416. Mastering Motivation: Behavioral Economics Insights (Refreshed Episode)

Welcome to episode 416 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy Today's episode is all about how to get and stay motivated. Ready? Let's get started. You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer. Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is all about motivation and how it works in our brains so you can both get and stay motivated. Now, of course, I'm not promising that listening to this episode one time means that you will never struggle with motivation or focus ever again in your life. Sorry about that. Instead, this episode is about understanding motivation, thinking about and narrowing down goals, and considering how some specific concepts from behavioral economics, loss aversion habits and framing, to name a few, come into play when thinking about your own behavior change as well as if you work for a company that might be looking to incorporate behavioral economics concepts into your programs or with your teams, I am going to specifically dig in on some apps and different things I see and how they're set up to help contextualize these ideas ideas throughout the episode. Now, I chose to refresh this episode today because of my guest on this upcoming Friday's episode, Justin Jones Fosu. Justin is the CEO of Work Meaningful and in addition to talking about his new book, I respectfully disagree. We talk about what it means to have meaningful work, a bit about motivating team members and understanding what makes people feel like their work is meaningful and why that matters for organizations and managers. So it felt like a great time to revisit this episode to think a little about goals, the different types of motivation, and more as you prepare to hear that episode when it comes out on Friday. Of course, if you're not yet subscribed to the Brainy Business podcast, now is a great time to do so to make sure that you don't miss that episode or any others when they come out. And don't forget, there are links for everything, including my top related past episodes and books waiting for you in the show. Notes for this episode, which are found within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com 416 all right, let's talk about how to get and stay motivated. Motivation is definitely a key piece of the mindset puzzle, so it's no wonder it's been taking up brain space for me. Recently, however, I've also been driven to think about motivation as I've been working on getting back into run. If you follow me on Instagram where you can find me as the brainy biz. You recently saw me talking about this in my stories before my trip to Boston. Actually just a few days before this episode goes live. In laying the groundwork for this episode on motivation, I'm hoping I can get vulnerable with you for a few minutes. Take some advice from Brene Brown while I share a very personal story. It absolutely relates to the topic at hand and it feels like it's the right time to talk about it. This is about my relationship with running and how it has shaped my life over the years. Honestly, I hated running my whole life. Running laps at soccer practice? No thanks. Going to run a mile with my mom. I'm sure she still remembers me complaining every single step of the way about how much I hated the process. Sorry Mom, I can't remember if I've ever mentioned this on the show before, but I did ballet for 12 years growing up and at the peak I was dancing 20 hours a week on multiple days, including a very long Saturday that started far too early. But in junior high school I found out this qualified me to be signed out of pe. No more wind sprints. No more fun runs. Sign me up. I think seventh grade is the last year I took PE in school, which I of course thought was awesome. At the time. I was encouraged to be excused from PE by one of my ballet instructors who told us all we should not run because it would, quote, make our legs look ugly in tights. Not sure that's exactly true, and I definitely would not have been running enough for that sort of definition, but I jumped at my shot to kiss gym class goodbye. This created a limiting belief in my mind that I held for many years that I can't run or I shouldn't run or running isn't for people like me. I'm not fast. I lost my chance to build endurance. All these excuses kept me from getting motivated enough to try again. I was actually still relatively healthy, doing classes at the gym like kickboxing and things, but still not believing I could run far or consistently, or that I ever would be able to. I had started playing soccer again as an adult, always on defense of course, because I don't have the endurance to play anywhere else. And I talked with a friend about doing a triathlon to get in better shape, even though I didn't own a bike, didn't really swim, and hated running. No wonder that didn't work out and eventually did couch to 5k to get in the habit, though I definitely still did that with a lot of walking to get my timeline properly aligned. I scrolled back through Facebook as I was working on revisiting this story. As I've said, this is like a 10 year sort of a run here and it looks like I did my first 5k on April 10, 2011 after I had been doing couch to 5k and it was my first time running outside and just I still had a pretty good pace but it was just one step on the path and I still had this limiting belief. I remember very clearly there was a 12k along with it. It was a Seahawks run and the number 12 is very important for Seahawks fans. I remember thinking I could never run that far. It was a little mental goal I put in my brain, something you think you might do but never really will, that someday maybe I would do that. And I kept running but having serious barriers on my distance and pace about what I would never be able to do or accomplish. Then in 2013, really almost exactly two years later, I was in a program for emerging leaders where we did a lot of work on Mindset. One of the benefits of being in the program was my very own executive coach for the six months of the program and I was very fortunate to work with Peter Myers and want to give him a little shout out here for all he made possible possible for me. He has done a ton of races and events in his time and answered most all of my statements within the program with questions to help me break through my mindset and motivation blocks. You all know how much I love questions. As we were setting big goals to complete by the end of the program, I had told some of my story about running and he encouraged me to sign up for a big race to kind of get through that block. So I found a 10k that would be taking place about 5 months later. No more excuses. This was about work performance now, a whole new ball game that had nothing to do with weight struggles or endurance or those limiting beliefs in my head. This was now part of my job, my career. So I knew I had to stick with it. And I'm sure it doesn't surprise you. I've always pretty much been an A student who works maybe too hard on achievements in a workspace. So I did. And after training for months I knew my basic pace and set a goal to finish the 6.2 miles in under an hour and 30 minutes, which is a pace of just under 14 and a half minutes per mile. By all running standards, this is, we'll say slow and steady to be kind. My dream was to be closer to an hour and 15 minutes, but I didn't want to get my hopes up and be disappointed. There are those limiting beliefs creeping up again. In the end, I finished with an overall time of 1:14:35, beating my stretch goal by 25 seconds and having a pace of 12 minutes flat, which probably shocked me more than anyone. At that time, I was running 15 to 20 miles a week and gearing up to train to do that 12K. In April, I had surpassed my mental demons and motivation wasn't a problem anymore. Until just over a month later when I was driving home from a work event and was hit by two different cars on the freeway. That led to a whole new set of mindset and motivation struggles. Every appointment I asked when I would be able to run again and over the years was told many times to get a new dream. I had always hated running and now it seemed like the only thing I wanted to do. How cruel was this? This was my thing where I found my mental clarity, where I had ideas and bonded with my Pomeranian who ran all those miles with me every morning. Her little legs were a blur. Over the years, I tried again and again to run, to do any exercise really, but even walking caused me to be in extreme pain for days on end. My motivation waned, but I never really gave up. I wanted to get back to me again. And in 2016 I was introduced to a procedure called prolotherapy, which was a series of, let's just say, unpleasant injections into my spine, which took another two years to tighten up the joints enough to run again. And then I was in podcast mode and had all sorts of excuses to not exercise regularly. Lots of built up fears to challenge. My best attempts at motivating myself until August just a few weeks ago, when I decided to apply all my mindset learning and make a change. I found a way over the hurdle and started couch to 5K again from the beginning, which meant only jogging 60 seconds at a time. And truth be told, after six years, that was plenty. It was still very difficult. And as a reminder, I ran for, you know, an hour and 15 minutes, an hour and a half at a time before just, you know, six years ago. But those 60 seconds, you gotta start somewhere, right? So the program is 30 minutes three times a week for eight weeks, with a little grace for myself when traveling internationally last week. So we'll call My nine weeks. The Hubs, of course, is in full Support and we have two 5Ks on the books before the end of the year, which is another motivation tactic and I'll talk about that a little bit later on. So how did we get here to this episode? As I said earlier, running was a place where I found mental clarity. Thoughts could just line up and come together in whatever pattern. It was a great time for me to just be While on a jog recently, I was thinking about the apps I was using during the process, what they charge for and don't, and how that could be better aligned with motivation and the way the brain actually works. And the spark for this episode was created. So today I'm going to talk about the two types of motivation. We'll dig into a few specific apps. I'm going to talk about couch to 5k and run keeper as well as a couple of others and give you some interesting ways to hack your motivation using brain science. Ready? All right, before I get into the apps, I want to talk about the two types of motivation. Motivation can either be intrinsic or extrinsic. Essentially that means it either comes from your own self intrinsic, internal. Right, that kind of makes sense. Or an outside source extrinsic, external. In looking at my story, there are all sorts of motivations woven in throughout the years. My desire to find solutions even after years and years of struggle after my accident because I knew I wanted to run again, and enduring 36 very painful injections into my spine over seven weeks was intrinsic motivation. That was for me, my mind, my goals, my motivation. Working with Peter and overcoming my block about distance and how much I could run was extrinsic. I had set a goal with him and I didn't want to let him or the rest of my group down by not running the race. I made a commitment to them that I would complete a 10k before our final presentations. And that mattered in a different way than a commitment to myself, especially when layered with being part of my job, which moved this previously mind blocked item into a brand new category. Often thinking about something from a fresh new angle will allow you to shake off the cobwebs and old rules to refresh your motivation. In the case of me deciding to jump in again and start running here just a few weeks ago, I was really making health a priority. It became one of the goals for me, one of the three goals that I want to focus on. And again, I'll talk about this later on in the episode, but it became something that was important enough to me that I knew it was time and it needed to be a priority and so I needed to set something up in place, get out of my own head. Put move into an extrinsic motivational space again by setting up the couch to 5K app and setting some goals with my husband of some 5Ks that we're going to go do and just committing to it. So here's an example of how you could look at motivation in your business. One thing I know a lot of people get hung up on is sales calls or some other version of drumming up new business. You know you should be doing sales calls and that people may want your services, but the act of making the call is scary. That's fear talking. You're intrinsically dwelling and keeping the whole conversation inside your own head. Doing this means you don't have to shine a light on the problem. You can just keep circling and spinning in your own brain, your own vicious cycle. Even when you believe you're thinking about it differently, it's still within your own mind which has limiting beliefs on selling. So you stay stuck and don't ever really get motivated. How might you move this into the extrinsic space to spur motivation? You could make a commitment to a friend that you will both make a certain number of sales calls by the end of the week. The commitment to each other can be enough or you might want to include a negative sort of a prod to help you keep going. I know lots of people who have been trying to write their books and and always finding an excuse to not write the pages that day or week. So to keep them motivated they would do something like write a check to a friend who was instructed to cash it if they didn't turn in their pages or final manuscript by the deadline. And these were significant checks to keep the motivation some as much as $10,000. Think about that. If you made a commitment to me that you would make five sales calls a week for three months to start a habit and you were required to check in with me or forward a follow up email after every single one. And if you ever missed I get to cash a check you wrote to me for $10,000. Even a thousand. And this is pretty motivating. Now you're bringing in loss aversion and other brain motivators to help you get over the mindset block and into motivation territory. The fear of loss outweighs the gain your brain may feel from procrastinating. I've linked to episode nine on loss aversion in the show Notes so you can check that out if you haven't heard it already. The main tip for you here is when you're feeling a lack of motivation or want to motivate yourself, think about the mindset block that's keeping you stuck. Is it intrinsic or extrinsic? And how might you flip it into the other category to help you stick to your goal? As you can see, you don't want to do this with everything you might possibly want because then you have far too many competing goals and would drive yourself crazy. I have talked about setting and limiting goals before on the podcast in episode 29 and you can now get these steps within the free Master your mindset mini course which is linked in the show notes of this episode. It has a video from me explaining about mindset and how to use the brand new worksheet which is only available through the courses on finding your top goals and how to get your mindset on the right path to achieving those goals. Just like Jen did, which I talked about earlier in the episode. Understanding your priorities so you can say no to things that are outside of those goals is key to being able to get and stay motivated. When you have 85 goals, it's easy to stay stuck and never get motivated to make significant progress on any of them. When you only have three priorities in your life and business, three goals, it's easier to be motivated to achieve those and you can forgive yourself for not doing the 82 other things that come up. As I said last month I decided that health and wellness and running again needed to bump up and be one of those three goals, which is why I found couch to 5k again and started on a new motivated path. Alright, now that we've talked about the types of motivation, I want to tell you a little about the apps and how they have been set up to motivate where they're doing well and where they could do better. First, let's talk about couch to 5k because I've already mentioned that throughout the episode. As a side note, I've shared screenshots from both apps in my social media feeds and stories where you can find and follow me on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook as the brainy biz. Couch to 5K is a free app but you have to pay to upgrade to get some bonus features which is not uncommon in the app world. As I said, it's a three time per week schedule for eight weeks and they have tons of success stories if you want to read about them on social media. They also have ongoing training programs for a first 10k or half marathon or whatnot and the company that owns them. Zen Lab has pull up challenges that's on my list and plank challenges and things like that. Like most apps, it incorporates push notifications to remind you to stick to your running schedule. A very simple time to lace up those running shoes, don't forget sort of thing. One of them actually did help me go out and run when I was considering skipping or pushing back an extra day because I had a lot of work to do and some big deadlines. But the push notification hit me at the perfect time and I went for my run. So these can be useful for motivation and reminders of pre commitment, which I do talk about a little bit on the episode about my research study which you can check out. There's a link for that in the show notes as well. For my training I am mixing up running on the treadmill and running outside. And while the app has a GPS tracker, the thing it doesn't share with you in the basic model, what you would have to pay up to access is the actual distance tracking and calories. So I know I was out for 30 minutes because it says in the description of the exercise, but I can't see calories burned or distance and therefore have what I need to calculate pace without paying into the app. One thing I think this app really lacks in as well is it stops tracking when their prescribed course is done. So if I'm still half a mile from home when the 30 minute workout is over, it doesn't track the extra walk back or if I chose to jog some of it, I can't log the benefits of any extra effort. In this way they're conditioning me to not want to put in any extra effort or push myself beyond their 30 minutes because there's no benefit in doing so. This can be unintentionally setting up a weird intrinsic story for those who use the program. While I've not spoken to them and don't know anything about their goals behind the scenes, it's possible the apps are set up this way to make it so you believe you can and should only do exercises prescribed by them within the app, and that you will not and should not do anything without having their app with you, you can see the benefit for them. This could be motivated from a monetary place, which isn't necessarily bad. They are a business and they're giving a ton of stuff out for free. But they also could be Dr. From a place of helping to motivate you and keeping you from injuring yourself from doing too much too quickly. It's important to understand the motivation of the business, the strategy, before you determine a pricing model, as I talk about in my pricing course and what I teach my clients about. So let's talk a little bit about their subscription, model what you're paying for and see how that might align with motivation to remove ads, track distance and calories, and be able to access their music. It's $4.99 a month or $49.99 per year. In the logical brain world, this isn't really that bad. If you do your three runs each week, it's less than 50 cents each to get your stats. But I still have to do a separate calculation to find my pace, and from what I've seen, it doesn't track splits or anything like that. So with this being a run walk model, it doesn't tell me what my average running pace was compared to the walking pace. It's just the total distance and the time in hearing me explain it to you. Now, do you feel like you want to pay $5 a month for that? Humans are creatures of habit, as we know, and so most people will likely run the same route. When training, I leave my house, turn right, and pick some version of the streets to make a loop. That should get me home in about 30 minutes so I could drive that once in my car to know the exact distance and have that every time so I don't need to pay for it. And because I already have to do work to find the pace, the thing at least I really care about, I think this is also important for a lot of runners. I'm pushed outside the app to get this, which decreases the value of their sales pitch and makes me and probably others less likely to pay. The other thing you get if you pay, as I said, is their music mix, which they say is proven to increase performance. I don't know what that means or what's included, and I myself have wondered, what if I hate it? And now I've paid for music that I hate and don't want to listen to. And the app doesn't block other music sources, thankfully, so I have my own playlist going at the same time. Might I like their music? Absolutely. Might it make me run faster and stay motivated? Sure. Am I willing to pay $5 to try when I already pay to have a music service with a playlist I know I like? I won't go so far as to say probably not, but I'll at least say not yet. And truth be told, their payment model doesn't align with their brand promise. They tell me that with their program I can run a 5k after 8 weeks and there are thousands, probably tens or hundreds of thousands by now who've been able to accomplish their goal of running non stop for 30 minutes after that time. So you're selling me mostly on being done within eight weeks, knowing I have other options to add on and keep improving. But from what I can see, the monthly payment isn't for all the apps from Zen Labs and there are a lot of them, but it's just for this specific one couch to 5K. Why would I ever want an annual plan that's sort of setting myself up to fail, believing I'm going to be in this loop of trying to run a 5k forever? Or why would I want to get sucked into a subscription model of a monthly payment that I'll have to remember to go in and cancel after eight weeks? While I'm sure some people pay for this, it's not the best model for the company in my opinion. And if Zen labs and couch to 5k was my client, I would recommend that the monthly payment include access to all the apps and benefits. If it does this already and you're listening to the podcast, that should be made really clear as it's additional value and shows how much you care about me as the customer. Being fit overall and not just about getting paid. Which as I've already said, isn't a bad thing. It's important that people are paid for their work, but this is about proper framing and what matters to me as the customer. If this doesn't include all the apps, I recommend switching to an extrinsic motivation and loss aversion model. Getting people to pre commit when they're in their cold state, taking advantage of time, discounting when they're optimistic and excited about the possibilities before their motivation starts to wane is the key here. This would allow them to unlock all the features of the app and agree that anytime they miss a run, they will have $2.50 removed from their account. There would be rules like you can't do more than one run a day and whatever else to prevent injury. But now instead of just having the thought that you said you would run, you also know that if you don't get out the door and do what you said you would, there's a nominal fee. You could also let people set their own fee that would be motivating to them. Maybe it would be $10 and you could set a max on the total amount paid over period or whatnot to not gouge people. However, if they set it themselves, it's their choice, so it's an interesting idea to play with. I would recommend there being an option each week where you can set the days you plan to run and know that you'll be picking when your reminders will come to you and you get an option to do less than the total plan on a sporadic basis if you have something big going on or need the week off. For example, as I said when I was in London last week, I ran before I left left and when I got back, but I knew I wouldn't be able to run while I was there. Instead, I committed myself to walking a lot instead of taking cabs or the tube. Five or six miles a day, which felt suitable for me compared to the two or two and a half miles I would walk jog on the program. The shift was needed and I planned it in advance knowing I would pick up where I left off the following week, which I have if you don't plan which conditions for the importance of mental preparation around fitness, you pay. If you miss, what do you think? Would that increase your motivation? Would you be willing to take that sort of a model? It's beneficial for the person because they feel like they're getting a win in not paying up front, but it keeps them committed to using the app and if they do miss or make a choice then they can pay to be involved. I did a little research and there's a separate app called Lazy Jar that does exactly this. It helps you stick to your fitness goals by charging you if you skip. I've linked to it in the show notes if you want to check it out. This is sort of like Stick S T I C K K which you may have heard of before. I believe this was the first app to use Brain Science for motivation. It's a tool to help people stick to goals and stay motivated by moving into extrinsic motivation. Much like I talked about the writing a check to a friend. But in this case it's a cold, unfeeling app that you know will not listen to any of your excuses. And instead of just paying your friend some money, you're committing to putting money towards something you hate, like making a donation to a cause you can't stand or the opposing political party. Would that be motivating to you? Stickk was created by behavioral economists and has helped people reach all sorts of goals, from losing weight to meditating daily to cleaning out the garage or writing a dissertation I haven't used it personally yet, but the premise is sound and I've heard good things. Now that I've talked about the couch to 5k app and given some tips on aligning their pricing structure to the motivation they're trying to build build, let's talk about runkeeper. The name is fairly self explanatory. It's an app that allows you to store your running data. You can also do some other activities, but it's mostly for running. Like couch to 5k. It includes push notifications to remind you of your commitments. It's funny because it's sort of the opposite of couch to 5k. You get tons of tracking for free. It lets you put notes about all your individual runs. You can mark how you felt based on a smiley face rating down to a very exhausted looking face, which I've had to use a few times. And it encourages you to track what shoes you wear on each run to avoid injury and lets you put in notes if you if it was raining or if you were with somebody, or if you felt particularly bad or you had a pain, whatever was important to you. It gives badges with confetti for hitting achievements which are easily shareable on social media. You can see the GPS tracking and it will give a badge for fastest pace or longest run. And it does separate out by splits. Last week when I had that diversion from couch to 5k for my London trip, I did a run keeper run. When I got back as part of my research for this episode, it has several free training programs available. So I used a run walk that did two minute intervals which lined up reasonably well with what I had been doing in couch to 5K and kind of keeping in the spirit rid of that training plan. After completing that run, I can see the average pace by mile or workout intervals to be able to compare which ones I ran fastest or slowest or when my walking got a bit too indulgent. And it shows elevation tracks, the total amount run in the last week, month and year. It's tons of data to get you excited to look at what you're doing. And then when you click on Compare Workouts, which is one of many things listed in the options for each run, it brings you to the pricing model. Now that I, like I said, have gotten excited and know what my stats are, I can pay up to track how similar runs get better or worse and how I might be improving over time. The information is all there within the app. I could track it myself, put it into an Excel spreadsheet or something, but If I'm getting serious about the app, it feels like a value to buy up and save myself that time. They also have advanced workout and training plans that you can buy. So if you remember, couch to 5k was 4.99amonth or $49.99 per year. There's a tiny discount to go annual, but not much. I would bet they have more monthly subscribers than ongoing. And don't assume this is a bad thing. In many ways, small monthly payments are better than a big annual payment, which I talked about in the episodes on Habits Habits and those are linked for you in the show Notes. It might be nice to get that big hit up front for the company, but when that payment auto pulls a year later, I'm guessing a lot of people call to ask for refunds and it might be a whole big can of worms. On the other hand, the little pulls from an account on a regular basis could be a motivational tactic as well, reminding people to exercise to get the value out of their payment. Sort of like a gym membership, which is a whole other model we won't get into here. So couch to 5k is catered to the monthly payments and Runkeeper is definitely catered to the one time annual payment. Their annual subscription is 39.99. That's $10 less than couch to 5k, but their monthly payment is double. It's 9 99. It's clearly a way better value to do the annual subscription and they have a seven day free trial, so it seems likely people would try it out and then opt for the yearly subscription if they like it. I mean, why wouldn't you? It seems like such a better deal and it's less than one appointment with a personal trainer and it's for a year. It's easy to justify when your brain has already gotten excited about stats and wants to be in competition with yourself, effectively boosting motivation. Isn't it funny how the a big price disparity makes one thing look like a better value and then one small shift makes it look completely different? In this other context, I've linked to the episodes on Value and Relativity in case you want to learn more about those concepts. But think about how these are positioned. Essentially they're selling the same thing, fitness via running, and they're tracking different things, but their pricing models are completely different and the way that they put them stacked against each other makes it really clear that one is a better value than the other and it makes a whole big difference. So if you have a business with subscription models that depend on regular usage and enjoyment. The goal is really to keep motivation up in the people that you're selling to, and as you can see, there's no perfect way to do this. The models I've walked you through today on the apps show basically opposite strategies, both of which can work. And this is why it's so, so important to understand pricing strategy and why I created the brainy Pricing course. If you listened to this and were interested in a step by step guide to help you determine the best pricing structure for your business, check that out@thebrainybusiness.com courses and there is a link for you you in the show notes along with a link to last week's episode where we really dug into the course itself and the importance of pricing confidence. And as always, if you have any specific questions and want to reach out to me, you can always email me. Molina the brainy business.com okay, so we've talked about the types of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic, and dug into some apps and how they can help to either encourage or discourage motivation, both for you to know as someone trying to stay motivated and if you want to motivate people to stick with whatever you're putting out there, whether it's a course or a program or anything else. If you don't understand the science behind motivation, it can be hard to keep people engaged and engagement is key to motivation. When we aren't engaged, we forget and without reminders we lose all the motivation we may have started with. So the last piece of this episode is to wrap up with the top tips on hacking your own motivation. My first tip is to limit your goals. As I said earlier, having too many goals is a recipe for motivation failure. Use the tools in the show notes to help you get your goals down to three max. Trust me, it's worth it and you'll be glad you did. Your second tip is to flip the script. This is a lot like a reframe and in the case of motivation, your specific instruction is to look at the mind block and ask if you're starting from intrinsic or extrinsic motivation. Whichever one it is, look at how you could switch it to the other. In my story, trying to go to the gym on my own again and set up my own schedule was obviously not working working. So I found an external resource apps like couch to 5k and run keeper to get me started and keep me motivated. I'm also sharing on social media so others are expecting me to run races and stay accountable, which is another source of Extrinsic motivation. And finally is to look at the small steps. This is one of those things you hear me say a lot and there's a reason for that. It's proven to work. Work. You start by thinking big and know what's important to you, being thoughtful to narrow your goals, and then you can put together the action steps to get there and go as small as you can. One reason couch to 5K works is because you've set a big goal. Run a 5k, which seems really far away if you've never done one. So you need to train and want help with that. They have it broken down into incremental steps to help you get there. One run at a time. You start only running 60 seconds at a time, as I've already said, and by week four, you start with five minute blocks, which believe me, was no fun when I did that first one. But I know I should be able to do it and I push myself because it's on the plan, which is proven. So let's say your social media presence and following is a top priority for you. You, it's one of mine. You can break that up into smaller steps. Posting on Instagram stories at least once a day, which is something I'm doing. Once that becomes a habit, you can incorporate in the next thing, like going live on Facebook once a week. And if we need extra motivation, we can use an app like the ones I talked about in this episode or a buddy to help keep us committed and on task and. And having a community of people that you can share with and have commitments with, be committed to that you're going to achieve your goals and work on things is really important when it comes to mindset. Getting over blocks, working on motivation, all of that. Having that extrinsic motivational commitment piece is really a critical portion. I'm going to put a pin in that for now, but really remember that a little bit later on. So when it's broken down like this, I hope you see that getting and keeping motivated doesn't have to be as elusive as it might seem. It's all about understanding the brain and how to work with its rules around mindset to achieve your big dreams. You can do whatever you set your mind to and playing along with the rules of your brain will make it so much easier. So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about getting and staying motivated today? For me, I always love thinking about reframes and how they can impact our behavior. Like considering a reframe from extrinsic motivation to intrinsic on your goal or project or vice versa. If you're struggling to accomplish something and it's all trying to rely on your own willpower, could an accountability buddy help? Or if you're only doing something because of that external motivator, how might you make it more intrinsically motivating? It's also so fun to look back and see how episodes like this one, which originally aired in 2019, are really foundational to the talk I did at TEDx Portland earlier this year, which is about the four brain tricks that keep us stuck in the status quo. Three steps to get more of the right things done using two powerful words to make it possible by doing one thing at a time. These things work. I've used these strategies to write three books in as many years while growing the brainy business and so much more. Understanding people, yourself, your team members, your customers and what motivates them is so important in all areas of life and business. Little things like framing for loss aversion and planning for errors can make a huge difference in whether or not people accomplish what they set out to do. Sticking to those goals and staying motivated in the long term, or if they bail, if they just stop or give up. I hope this episode gave you a lot to think about and is helping you to feel a little more motivated. So how will you apply the insights from today's episode? Come share it with me on social media. You'll find me as the brainy biz pretty much everywhere and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. There are links in the show notes to make it easy as well as links to my top related past episodes and books and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 416 and just like that, episode 416 on how to get and stay motivated is is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Justin Jones Fosu to discuss meaningful work and his book. I respectfully disagree. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me and remember to be thoughtful. Thank you for listening to to the Brainy Business podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness. Com.