The One About Incentives

I was young when I first experienced the value of incentives. We probably all are young when we learn that.

A local pizza place was running a promotion. Here was the gist: read more books, eat more pizza.

When I recall my young self, I can see a girl with pizza sauce smeared on her face. She is running and playing with neighbors and always glad to eat a favorite food, of hers, pizza.

While I had an appreciation for girly things, I was undeniably a tomboy.

I preferred to go shirtless out front like my dad and two older brothers. I played with mostly boys - in fact, only later after a girl moved into our neighborhood, did she and I both learn how inept I was at handling her emotions.

I got jeered at sometimes throughout childhood for my love of pizza, as a young girl and as a middle school student. When rewinding to my early reading days, one can imagine the feeling I had when I learned that if I read, I could eat more pizza - for free.

This is what I learned early: incentives can help overcome failure.

I did what I needed to do to get what i wanted to get. Nothing about my actions were immoral or disruptive to others. I was saving my parents some money, I thought, so perhaps it was even a bit unselfish, right? Gluttonous perhaps, but that would be honed in time. Plus, as a child I don't think I emotionally ate until I could not move. That would come later too. At my young age, I liked pizza and enjoyed it for what it was.

What the experience taught me early was that if a proverbial carrot was dangled in front of me, and it was something I wanted, AND I could in fact eventually reach and eat it, I would put in the work to get there.

Well, a carrot... or a pizza, you know what I mean.

A few years ago I was reading a book by an author I like a lot and I wrote three takeaways that I knew to be true from the book. One of those three paraphrased is: creative incentives can help overcome failure.

I think the heart, intentions, and purity are all important. That is, a pure heart with good intentions is valuable. I also recognize that maturity can play a role in the longer term. God willing, people can grow up in every sense of their being.

When I was a young child reading those books, the incentive (pizza!) mattered to me. Now, many years later, I am thankful for the habit of reading. I now read not for pizza but for the love of learning.

I read consciously. I also now eat pizza consciously. Thank God my intentions and awareness have changed.

I continue to be thankful for creative incentives that helped pushed me along to be better. These days I can read without a trace of pizza sauce on my face.

Love,
Clarity Mint