Motivation and a sense of accomplishment
Do you want to do something? It depends whether you imagine it will be pleasant or unpleasant. The anticipating self imagines whether something will be pleasant or unpleasant. This is in some sense, the pleasure of your mental model of your future self. We call this "motivation".
Do you enjoy what you're currently doing? We call this "enjoyment", or "pleasure".
After you finish something, when you think about to it, do you experience pleasure? Are you happy you did it? Do you remember experiencing pleasure then? This is the happiness of your remembered and future selves. We call this "satisfaction" and "accomplishment".
They are not in alignment. What you anticipate being unpleasant or pleasant, is not always so. I rarely remember experiences as being as pleasant, or unpleasant, as they were at the moment. When I imagine being satisfied after finishing a task, it may or may not be true -- but it is usually true I will forget the effort the task took, afterwards.
What is capability?
Can I compose a symphony? In some sense, no. I don't know anything about music. In some sense, yes. My fingers can certainly draw all the notes.
Can I paint my house? In some sense yes. I know how, and I possess enough money to buy paint and tools. In another sense, no. I don't have any paint at my house right now. I am afraid of heights. It sounds like a lot of work. I don't care what color the house is. I have never painted a house before. I am sleepy right now.
One goal we might pick is to "expand our capabilities". But what does that mean? A naive view might say that it would be useful to learn to paint a house. But imagine I disliked the color of my house, and wanted to change its color. It might be scary to learn to paint. If I learned to paint, I would "have to" paint it... and I have not fixed any of the other obstacles. So it might be good to expand our vocabulary, or increase the detail of our thinking, when we think about whether we will be capable of something.
An experiment
Today I'm experimenting with the idea of trying to expand my capabilities, in the sense that I would say "yes, I am capable of that" in response to each objection above.
I have no idea how it will go. Probably it will fail--most experiments do.
Perhaps I will expand my comfort zones. I might increase my energy levels with exercise or coffee. I might boost my confidence by succeeding at smaller, my planning the steps of something, or by completing subtasks. I might take a class on music theory. I might compose and share a heartfelt, and very bad poem, so that writing more poetry has less pressure on it (I won't, though).
I'm thinking about how to get the most new capabilities, for the least work, and ideally to do things which advance my goals, like helping others.