A fair point; I try and take it a different way (as opposed to their having leverage over me), if my conscience is clear in terms of having done GOOD WORK and not wasted any time by procrastinating, they have _less_ leverage from my point of view, since I know I've been delivering 100% and can come from a position of strength.
In terms of motivating myself by negatives instead of positives, that's something I've put literally decades in trying to adjust and something I'm not sure I'll ever break myself of. It's too useful in other areas (looking critically at my own code, looking critically at problem spaces, being unbiased in introspection) that as with the OPs point of not truly internalizing something despite agreeing logically that "X should be this way", I'm not sure I could truly internalize looking at things in a positive light.
In terms of motivating myself by negatives instead of positives, that's something I've put literally decades in trying to adjust and something I'm not sure I'll ever break myself of. It's too useful in other areas (looking critically at my own code, looking critically at problem spaces, being unbiased in introspection) that as with the OPs point of not truly internalizing something despite agreeing logically that "X should be this way", I'm not sure I could truly internalize looking at things in a positive light.