"Motivation is GARBAGE!" - Mel Robbins (@melrobbins) - #Entspresso

Good morning, Believe Nation! My name is Evan Carmichael. My one word is believe, and I believe that entrepreneurs will solve all of the world's major problems. So to help you on your journey, today's message is motivation is garbage. Over to you, Mel Robbins. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going. I wake up every morning.

We bought into this complete falsehood that at some point you're gonna have the courage, at some point you're gonna have the confidence, and it's total bullshit, frankly. Are we allowed to swear on this show? Absolutely. Okay. It's complete garbage. And so there are so many people in the world, and you know, you may be watching this right now, and you have these incredible ideas, and what you think is missing is motivation. And that's not true, because the way that our minds are wired and the fact about human beings is that we are not designed to do things that are uncomfortable or scary or difficult. Our brains are designed to protect us from those things, 'cause our brains are trying to keep us alive. And in order to change, in order to build a business, in order to be the best parent, the best spouse, to do all those things that you know you wanna do with your life, with your work, with your dreams, you're gonna have to do things that are difficult, uncertain, or scary, which sets up this problem for all of us. You're never gonna feel like it. Motivation's garbage. You only feel motivated to do the things that are easy, right?

Why do you think that is?

Oh, I know exactly why that is. Because I, I, I've studied this so much because for me, one of the hardest things to figure out was why is it so hard to do the little things that would improve my life. And what I've come to realize, and what we'll talk a lot about today, is that the way that our minds are designed is our minds are designed to stop you at all costs from doing anything that might hurt you. And the way that, that, that, that this all happens is it all starts with something super subtle. That none of us ever catch. And that is with this habit that all of us have that nobody's talking about. We all have a habit of hesitating.

Mm.

We have an idea. You're sitting in a meeting. You have this incredible idea. And instead of just, you know, saying it, you stop and you hesitate. Now, what none of us realize is that when you hesitate, just that moment, that micro-moment, that small hesitation, it sends a stress signal to your brain. It wakes your brain up and your brain all of a sudden goes, "Oh, oh, wait a minute. Why is he hesitating? He didn't hesitate when he put on his killer spiky sneakers. He didn't hesitate with the really cool track pants. He didn't hesitate with the NASA t-shirt. Now he's hesitating to talk? Something must be up." So then your brain goes to work to protect you. It has a million different ways to protect you. One of them's called the spotlight effect. It's a known phenomenon where your brain magnifies risk. Why? To pull you away from something that it perceives to be a problem. And so you can truly trace every single problem or complaint in your life to silence and hesitation. Those are decisions. And what I do and what's changed my life is waking up and realizing that motivation's garbage. I'm never gonna feel like doing the things that are tough or difficult or uncertain or scary or new, so I need to stop waiting until I feel like it. And number 2, I am one decision away from a totally different marriage, a totally different life, a totally different job, a totally different income, a totally different relationship with my kids. Not like one decision I'm divorcing you in the marriage example, but one decision on, you know, you could be having a conversation with your spouse and you feel your emotions rise up and within a tiny window, those emotions can take over and can impact how your marriage goes. Or you can learn how to take control of that micro-moment and make a decision to act in a way that actually shifts your marriage. Your life comes down to your decisions, and if you change your decisions, you will change everything.

So I don't know that I agree completely that motivation is absolute garbage. I've seen motivation work for me. You know, I put on a Tony Robbins CD, and then wanted to go off and do amazing things, and I did it. I took action. I had Tony in my ear, and I went out and would do something that I was afraid of doing, and I took action on it. So I know that it can work. The challenge is, you know, we don't have Tony Robbins chasing around us all the time yelling at us to go and do something, and that kind of motivation is super short. You know, I don't wake up every day and, "Life is amazing. I can't wait to go crush it. This is insane." Right? And so that kind of motivation can come in bursts, and I think can be helpful, but it's hard to keep a consistent and practical on an ongoing basis. Because even if I listen to that CD again, or even if I watch that video again, it starts to lose its impact. If you watch the same video over and over and over again, the first time it might be really motivating, it might make you want to go and go do something, and then you watch it again and the impact's not there, and the third, fourth, by the time you get to the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth time, you're like, "Yeah, I heard that message before. You know, I heard that." And it's not motivating anymore. So that's why it's really hard to keep that external motivation going. I think what's much more practical, at least for me, I've seen it work consistently in my life, is one, having an environment that is designed to help you be more successful. So figure out what your one word is. Mine is believe. I wanna have an environment that makes me believe in myself and the great things that I'm trying to do on a daily basis, on a consistent basis. The habits that you have on a consistent basis, the people that you surround yourself with, the media that you consume, the books that you read, your physical environment, it all matters. It all has an impact every single day. And the confidence that I've gained over the past few years and how much of this has come out on the videos that I've made for you guys is in great part due to the videos that I've watched, the videos on my channel. By surrounding myself consistently with successful people, not just entrepreneurs, people, the way they act, the things they say, their mindset, the way they interpret information, the patterns start to consistently come in over and over and over again, whether it's a Michael Jordan or a Mel Robbins or an Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bill Gates or Tony Robbins or whoever it is, You start to see that these people think a certain way. And the more you see it, not just what they say to do, not just do this step, but how they do it, how they react to questions, being around them. 'Cause I can't be around Steve Jobs, right? He passed away. I'm not gonna go visit his grave. I can't be around him anymore. But I can with the videos. At least it works well for me. And the more I'm around that, the more it makes me wanna raise up my game. The more it makes me feel like I wanna go off and do bigger things. And it's allowed me to have bolder goals, to be more controversial, to be more myself, to be more outgoing, to chase bigger things, to challenge people more. I keep doing it, right? And so I think the environment that you have, when you have the self-awareness to know what your one word is and then build an environment around it and habits and routines really is important. The second thing I would say about motivation is I like to do trade-offs around short-term fear and long-term fear. And so the trick is catching the fear. The trick is catching yourself when you're in a moment when you're playing small, when you're not doing the big thing that you should be doing, you're just super afraid and you disguise it as some practical reason. You convince yourself that there's a logical reason why you're not doing it, which is naturally play small. When somebody asks you to do things, come on my YouTube channel and be a guest, most people are like, "Oh, that's too big an opportunity." I was like, "You have this opportunity!" And then they justify it with all these reasons, right? I'm not ready, you know, I don't have a good message, you know, I don't have the gear, I don't have a webcam, you know, I don't have a microphone, like all of these reasons why they can't do it, but really they're just afraid. That's the problem. They're just afraid. But it's catching the fear. They're not catching it. They're pushing it off with practicality, but it's really fear. And so I try to catch that fear and then replace it with longer-term, bigger fear. That's it. So this one thing that I'm afraid of doing versus 100 years old looking back at my life, you know, 60 years of regret. That's scary. That's what I try to avoid and tell the story about this girl in Paris that I met where I wanted to ask her out and I didn't, and I was too afraid, and I took a picture and I didn't actually catch her in the picture, I tried, but it was French scenery that I put up on my wall in my university room because it was a reminder not to let opportunities pass by. That the next time that I had an opportunity to ask somebody out, to say yes to a business, to do whatever the thing is I think in my head, that'd be cool to do, but then the fear comes in I'm gonna take action. And looking at that poster every day reminded me so that when I had that opportunity to join a startup company a couple months later versus taking the job that I thought I always wanted, I had that picture in my head saying, this business may not work out, this startup company I'm about to join may not work out versus having this safe job that I thought I always wanted paying $80,000 to $100,000 a year. But I didn't want to live with the regret. I didn't want to live with the regret. I could deal with the failure, I could deal with the pain of it not working out, I could give it 6 months or 12 months and it doesn't work out, but I know. At least I know. I should have asked that girl in France out, so at least I know, right? And ever since then I've tried to make that same approach to important decisions in my life. I try to ask myself, yes, I'm afraid of this. If I can catch it, if I can catch the fear, I'm afraid in the moment, But if I don't do this, am I going to regret this for the rest of my life? And if the answer is yes, then I know I have to do it. And I force myself to do it. And it works. At least it works for me. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, what do you think about motivation? How do you deal with it? Does it help you long-term, short-term? I'm very curious about your habits and your general thoughts on motivation. Leave it down in the comments below. I'm excited to see what you have to say. I also want to give a quick shout out to Mel Busolo. Mel, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. It really means a lot to me and I hope you enjoyed the read. So thank you guys so much for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.

Decision-making is a process, right? The question is what filters are you using to make decisions? Are you making decisions based on the financial rewards? Are you making decisions based on how easy the work will be? I mean, I remember in college, you know, they would give you this book where all the students would rate the classes and they would rate things like how easy the class was and how, you know, how much they liked the professor. And, you know, the first year I picked all my classes based on workload and I picked everything a low workload, you know, and pretty bored. Didn't work very hard, which is fine, but nothing was dynamic and nothing really excited me. And I, thank goodness, learned that. And so the second year, I picked all my classes by professor rating, regardless of the workload. So every class I had, I had these dynamic, amazing, incredible human beings passing on their knowledge, and you were excited to work hard for them, you know? And so again, the question is, what are the filters we're using? And so if you're only chasing the mighty dollar, then you will have jobs that'll pay you a little more than the last, but are you enjoying yourself? And I talked to a guy recently who was in a— he's in bad shape. Like, he really hates his life and he's really depressed and he doesn't know what to do. And so we were going through all his old jobs, you know, and I said, give me a job that you've loved. And he hadn't. Every single job he's chosen out of college, he picked because of the money. And if something offered him more somewhere else, he took it, you know, regardless. And the amazing thing is he plateaued. Because if you're only chasing the result, if you're only chasing the thing that makes it easy, right, then eventually you will get bored or they'll get bored of you, right, and you plateau. In other words, chasing the almighty dollar, if that's your only thing, it eventually flattens out. Whereas if you're chasing the thing that excites you, the human beings to be around, the work that excites you, the stuff that, you know, you can get passionate about, you know, the irony is you'll actually make way, way more. Right? Because you're excited and they appreciate your excitement and they reward your excitement and you're better at your work because you want to work harder and all of that stuff. You don't have to strain to work harder. So decision-making is simply a matter of filters, you know? And so I've made decisions in my life that I would rather be happy than right. I'd rather do good than get rich. And so the decisions I make put me in positions where when I leave any engagement, when I leave any meeting, I feel that I've contributed, right? Rare are the times anymore where you walk away going, "Just think of the money, just think of the money, think of the money," you know? Because it doesn't feel nice. And the experience I have, I don't enjoy traveling to them and I don't enjoy traveling home. Where if I have an amazing experience, I am looking forward to getting there and I'm excited when I leave. You know? So it's just decision making. Decision making is just a matter of what filters you use, and if you're good about keeping those filters up, and clear, then make your decision. I don't judge anybody by how— if they choose to use different filters. These are just the filters I choose to live my life. Not right or wrong, just those are my decisions. That's my filter.