00:00

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 253, "How to Get Motivated." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living.

00:20

Alright, hello there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast today. So glad to have you here. I love providing this content for you and I'm super glad to have you here with me. For those of you who have been leaving me reviews, thank you so much. That really helps to bump up my podcast so that it will put on other people's suggested for you lists. So good stuff there. And if you love this content, I would love to have you share it with other people in your life who you feel would also love this content. To me, this is good stuff that has completely changed my life, changed the trajectory of the kind of person that I am, and how I'm living. And I feel so much more empowered to create what I want to in my life. And I know that a lot of you feel the same and that's why you keep coming back. Share this with people, please, and help grow this content and this podcast. It would be fabulous.

01:18

So we are going to start today. We're going to be talking about how to get motivated. Alright. Anybody besides me struggle to get motivated to do things sometimes? It seems to be the human condition, doesn't it? To have something that needs to be done or that we want to get done and yet we just keep procrastinating and putting it off. So today we're going to chat about some helpful thoughts and ideas that will help you be more mindful of why you procrastinate and how you can just get things done. How to find that elusive motivation. So I was like, "okay, so what is motivation?" So I started looking it up and I'm like, "oh, well, it's It just says to find a motive." And I was like, "Oh, never thought of that root word. I'd never pulled that out of there." But motive is an intriguing word in the context of trying to find motivation or in trying to get ourselves moving to do something. What is our motive? What is our reason for wanting to do the thing? And every other definition that I looked up that was an associated word, like motivation, just came back to the word motivate. So instead I looked at some synonyms, but here's some interesting things. Synonyms are: boost, encouragement, goad, impetus, impulse, incentive, incitation, incitement, instigation, momentum, provocation, spur, stimulant, stimulus, yeast. I love the yeast one. That's my favorite.

02:52

But look, but I thought it was interesting looking at that list that some of those are more positive, like boost and encourage and incentive and momentum. And others are more negative, like goad or impulse or incitation or instigation. But here's what they all have in common: they all imply some sort of movement. And I'm sure that I'm not the only one who in these times of struggling to find motivation has said, "I just can't seem to get moving on this," or "I just don't feel motivated," or "I just don't feel like it," or I ended up cleaning the whole house instead of doing the thing that I actually wanted to get done. When we first start to realize that motivation is actually all just about our thinking, we can start to approach these tasks differently. So first, let's dispel the motivation myth. Because there have been a few times in our lives that motivation has seemed to come out of nowhere, and all of a sudden, we had the energy and the drive to get that thing done, we have this erroneous idea that motivation comes to us, that is kind of like magic, that we have to wait for motivation to come before we can do the hard thing. Maybe motivation works that way sometimes, but I think, from my experience, generally if I'm waiting for motivation, it doesn't make it. And if I had a dollar for every time I told one of my eighth grade students that they didn't have to feel like doing it, they just had to do it, I wouldn't have to put any more money away for retirement.

04:32

That's just a big phrase, "I just don't feel like it." We live off that phrase sometimes. And interesting that many of us have this belief that we have to be motivated before we can do something. When we have a project coming up, we have this idea that motivation should just come up and tackle us, or the very least, that should come and gently rest upon our shoulders. And because it has done it occasionally in the past, we think it should do it every time but it doesn't. Motivation is pretty fickle like that. I've noticed that motivation generally kicks in after I have started moving on something. So I like to think of motivation as a byproduct of a secondary model, meaning...here we go...I create the motivation in my second thought model but not my first thought model. Let me show you what this looks like.

05:25

The first thought model will generally look something like this: the circumstance. I'm going to put my project in there, what I want to get done, my thought about it. "I'll be so happy tomorrow when this is done." My feeling is generally not motivated right up front. My feeling is generally more something like determined and so my action line: I take the first steps. I sit down at the computer, I go get my shoes on, I go get the shovel and my gloves on or whatever. The result: I start the project. Then here's what happens because our lives are really just like thought model after thought model after thought model, right? So here's what happens in my brain. My action of taking the first steps, right, like getting my shoes on, grabbing the shovel, sitting at the computer, whatever that action is, goes into the circumstance of my next model. And then it looks like this: the circumstance. I'm taking the first steps toward getting my project done. The thought, "look at me. I'm doing the hard thing. I'm getting my project done." The feeling then for me is motivated. Then the action is that I keep taking the steps and the result is that I get my project done. So notice that in this model, "motivated" shows up after I get started, after I invite it in my first thought model. Sometimes we just have the right magical thought to have it show up in our first model. But for me, it usually shows up in my second model once I've gotten started. So one of the big ideas for today, just start.

07:10

These are the two magical words to create the feeling of motivation, right? But that's when that action line goes into the circumstance of our next, right? So we have to create the thought first. That's first that gets us determined to just start. Whatever it is you've been putting off for a while, waiting for motivation to appear, instead use whatever thought will help you feel determined to just start with a small step and create some motivation. I know that in my house, I have these jobs that I call two year, 20 minute jobs. It's because it takes me two years to get around to doing it and 20 minutes to actually complete the task once I get started. But meanwhile, think of all the time and. energy, my brain has spent thinking about that job, thinking about, so say that I wanted to, I need, I needed to, to repaint a patch in my wall or something like that. Every time I walk past that patch in the wall, I look at it and I go, "oh, gotta get that done. Oh, I need to get that taken care of," you know, and I do that for two years. And then when I finally pull out the paint, it's like a 20 minute job. And that's when I always roll my eyes and I'm like, "what is that?" Right? Like why would I put off for two years something that takes me 20 minutes? How much energy has my brain expended, not forgetting to do that job? Kind of crazy, right? So remembering that is another thought that I'm like, "you know what, I'll be really glad to have this done."

08:53

Sometimes once we get started, once we just start, the first thing like in that case once I just go pull out the paint and the brush and whatever, then motivation can sneak in through the back door and it helps me to get things done. Our thoughts absolutely create motivation, alright? So like painting that spot is going to happen when all of a sudden I'm like, "oh having a big house party over and people are going to be here. I need to get that done," or when the pain of having that spot on the wall is bigger than the pain of just noticing it, then I'm going to start getting it done. Our thoughts absolutely create motivation. But as I just showed you, it's much easier for us to create that feeling once we've got some movement going on. It's just like steering a car. It's so much easier to move the wheels when the car is moving than when it's at a standstill. Although there are times that I'm going to be able to get motivated in my first model.

09:56

For example, when I was younger I used to leave the dinner dishes (like a teenager) and had dishes to do (or even a young Mom I did this a lot) I would leave the dinner dishes to do the next morning. But I always hated waking up the next morning to a dirty kitchen. So I started telling myself "tomorrow morning I'll be so happy that I have a clean kitchen," and that thought worked great at helping to motivate me to get the dishes done at night when I was tired. And I use this thought often with all sorts of things that I'm not currently motivated to do. When I remember my future self, my tomorrow self, my next week self, and work to take care of her and make her life easier, that helps to create the feeling of motivation for me. That thought though has also come to me after years of using it to create the feeling of determination That thought for a long time just created determination, whereas now I can use that thought and it will create motivation.

10:58

So notice though that motivation is coming from thoughts. It doesn't just appear out of nowhere. We don't just all of a sudden feel motivated to do something. I was working through some motivation concepts with a teen client once who was telling me how difficult it was to clean her bedroom. And a few months later we were talking about how difficult it was to get motivated to do her homework. And when avoiding her homework, she found it easy to clean her room, which was the thing that she previously was struggling being motivated to do. It was all about the thought. When she's thinking "I don't want to clean my room," that creates the opposite of motivation, which I guess, I don't know what is that, unmotivated? Okay. But when faced with a different task that was worse than cleaning the room, writing a paper for a class, all of a sudden cleaning her room looked like a much easier job to do and it was a way she could still feel productive and justify not sitting down to do the paper. Cleaning her room became a sort of buffering a way to disengage from the discomfort of writing a paper.

12:05

So I've noticed that I do this a lot as well. Often when I'm preparing this podcast, right, it's interesting. The interesting thing about this motivation for me is that I really love preparing this podcast for y'all. I always make some great connections in my brain. I understand things better. I feel productive and I go into my own space of overflow. But it does require work. I need to engage my brain in a way that I don't have to when I'm cleaning something or doing some of the endless small tasks that end up on our to-do list. So learning to just start, regardless of how I feel about it, gets me to feeling motivated within a few minutes. It's just the sitting down and engaging my brain that takes the most work. I don't have to feel motivated to do anything. But this makes sense, right? Like changing trajectory requires more focus, attention, effort than just continuing on course. So if I'm on my phone, like just scrolling Instagram or Facebook, changing trajectory, putting that down, turning on my computer, pulling up the, you know, something that I can start typing on, that requires a lot more effort than just to continue scrolling. An object in motion tends to stay in motion, right? Changing it is hard.

13:29

Okay, so let's talk about another aspect of motivation. Have you noticed that there are things in your life that you don't necessarily love doing, but that you just do them without waiting for motivation, like brushing your teeth. Now, I'm going to be the first. I love clean teeth, right? But I don't necessarily love the process of brushing my teeth. I just do it. I don't create drama about brushing my teeth. A four year old, however, will create a lot of drama about cleaning their teeth and it may take them 10 minutes to do a two minute decent tooth brushing job. Whereas when we're adults, it takes us two minutes to do the two minute job. Why? Because we don't get all caught up in waiting for motivation of whether or not we feel like doing it. We don't create a story about all the things we'd rather be doing, about how it's so difficult or about how we're waiting for just the right motivation.

14:28

We just brush our teeth. When it comes to doing whatever task we want to do and just can't seem to get motivated, it's because we're creating drama around it. We're creating a story. We're thinking about all the things that we'd rather do about how it's going to take so much time, about how we just don't feel motivated. "I just don't feel like it right now." We're creating a lot of drama around the task. What if we just learned to do the tasks with the same kind of thinking that we use when we brush our teeth? We just do it without all the drama, without the stories about how it's so difficult, without thinking that we had to find the right motivation to get started. It's not that the task is so difficult, it's that our thinking about the task makes it difficult.

15:17

When I was a teenager, it would take me hours to get the kitchen cleaned after dinner. Whereas now, it takes me 10 minutes, why? Because I don't create drama. I don't make up a story about how it's so hard, about how it's so unfair, about how I shouldn't have to do it, about how I just don't feel like it. I just do it. So when your brain starts to create drama, stop thinking about it and allowing your brain to come up with all the reasons why you don't want to do it. And just do it, just start. When you start thinking about how hard it will be, stop thinking about it and just do it. When you think you have to have motivation to do it, stop thinking about wanting motivation and just do it. Most things in life don't require motivation. They just require that we do them. If we want to change our lives, we have to stop telling stories and just do the things that we want to do. Storytime is over. That's a phrase I've started using for me. When I catch myself in the creating the drama, I'm just like, "oh, storytime is over. Let's just get to work, let's just start."

16:28

So here's something I really want you to consider, however. You actually do have a lot of motivation. When you look at your life, look at how much you actually get done every day. Most likely you got out of bed today, you cleaned your teeth, you showered, you got ready, whatever that all entails. You got something to eat, you drove to work, you made your way down the hall through the office, you started taking care of things in there or at home. You may have made breakfast, you may have grabbed a protein bar, you've gotten something to eat, you might have checked some email, returned some text messages, and we could continue throughout your day of all the things that you've done. And the surprising thing, you probably did most of it, if not all of it, without any drama whatsoever. Without creating a story about how you didn't want to, about how it was too hard, about how you weren't motivated. With these items, you've just put them in the category of just get them done, end of story. Right? So saying you're unmotivated in life really isn't true. You are motivated. You're getting lots of stuff done. But not only is the thought that you're unmotivated not true, it's absolutely not helpful. In a thought model, it looks like this: circumstance (whatever project you're working on), thought, ("I'm so unmotivated,") then the feeling that creates unmotivated (may be discouraged,) action (you don't do anything).

18:02

Saying that we're unmotivated is not helpful because it does not move us in the direction that we want to go. So be very, very careful with the words that you use after the phrase, "I am..." Your brain pays close attention and finds and works to find evidence for those things and also works to make them happen. I came across a thought the other day that said your self-image will never let you act in a way that is inconsistent with it. Now that's fascinating, isn't it? Whatever you believe

about yourself, your brain won't let you act in a way that that it is that is different from that. If you believe you're unmotivated, "I am unmotivated." Your brain will work very hard to create unmotivated. If you believe that you're motivated, "I am motivated." Your brain will work very hard to create motivated. Now you can also get online and you can Google how to get motivated and you can pull off a bunch of tricks and tips for how to do things that you can put in your action line to get you motivated. And they will work short term for sure. But our goal here is to go to the source of the actions, your thoughts, and create change there so that you can be motivated long term, not just short term.

19:27

So one last thought, I hear so many people say that they just can't get motivated to do something until the very last second. That makes complete sense when you think about the thoughts. More likely a thought such as, "If I don't get this done right now, I'm dead meat," is going on, right? "It's do or die time." I am thinking in my head, okay, I gotta get it done now. I've got two hours to get this five page paper written. Right? I'm gonna get an F in my class. Like, we create the motivation by what we're thinking. Think of the motivation. If you're a student that values getting A's on all your papers, and you've got two hours to turn in a paper, the thought is, "I have to protect my A's. Like, this is super important. I'm gonna get an F if I don't do it right now." And we create this motivation, a fear-based motivation, by what we're thinking. But we have the exact same capacity to create the same type of motivation to do the things weeks earlier by using our thoughts in the same way.

20:39

Realize that the circumstance may be different, i .e. the project is due by five p .m. as opposed to the project is due in two weeks. But the circumstance doesn't create our feelings. We create our feelings, motivation, with our thoughts. We're just thinking a very different thought. And this thought creates our feeling which dictates our action. So notice that usually when we are doing a last minute project and we're doing, we're moving into that kind of motivation, it's a motivation based off of fear. Whereas if I'm working on something two weeks before it's due, and my thought is, "I will be so happy next week when this is done." That's more of a love motivation, right? Motivated more by love rather than by fear. And it just feels so much better to do things from a place of love rather than a place of fear. Okay, so our thoughts are really powerful. Please pay attention to yours.

21:46

When I know that when I'm struggling, getting started on my podcast, generally I'm thinking, I actually have time tomorrow that I could get it done. It's not even that I think, "ugh, I have to do a podcast." I actually never think that. I actually really love doing this. But my struggle for motivation is that I think, "I have time tomorrow, I have time in my schedule to finish this," but that thought does nothing to create the feeling of motivation, right? It creates distraction. So using the thought, "tomorrow, Tanya will be so happy that this is done." That's a way more motivating thought for me. Okay, you've got this, my friend. Explore your thoughts. Pay attention to what's going on inside of your head and start creating powerful motivation from the inside. Learn to manage your thoughts around doing the things that you want to do. And it will change long-term how you engage with life and how you feel about what you're doing and how you're engaging with your thoughts. Okay, have an awesome, awesome day, have a great week, and I will see you next time. Bye.

23:00

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.