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Imagine you have a starving rat, and it knows that it's got food down the end of a corridor; you can put a little spring on its tail and measure how hard it pulls [towards the food]. That gives you an indication of its motivational force.
Now, imagine the starving rat trying to get to some food, and you have a little spring on his tail, and you waft in some cat odour. Now that the rat is starving and wants to get out of there, he will try to pull even harder towards the food. Getting away and moving forward are separate motivational systems. If you can add them together, it's real potent. And part of the reason why in the Future Authoring exercise you're asked to outline the place you'd like to end up, and the place that you could end up if you let everything fall apart, is so that your anxiety chases you and your approach systems pull you forward. You're maximally motivated then.
That's important because otherwise, you can be afraid of pursuing the things you want to pursue. And so then the fear inhibits you, as the promise pulls you forward. But that makes you weak because you're afraid, so you want to get your fear behind you, pushing you.
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