Toxic Study Motivation: Learning Doesn't Have to Mean Bullying Yourself
Hello beautiful! For most of us, at this time of year, schoolwork is picking up and with it, studying time. Today, I want to address the trend that we know as toxic study motivation. This "motivation" often comes in the form of a video of someone essentially shaming you for needing a break or not feeling like studying. They use deprecation as a method to get you to listen to them. I think that this trend has revealed the truth about not only the way that society views motivation and discipline, but also the way that we view education, as a chore rather than as a privilege.
Toxic motivation can come in all forms, like pressures from family, videos on the internet, and influence from peers. But before I continue, I should probably address one thing: what makes motivation toxic?
For me, toxic motivation is anything that uses fear, ego or insults to compel someone to go through with an action. Here are some of my examples:
A student afraid of failure pushes themself to study late into the night.
A video on you feed says "You don't feel like studying? That's fine, I guess you're just a lazy slacker who doesn't care about their future."
A high schooler who's scared of letting down their parents pursues a high paying job and ignores their true passions
A student that studies only so they can "be better" than their academic rival
Obviously, we will be exposed to toxic motivation at some point in our lives. There's not much we can do about the external motivators that may be harming us and our mental health. But, I've been doing a lot of thinking about internal motivation and the way that we speak to ourselves when trying to be productive and get work done, and my conclusion was that we are way too comfortable bullying ourselves.
The term "self talk" has been around for a while, and we're all becoming increasingly aware of the way that we talk to ourselves and how it can affect the way we operate. But, for whatever reason, I've noticed that positive self talk goes out the window when school or studying is involved, and I think this phenomenon has made way for the online trend that we know as "toxic study motivation."
There's a certain distinction between motivation for school and motivation for other aspects of life such as career, wellness, and routines. The atmosphere feels more harsh and judgy when it comes to education; toxic study motivation videos are the perfect example of this. Random people that have never met you and know nothing about your situation are telling you that you're lazy and you will live a life of poverty if you don't get up and study. Maybe it's just me, but I think that is a wild assumption to make.
I think this unspoken idea that we can be mean to each other in these academic spaces comes from the same place of negative self talk. We've spent so long being mean to ourselves and instilling fear in ourselves that it's become normal when other people do it to us as well.
This feels like a good time to remind you all that self talk is important. it directly impacts the way you see yourself and your work. It might seem silly, but studies have shown that it works, in positive and negative ways.
So when we constantly tell ourselves terrible things about our grades or our performance in school, over time our brain starts to believe it. I'm not a professional, and I don't have any degrees or research to back up any of this hypothesis, BUT negative self talk could be what discourages us from studying on our own, without this toxic motivation. It creates that toxic relationship between the student and the studying, a relationship that is made worse by toxic study motivation videos.
It's essentially a cycle: have a less than perfect performance in school, tell yourself you're a bad student, procrastinate schoolwork because it scares you now, perform poorly in school again.
These videos might be even more dangerous than anything else when it comes to toxic motivation for two reasons: they're often disguised as being helpful, and we are constantly consuming them.
That's why I beg you to be aware of the content you're consuming, the way you let other people speak to you, and the way you speak to yourself. If there's anything that's unhelpful and degrading, simply don't listen to it. There is a difference between constructive criticism and blatant rudeness, and we all need to learn where to draw the line, because if we don't, it will harm our perception of ourselves.
Remember, if you ever need a hand, girl, let me help!
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