There is more to motivation than immediate reward. When we succeed, a lot goes on in the mind. "These kinds of complications make it impossible to invent good defintions for ordinary words like `pleasure' and `happiness'. No small set of terms could suffice to express the many sorts of goals and wants that, in our minds, compete in different agencies and on different scales of time."
(NB: This passage brings to mind Miller, Pribram and Galatner's treatment of behaviorist motivation theories in their book Plans and the structure of behavior. They pointed out that there is a lot cognitive going on influencing our notion of reward, which is why (for instance) we do not develop compulsive urges to mail letters (for more details on this, read their stuff!!).
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