tl;dr: Your subconsciousness, your inner animal, guides almost all your actual behavior. You are post-rationalizing all the time, that is, you're inventing stories after the fact, telling that you wanted it all along and why it made sense. An important step towards becoming a fully integrated human is to acknowledge your inner animal and collaborate with it.
Epistemic state: In the last several years, I encountered these or similar thoughts over and over again from many different reputable sources.
You are not as much in control of yourself as you think you are. Ever wanted to do things that are obviously reasonable and useful things to do, like doing your assigned tasks, exercising, or getting up in the morning, but you just couldn't get yourself to do them? Ever had the experience of being on autopilot, like driving a usual route and realizing at the end that you don't know at all how you got there? Can you say what your next thought will be? And where it comes from?
Daniel Kahnemann describes in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow human thinking in terms of two systems: the fast, automatic, irrational system 1 and the slow, effortful, logical system 2. The latter is identified with the "sense of self", your conscious ego, while the former works somehow spooky in the background. To avoid confusion, I'll dub them from now on your conscious self (system 2) and your inner animal (system 1). (Other candidates were inner parent and inner child or inner god and inner monkey.)
A common allegory is a horse with its rider. The rider is the conscious self who is steering the horse, which is the inner animal. Riding a horse is in itself often not an easy task, especially if the horse has its own opinion where to go. If the horse goes berserk, you have little control over where you are going. And it's especially hard to control the direction if you ignore that you sit on a horse in the first place, but you think you are walking yourself.
The point is that your inner animal ultimately guides almost all your actual behavior. You only actually do your assigned tasks, if your inner animal decides to do them. You only get up in the morning, if your inner animal wants it. Your conscious self is more like an assistant, recommending your inner animal what to do, but doesn't have the actual executive power. It's more like a planning consultant, analyzing your current situation and devising good strategies.
You may now think "What are you saying there? I can clearly move my arm consciously how I want!" That's true, but only because your inner animal approves of it. It's quite mind-blowing and irritating if someone's inner animal does not approve of such simple actions, for example during hypnosis or due to brain damage. You can be thankful if your inner animal is cooperating with you.
That your conscious part has control over your actions is a hard-wired illusion. You think that, generally, you cause your behavior consciously. Even worse, have you actually consciously thought that you want to move your arm, before your arm physically moved — or did the arm move first? Usually, if you do something, you think only after the fact that you actually wanted to do it before. You are post-rationalizing. That is, the conscious self is really good at inventing stories why the behavior made sense.
Now, usually the inner animal does things that look reasonable to our conscious part. But what happens if the inner animal doesn't execute the prescribed plans? We get angry at ourselves. We call ourselves bad, stupid, or lazy. And then we feel bad about it, but don't understand why. Even worse, we do this even with others.
Don't do this. Don't motivate yourself or others by fear, guilt, or shame. Ultimately it doesn't really work, it has serious health consequences, and, most importantly, it makes you feel horrible.
Instead, collaborate with your inner animal. Connect to it, respect it, love it. Your emotions are messages your inner animal sends to you. Listen to them; in them is ancient wisdom. If you appreciate to your inner animal and respect its needs in your plans, it'll be happy to help you to achieve your goals.