“Am I a creature trembling or do I have rights?” Recent debates under a post about Amazon, enterprising employees and remote work gave me the idea to write about the secondary benefit. The secondary benefit is an advantage or bonus that a person receives in a hidden form from being in a problematic, unpleasant, difficult, and outwardly completely disadvantageous situation. It sounds strange, but it is a fact: sometimes it is beneficial for us to feel bad.
Any goal has a price – the effort that must be made to achieve it. It happens that a person is simply not ready to pay it. But he can (often unconsciously) sabotage the process. “To spite my grandmother, I’ll freeze my ears off.” No one will benefit from this, but I will still do bad to myself and others because this is how my essence works.
A person is offended by something. He walks with this feeling in his soul, not always able to recognize it. And often takes the path of least resistance – shifts it onto others.
Secondary benefits are a common phenomenon, and almost everyone can find a couple of such small benefits in themselves. True, it is not so easy to do – in the overwhelming majority of cases, they are not recognized by the person and he has no idea why he does not do something.
If the secondary benefit is obvious to an outsider, when trying to present it to a person, you can encounter a negative and even aggressive reaction. Often, secondary benefits “sit” in something that is not very pleasant for the image of “I”, so the very first and most natural reaction is denial.
I often encounter this in my work. Candidates with excellent qualifications and a wonderful resume, who fail interviews one after another for no apparent reason. Professionals who refuse to improve their English just a little in order to get a job. People who come to a consultation only to prove that their case is hopeless and that nothing can help them.
Secondary benefits in themselves are neither good nor bad, they are a kind of test for the truth of the goals.
Sometimes we do not even realize what is an obstacle to achieving them, and we begin to torment ourselves. If you cannot identify them yourself or understand what to do with them, welcome to a consultation.