular school.

During that time that she taught until she resigned, I bet the school failed to talk about rewards or incentives that my sister would have looked forward to.

The next teacher resigned as well and the next thing we knew was that the school has imposed a fine of I think 25,000 pesos for breach of contract.

I bet the school didn't have clear policies about employment benefits and the like and only thought of doing something about it after the frequent change of teachers.

Do you now see what I am trying to say?

We need rewards and fines in our society in order to balance things out until equilibrium is finally achieved.

No matter how upright we are, there will be times when we needed incentives. There will be times when we needed to cooperate with others in order to achieve a certain goal.

In short, asking or wanting rewards is a natural tendency of people. Equally the same, we tend to minimize our fines from all our dealings.

Therefore, we have to always be prudent with how we carry things out. Refrain from giving excessive promises, respect the law and order, and stick to uprightness for as long as you can.