It's interesting you say this, because i've been thinking a lot about Nietzsche's slave vs. master morality, and i feel like we as a culture have to a large extent come to adopt something resembling the former. If this is true - and there are a lot of assumptions baked into this, so take it with a pinch of salt - then it stands to reason that we as a culture are inundated with shame, since the standards of a slave morality are so much higher and more proscriptive than those of a master morality. Master moralities tell you what to pursue and be; slave moralities tell you what not to do. So, yeah, in sum, if all of this is true, then it's no surprise that society at large is struggling a bit with motivation, since the slave morality is essentially etiolating everything.
When i was younger, i had intense bouts of what psychologists call intrinsic motivation.
As i get older, this happens less and less – which is a massive shame.
I wanted to understand whether there was any good evidence as to what intrinsic motivation is and how i might be able to cultivate it in my adult life. To do this, i did a massive deep dive of the scientific literature surrounding intrinsic motivation. This is the outcome of that research.
Intrinsic motivation is linked to greater wellbeing, greater creativity, greater task persistence, and greater learning.
As far as i'm concerned, the more intrinsically motivated we are in our daily lives, all things being equal, the better those lives are likely to be.
As it turns out, the science on Intrinsic Motivation is far more mature than most people realise. Thousands of studies. Tens of millions of citations. Etc.
I spent a couple months with my head in this literature. Here's a review of everything that i found.