Let's Get Motivated!

Summary

What is motivation?

• Psychological forces that compel you to take action
• General willingness to do something
• Pain of not doing a task becomes greater than the pain of doing it

Types of Motivation

• Extrinsic-when you are motivated by external factors that are given or controlled by others. Example: salary or praise
• Intrinsic-we perform task out of joy not because we have to

Self Motivation - Take Ownership

• To motivate yourself, you must examine and understand your needs, so that you know what you find valuable and rewarding. Then, by changing your environment and perspective, you can find the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to complete those undesirable tasks. So, rather than relying on other factors to make a task more rewarding, you make it more rewarding yourself.

Find your motivation

• Understand your why - the purpose behind what you are doing
  • list all positive outcomes
• Define your goal - the vital step between planning and doing
  • Know exactly what you need to do to achieve what you want in life
    • look at the "bigger picture", you'll be able to see how those undesirable task can help you reach your goals
• Create a clear vision - you can achieve what you see
• Produce a plan - break down the steps you need to get it done
• Look for the bigger picture, to accomplish more, you think bigger
  • How does this relate not only to yourself but to others?
  • How will it contribute to something important?
  • Where will this make a difference?
• Keep it positive - Take control of how you think, how you feel, how you act
• Break goals into manageable tasks - success with the smaller tasks will motivate you to finish big tasks
• Tackle procrastination head on - the best way to begin something is just to start
• Seize the power of deadlines
• Create a schedule that helps you to do things more efficiently
• Buil rituals
• Reward yourself
• Surround yourself with positive thoughts and people
• Create an accomplishment log

[ The following is the full transcript from this week's post. This is a health blog with a focus on weight loss. Please consider that all episodes are unscripted, direct to camera, with focused talking points. ]

Hi, I am Dr. Cox, and today I want to talk to you a little bit about motivation.

One of the challenges we have as we continue our journey for health, is often we must do things that either stop doing certain habits or start doing certain other habits that are good for us.

Well, there is a reason we are currently not doing those habits, and that is often because we tell ourselves that we are just not motivated.

I hear people all the time say that. “I know I should quit smoking right now.”

Or I should do this. But I find that I do not have the motivation to do that.

So today, I want to talk to you a little bit about motivation, and is there ways we can do things that will help us be motivated to actually accomplish those things we set out to do?

So, it is one thing to know what we need to do.

And it is another thing to execute on what we need to do.

The cause to go from knowing to execution is simply motivation.

Motivation can be defined as the psychological forces that cause us to take action.

It is a general willingness to do something.

Now, sometimes it is really that the pain of not doing something becomes greater than pain of doing it. But really to be motivated, it does not necessarily have to equate to pain. And I think that is important for us to understand, because if you do this right, there's things you can do to make this enjoyable.

So first, there is two types of motivation, there is extrinsic motivation, and that's motivation from the outside. So, a desire to get a new piece of clothing, or fit into some type of new clothing, or your paycheck is an external motivator. These are kind of external systems into rewarding you for doing certain things.

But then there's intrinsic motivation. That is motivation that comes from within. You see people, the kind of hobbyist’s hobbies that they do, they are intrinsically motivated to do it, they find joy in it. They do not have external drivers, are not getting paid to do it. So intrinsic motivation comes with it.

Then, involved in motivation is something called self-motivation. What that means is you really take ownership; you are not relying on the external world to create a system for you. You are going to do whatever hobby, or habit, or whatever it is you need to accomplish, that you are going to use internal things to do that kind of distinction. It is what you find joy, and that is going to drive you to be motivated to do whatever it is you are trying to accomplish.

Now, when we are talking about motivation that you are trying to do, what we are really talking about is, habits. We are trying to either stop certain habits that we know are bad or develop good habits. But, for whatever reason, we currently do not do those things.

So, we are trying to find that desire. How do I create a desire that is pleasant? That is going to allow me to, to accomplish those things.

So, you really need to dig deep to understand self-motivation.

And the first thing you need to do, is you need to understand your why? When you want to do something or stop doing something, how does it tie back to you personally? And what I mean by that is, what is your why?

When you say you want to lose weight, well why do you want to lose weight? And as you dig deeper and deeper internally, you will learn that the why. May be because you really want to play in the park with your grandchildren, and you are worried that your current health is not going to get you there. It is important that you really understand your why.

Today, we are not going to do a deep dive into understanding or finding your why. We have other podcasts that you can look at, that we do a deeper dive

That the important thing is, is you have to tie it back to your why.

So, one of the examples they use, is a young boy, meets a wise man and says, What's the secret to success? And the wise man says, “If you want to know the secret to success, let's go down to the river.” and they go down the river. And the boy says, “what's the secret to success?”

The wise man says, “let's walk out in the river.” So they proceed to walk out in the river to the point that the river waters are up to their noses, Then the wise man grabs the boy and holds him down under the water. The young man is now fighting, fighting, fighting, trying to breathe. Suddenly the wise man brings him up and says, “What are you fighting for?” The young boy says, “Air?” The wise Man says, “That's the secret, as soon as you want success, as much as you want air, then you'll get it.”

What is important to understand is, we do not have to be the point of death, or almost died to understand why. If we take time and think about it and reflect, you can determine, really, what is your deep passionate why, and how does that tie back into your habits and the things you want life?

Next thing you need to do is to have clearly defined goals. It is one thing to say, I want to lose weight, but it is another thing to say I want to lose 10lbs. The more you can define your goals and the clarity of those goals, the more motivated you are going to be.

It helps you see kind of how that fits into the bigger picture. I want to lose 10lbs, so that I can play in the park with my grandchildren without getting short of breath.

It is important that you set clear goals because you also need to have a very clear vision. One of the things that happens is, people often have tried multiple times to change whatever behavior there is. Or to adopt whatever behaviors they are wanting without success. And they fail when they started to tell themselves that I am just not destined, or I just cannot do it. Then they start to tell themselves that internal story that I am just a failure here, and you have to change that. You have to visualize what it is you are trying to get. And what does it look like when you get it?

Then instead of thinking about the negative, you are thinking about the positive. Instead of thinking about I really cannot lose weight, or I cannot stop smoking. You need to start focusing on, what is the vision look like when you are able to do that. And put that in your mind, so your mind knows what it is that it is trying to get to.

Next thing in line with this, is you to keep it positive. One of the ways you can do that is both internally, but you can also surround yourself with positive people. This can be a real challenge for you. You may have friends in your life that really are dragging you down. They are not helping you. It is important that when you are trying to adopt behaviors, or stop some behaviors, that you are surrounded by positive people and positive environment.

Let us say you are trying to exercise more. Well, having a friend at the gym, is going to help you exercise more because, you are like minded people, and you can support each other.

Another thing you need to do is, you must manage your time. I hear it all the time, “I just don't have time. It takes up too much time to do this." And the reality of it is, we all have the same amount of time. It is just how we manage that time.

Now, one of the things you can do is you can build a ritual. If you say I am going to work out, then one of the things you can do is set a time. “I'm going to work out every day at five pm.” And if you do that over and repeatedly. You take away that mental fatigue, the decision-making fatigue, and it just becomes easier and easier. Another important aspect is your perception of the amount of energy used to do it. Your perception is it is getting easier and easier. That is because you are converting this into a habit, you are removing the mental fatigue of having to make a decision. If you just get up in the morning saying, “Today, I'm going to exercise.” But have not really identified what time that is going to happen. Then you are creating this mental fatigue pitch where you are more likely not going to be able to do it. But if you set your shoes out the night before. And say “First thing in the morning at 5am, I'm going to get up. First thing I am doing is exercising, and you do that every day.” You are building those rituals, those habits that becomes secondary to you.

It is important that we understand that motivation is like a muscle, and it can get fatigued. So, we need to do things to help support it. So we are not always relying on motivation. And one of those things that we can do is building habits and rituals that reduce their desire or the need to rely on motivation.

Then one final thing that I would recommend you do is create an accomplishment log. One of the challenges I have is when I desire to do something and set a goal. I find that when I get close to that goal, I then move the goalpost, and I never stop and celebrate that accomplished my goal. Because when I accomplish a goal, I also want to go on to the next, to set a new goal, and go on.

I want you to know it is okay to pause and celebrate the wins. I think that is extremely important to take time and say, “Hey, I'm going to do a treadmill, for 45 minutes.” Well, at 43 minutes or so, do not think, “You know what, I'm going to do 55 minutes.”

No.

Stop at 45 minutes. Get off the treadmill. And say, “Man, I did it today, I set a goal, and I accomplished it.” And really bask in the wins. One of the ways you can do that is creating the logs so that when you're feeling down and you are not feeling like you are being successful, you can go back and look at this log. Then say, “Look, actually, I am being successful; there's multiple things that I'm doing this leading to my success.”

These are just some things you can do to help motivate you. If you would like to learn more.

Feel free to reach out to us. And we will see how we can help you.

Thank you.

Kelly Cox MD, FACEP

Member, American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine

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