Motivation and criticism: A toxic co-dependent relationship

6 minutes read

By Dr Chantale Lussier, PhD. CMPC

If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve noticed how even the most driven people experience ebbs and flows to their motivation. But have you ever reflected more deeply as to what are some of the most significant factors in play? What if one of the most influential factors impacting your motivation was the amount of exposure to toxic criticism you experience? Whether you’re a high performing athlete, coach, or sports parent, a performing artist, a business owner, and/or a servant leader in dynamic environments, you’ll want to keep reading.

Here’s what I see regularly in my private practice. Incredibly talented, driven, hardworking people who excel in their respective domains yet who experience inconsistent periods in their motivation often accompanied by significant mental and emotional fatigue. All of which, may I add, is often very difficult for high performers to admit in the first place. When we unpack the many potential contributing factors, from schedule, training and competitive loads, travel, to rest and recovery, to nutrition and hydration, and so much more, one element begins to stand out from the rest: the heavy mental load of extreme, relentless, toxic criticism.

In some cases, this non-stop exposure to criticism stems from an external person in the person’s environment, be it a toxic leader, boss, coach, teacher, teammates, and/or parent. Ensuring we cultivate safe and healthy cultures of excellence is a very important theme worthy of significant attention. In this article however, I want to share an equally important observation, which is that oftentimes fluctuations and drops in motivation can be directly related to the heavy mental load of toxic, internal self-criticism. In many cases, it’s the unrelenting, tyrannical inner critic that taunts, torments, shames, and exhausts even the most driven of high performers.

“Many high-achieving individuals often have a heightened level of self-criticism. Driven by high standards through their relentless self-critical voice, they push themselves to achieve excellence. This approach proves effective to some extent, as these individuals tend to produce outstanding work. The inner critic undoubtedly wields significant power, manifesting in qualities such as perseverance, ambition, and meticulous attention to detail. Yet from a different perspective, in the pursuit of self-imposed standards, they face continuous anxiety about their progress, fear of failure, and unhealthy comparisons with others. They may turn to self-criticism as a strategy to amplify their efforts and stand out at work, convinced that their self-improving form of self-criticism contributes to their success. However, this approach backfires when people find themselves unable to meet the expectations. When not met with success, these individuals often face profound feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness” (Andersone, N. (2023).

Understanding why motivation is important and how internal criticism impact one’s own motivation is vital, especially as it is something that can be greatly improved through knowledgeable guidance, coaching, and training in the mental gym.

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Why motivation matters for sustainable performance

While there are great arguments that can be made to rely more on our inner drive, commitment, and carefully curated daily habits of excellence to support personal and professional development and achievement, most people would agree that without some motivation, it becomes next to impossible to sustain our efforts for the long haul. As Singh and Pathak explain, motivation is key to accomplishment and has an enormous effect on learning. “Motivation is emotional talent. It is the key of learning and training… Motivation helps the people to perform, higher than their normal physical and mental capacities, and to keep them satisfied. Motivation is an inspirational process” (Singh & Pathak, 2017). Which then begs the question: Does how we speak to ourselves actually inspire us or deflate even our best efforts?

How an athlete or high performers leads, coaches, and speaks to themselves will have a big influence on their motivation and ability to sustain effort, especially through adversity. High performers need to develop a tolerance for failure and a capacity to learn from their mistakes, without experiencing motivational drops and reduced confidence in the process. Therefore, how a high performer analyzes their training and performances, and ultimately critique’s themselves is a vital part of the equation for sustainable excellence.

“Reinforcement is an important motivational tool. It refers to any type of event that increases or decreases the likelihood of a similar response occurring in the future. Positive reinforcements inform the athlete when he is doing something right and encourage the continuation of the activity in the specific direction. Negative reinforcement is generally, of little value because it merely indicates that the behavior is incorrect without providing information with respect to the correct response of behavior” (Singh & Pathak, 2017).

One of the many ways I help my clients improve their motivation, confidence, focus, and performance is by helping them recalibrate how they view, perceive, and debrief their training and performance along with the way they speak to themselves about it. When athletes constantly criticize themselves, it is easy to begin feeling mentally and emotionally depleted. Worst still, as I have noticed in my private practice, much of this criticism is intense, exaggerated, imbalanced, if not downright inaccurate. In other words, many high performers hyper focus on every minute error, while most of their improvements, growth, and daily wins do not mentally register.

“The results of two short–term, prospective studies conducted in the United States and Canada indicated that self–criticism was negatively associated with goal progress… In addition, the results indicated an association between self–criticism and rumination and procrastination that appears to mediate the impact of self–criticism on goal progress” (Powers, Koestner, and Zuroff, 2007).

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Though we seem to collectively believe that critiquing ourselves at nauseam will improve performance, this in fact goes against research findings. Teaching athletes and high performers to better lead and coach themselves fairly, accurately, in dignified, self-respecting ways not only supports overall performance, but also helps maintain motivation in the process of growth and development. A study in music education found that “highly sensitive students were more hurt by their instructors’ criticisms, felt they improved less in response to criticism, and found it more difficult to communicate with the instructor following criticism. These results suggest that being sensitive to criticism can have an impact on music students’ motivation and performance – and that instructors should be particularly careful in considering the effects that critical feedback may have on highly sensitive students” (Atlas, Taggart, and Goodell, 2004).

Important to note is that valuable feedback could be both delivered and/or received as harsh criticism. As such, not only is understanding a person’s sensitivity to feedback and cultivating growth minded, coachable people is important in growing excellence, so is the teaching and/or coaching pedagogy and communication skills deployed in the process of knowledge translation. In my experience, most athletes and high performers are already all too aware of what they have done wrong (especially at higher levels of development) and are already engaging in relentless, self-berating. They frankly don’t need well-meaning coaches, parents, or teammates adding to the harsh perspective. They’re already mentally punishing themselves plenty. If anything, when a high performer is being overly self-critical, they need help to remember and refocus on where they are working well, even in the oftentimes messy muck of skill acquisition and improvement. They need to be reminded of when, where, and how they are approaching excellence, rather than how to avoid failure. It’s not about being “soft”, it’s about being more balanced, accurate, and frankly strategic in focus. Helping high performers stop the detrimental cycle of self-criticism is one way we can help them refocus effectively with dignity and self-respect. This will go a long way to cultivating their motivation and capacity to sustain hard efforts over weeks, months, and years of training.

Self-criticism impacts motivation and performance

While understanding the intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of motivation is helpful, expanding this inquiry allows us to go deeper in our understanding of how motivation impacts us and/or the high performers in our lives. “A social-cognitive perspective assumes motivation to be dynamic, context-sensitive and changeable, thereby rendering it to be a much more differentiated construct than previously understood” (Maclellan, 2005). Recognizing the significant effect of self-criticism on motivation is key to understanding what we and/or our athletes are experiencing in the daily training environment and competitive arena. Meeting ourselves and each other in the challenges, adversity, and opportunity of our pursuits of excellence with compassion is infinitely more helpful than adding more criticism to an already overflowing cup of negativity.

“Self-criticism is considered to be among the most common and destructive stressors linked to different forms of psychological suffering, including depression, perfectionism, imposter syndrome, social anxiety, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and borderline disorder among others” (Andersone, N. (2023).

We owe it to ourselves and/or to the high performers in our lives to understand the truly harmful impact of chronic, self-criticism on the person, let alone their motivation. When it comes to understanding motivation, there are many theories, variables, and elements to consider. From goal achievement orientation, to various personality states and traits, to interpersonal dynamics including trust, communication styles, learning styles, teaching and coaching styles, to situational and environmental elements. Knowing one’s self, knowing the people we work, train, coach, and perform with is important to understanding the consequences to internal and external criticism on one’s motivation.

“Motivation serves to energize, select and direct performance. It helps in setting tough goals and directing the energy and effort to achieve those goals. Intrinsically motivated athletes strive hard to master the skill and are propelled by the inward drive to accomplish the task… Optimum level of motivation is essential for performance enhancement” (Singh & Pathak, 2017).

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Fire your inner critic

Now comes my personal challenge to you. Imagine if you stopped brutally criticizing yourself (and/or your athletes) on the daily? What do you think would happen? Stop reading and really think about it for a moment…. Do you really think you’d slack off and become a lazy couch potato? Do you think you’d start to half a** practices and training? No. In fact, quite the opposite would most likely happen. In my experience, when my clients reduce and eliminate chronic self-criticism in their daily training environment and competitive season, they experience a resurgence of motivation and drive, a renewed joy in the process of learning and training, a clearer focus and perspective on what truly matters, and they gain greater sustainable energy in the pursuit of what lights them up. So I dare you now. Fire your inner critic and see what happens to your motivation, confidence, peace of mind, and performance. Then, watch yourself (and/or your athletes) soar!

Let me know how it goes!

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