What Goes Around Comes Around: The Heaven’s Reward Fallacy

We all want to believe that if we work hard and do the right thing, good things will come to us. That idea is promoted by many religious leaders, by employers, and we’re even indoctrinated with it in our personal lives from family members and friends. If you work hard, keep your head down, and do what’s right, eventually you will be rewarded.

Sadly, that’s demonstrably not the way it works. We all know people who have worked as hard as us or even harder and yet have far less to show for it. History is rife with examples of people who strove to do the right thing and yet never received recognition, recompense, or any other reward for their actions.

The idea we are talking about is called the heaven’s reward fallacy, but it does not really have anything to do with the afterlife and can affect people regardless of their religious beliefs.

The Wrong Focus

The problem with this cognitive distortion is not necessarily the fact that we work hard or that we strive to do what’s right. It’s that we focus on the wrong thing. We focus on sublimating our own needs while doing for others in the hopes that in the future we’ll be rewarded with love, acceptance, or some other reward. We sacrifice the present for the future. “I will be happy when…” – chances are good that you’ve made those sorts of statements before.

This also applies to things far beyond employment or reciprocated love. For instance, someone struggling to overcome an eating disorder might feel increasingly bitter that those around them do not recognize or appreciate their sacrifices and the willpower required to overcome bingeing and purging. Here, the focus is on receiving praise or acknowledgment from outside ourselves on a job well done. The problem is that many people may not even realize everything required to fight back against an eating disorder.

Another example: One spouse works a full-time job, but also cooks, cleans, does the laundry, and generally takes care of the home. They do this while waiting for some sort of acknowledgment of their effort or recognition, but that never came. Eventually, the person becomes embittered and sullen and drives away the very family members from whom they had sought recognition.

In many situations, anxiety, low self-image, and related problems play pivotal roles. Many people locked into this fallacy feel that they are only worth what they do for others, or what they bring to their jobs – that they have little or no inherent worth in and of themselves. Western society has perpetuated this through the myth that if you do not contribute something of value to society, then you have no value yourself.

Overcoming the Heaven’s Reward Fallacy

While this is one of the more common cognitive distortions, it is one of the most challenging to overcome. Often, it requires therapy to deal with self-esteem and self-image issues, combined with other practices to help us focus on the value of the here and now, rather than some imagined better future.