741. Ways to Manage and Re-spark Your Daily Motivation
22 Jun 2021 · 20 min
Lori and Chris Harder explain that motivation isn't something you're born with, it's something you earn through routines. They recommend morning gratitudes, surrounding yourself with positive inputs, and using discipline in exercise and meditation to manufacture motivation when it doesn't come naturally.
Questions this episode answers
June 22, 2021
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And so you have to outweigh the bad propaganda with what I call positive propaganda. That's choosing the right books to read right away. It's choosing the right podcast to listen to right away. It's choosing the right people to follow right away. And it's purposely and intentionally seeking out enough positive propaganda to outweigh the negative propaganda and tilt the scales in your favor.
Welcome to the Earn your happy podcast. I'm Lori Harder, founder of Light Pink, bestselling author, three time fitness world champion, and I'm a crazy, multi passionate entrepreneur. My journey has taken me everywhere, from being a broke waitress, barista, retails associate, and personal trainer with massive anxiety and no belief in myself, to later becoming a multimillionaire in love with my life. In 2007, my husband and I lost everything. We found ourselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. At rock bottom. We had no ideas and I had no education to fall back on. This is when I found personal development and learned everything I could about business. Not by choice, but because I realized no one was coming to save me. The conversations on this podcast are going to let you know that you're not alone and that we all feel like we don't know what we're doing. We're going to give you the tools to help you face your fears, take action, start your business, and grow those massive dreams that are keeping you up at night. It's time to create a life that you can't hide from and put so much on the line that your higher self is forced to come out. You're going to stop waiting for someone to approve of you, and you're going to anoint yourself. Because I'm obsessed about building businesses that give women a platform. I want to feature you. So if you text the word podcast to 310-496-8363, you can get your questions answered on our Q and A segment along with a shout out. And if you rate, review and subscribe to this podcast, we're choosing someone every month to get coached and featured on our show. It just might be you. So let's get started. And we're back with another episode of he said, she said. And we are talking about managing your.
Motivation because I was not motivated this morning.
You were not motivated on our walk and you were like, I don't get it. I was motivated yesterday. And I love that you actually were like, I don't get it. We say this.
I'm used to being motivated. I mean, I'm. I'm intrinsically a motivated person, right? I always have big dreams, and I've always got want to go chase things down. But even that being my core system, like how I'm built, I still have days where I wake up and I'm like, oh, crap, I have no motivation today. And. And I didn't have motivation to work out, and I didn't have motivation to go build a business. I just didn't want to do anything today. And then that's what sparked our conversation on our walk in this episode.
So I actually want to talk about that because I want to share that I appear to be an extremely motivated person all the time, and I am, but I don't wake up that way. That's actually where the name of my podcast came from, is I was sitting in a meditation and. And the name earn your happy came to me because I've always had to have things in my life that start to trigger a different emotion. Because when I wake up, I'm actually pretty. Like, I usually feel tired. No matter how much I take care of myself, I'm not super excited about life or what I'm doing. And I have to go through these different things that I have in place, these different exercises, these different choices to think in a different way in order to then, quote, unquote, kind of earn what I how I want to feel. And I do that. You know, I earn how I want to feel through these different exercises. I've had a lot of people be like, you know, you don't have to earn your happiness, and it shouldn't have to be that way. And I'm like, well, you know, mentally, this is where I'm at, and this is what's helping me. So it does help me to know these are the. This is just what I wake up and do in order to get the result of feeling motivated and feeling, you know, excited. And I will say that motivation is one of those things that you're not always going to wake up with. Not everyone is going to wake up motivated. Motivation and willpower are essentially, I would say, kind of the same things. Like, you wake up every single day with a set amount of energy, willpower and motivation. Let's just all lump those together for the sake of this particular show. And a lot of times, different things can go into that. Willpower, energy, and motivation. It can be how great your sleep was. It can be what you ate the day before. You know, Chris and I are getting ready for Miami right now, so we're kind of limiting our carbs. So that kind of actually brings down your willpower and energy a bit.
That was the first thing you said to me this morning when I go, hey, I'm not motivated. And you go, is it the lack of carbs?
It could be because that actually, you know, for your brain, you can wake up with feeling less fuel in your body to kind of move forward or do your workout for that day. So there's so many things. It could be that you're overwhelmed and you're not meditating. It could be that you're focusing on something really negative, or you're focusing on what's going wrong in your life, or you're searching for why you should feel anxious or upset. So these are all the different things that we're gonna talk about with managing your willpower, energy, motivation.
Yeah. And I'm no expert, but I think that sometimes it's just chemically there, or it's chemically absolutely right. You either have the. The right chemical cocktail in your body and you feel great that day, or you're missing it, and it's not. And I think the way that you don't wake up as happy and you don't wake up as motivated, and I usually wake up pretty dang happy and pretty dang motivated. I think that's a great demonstration for every single person listening right now that you don't have to be one or the other. Right. So if you look at other people who seem motivated all the time, and you say, oh, must be nice. I wish I woke up motivated and happy every single day. That's why I'm not succeeding. Well, you have to understand that those individuals, they have many days where they don't wake up that way, even though that's their default. And then they're left wondering, oh, my God, what's going on? Why don't I feel this way? This is not me. And it's a bit of a panic. And then the inverse of that is people like Lori who don't wake up necessarily happy, who don't wake up necessarily motivated, but then they immediately implement the tools and routine to become that way. And one's not better than the other, because both are going to have good days and bad days. Both are going to have motivated days and unmotivated days. And the point is, no matter who you are, own it and implement these tools to be able to find the motivation, manufacture the motivation that it takes to live a really extraordinary life.
Yeah, I used to get caught in the cycle of the. Well, it's not fair. Why can't my brain be that way? Why can't I just wake up this way, and. And instead I have to look at.
Nope.
It just takes a little more work for me to get there. But what does that work? Providing. And I always think about how the fact that I know if I wanna feel the way that I wanna feel, I'm gonna need to work out. I'm gonna need to read, I'm gonna need to meditate, I'm gonna need to say prayers or stop looking for what's wrong and really become the master of my mindset. And what that does for me, even though, yes, I'd love to wake up motivated, is that it's really taught me extreme discipline. I've gotten the benefits of, yeah, I have to exercise to release some more chemicals that maybe Chris gets to wake up with. But for me, guess what? Now I'm super disciplined with exercise, and I feel great, and I stay more fit because these are just all things that I must do to feel that I want or the way that I want to feel. So I think a lot of times we can get caught in. I wish I felt this way, or why can't I feel this way? Or why am I feeling not motivated today? And if we can just go to, okay, well, what do I need to do? And how is this benefiting me? The things that I get to do or get to put in place? Because we're all built differently. And there are reasons I know that I am not waking up super happy, is because I probably wouldn't have my podcast. I probably wouldn't be living and teaching and breathing what I absolutely love to teach and. Or teach to other people and talk about, because I'd be like, I don't know. I don't get it. I just wake up happy, you know.
Let'S shift to this morning when I said, babe, I'm not motivated. And we're like, okay, what does it take to get there? What was the very first tool that we used? What was the first thing we did?
Gratitudes.
Yeah. So every single. You guys have heard us talk about in the evenings, we do three wins each, even when we don't feel like doing it. And then that helps us recognize the wins for that day. Well, every single morning, motivated or not, on our walk, we start with three gratitudes and three excited fours. And this morning, I didn't feel like it. She's like, well, that's okay. Let's start with our three gratitudes, our three excited for us. And right away, my first thought was nothing. Like, why does it have to be something I don't Want it to be something like, why can't I just not be motivated right now? And you have this resistance to even doing the thing that you know is going to make you happy. Yet that doing that thing is really so simple. And so, sure enough, I said, all right, my three gratitudes are. And the three things I'm excited for are. And not more than a quarter mile later into this walk, I was already feeling significantly better.
Yeah, a big one for me is not. Or letting it be okay that I don't feel a certain way. And I think first it's like accepting it and knowing that feelings are just visitors. That's huge for me. I'm gonna talk about that all the time, every single show I do. Because I think that we judge ourselves based on how we're feeling. And we have to remember that we are not our brain. Like, we're the observers of our brain. And we get to choose what we do with the observation that we have. And what can happen is sometimes I'm like, ugh, I feel so unmotivated. What is my problem? I feel depressed. I feel anxious. Or, you know, in associating myself with those feelings, thinking that that's who I am. And it's like, okay, except that this is how you feel right now. And the feeling can be just because you haven't exercised. The feeling can be because you had too much coffee. The feeling can be because of the thoughts that you're think. How do you want to feel? And how can you choose to do a bunch of actions around it and change the way that you're feeling? So for me, observing that, that's not who I am, but it's just a visitor, and I can change it. And I can also let it be okay that I'm feeling that way. Like, I'm gonna wake up every single day and I just say, okay, I'm not feeling great today. I'm gonna do the best that I can with how I feel. So I'm gonna implement the things that I know help this. And if I still don't get to the place that I wanna be, then that's okay. Like, that that's been huge for me is allowing that feeling in my life to just be there and to just still work with it. And I can still show up for work and I can still, you know, be around the house, but I don't have to fake it. I can just let it be okay and tell Chris, like, I'm not feeling great today. And. But. But I'm moving forward. Like, I say that A lot. Like, I'm not mentally feeling totally awesome today, but I'm still getting things done and I'm proud of myself.
I love how you, you said, hey. One of the things you just accepted is that feelings are visitors. Another thing that you'll hear me talk about all the time is propaganda, positive propaganda. And so when I'm not feeling motivated, when I'm not feeling on, I forcefully go find positive propaganda. And typically for me, that's podcasts. I know exactly which podcasts I can go turn to to get me all fired up and back in the mode to go build businesses or. Or go build a body or something like that. And that's an example. Positive propaganda. You hear me teach all the time that from the moment that you wake up, propaganda is falling in your lap. Maybe it's something from Instagram, maybe it's something from TikTok, maybe it's something from the news, maybe it's something that somebody in your household said to you. You can't stop propaganda from falling into your lap if you're going to, you know, be aware and operate throughout the day. And a lot of times it's not chosen propaganda. A lot of times it's negative propaganda, it's drama propaganda, it's fear propaganda. And so you have to outweigh the bad propaganda with what I call positive propaganda. That's choosing the right books to read right away. It's choosing the right podcast to listen to right away, is choosing the right people to follow right away. And it's purposely and intentionally seeking out enough positive propaganda to outweigh the negative propaganda and tilt the scales in your favor. Yeah.
One of the big realizations that I've had is that even on bad days, if you just keep moving forward, it's a great day. We so overestimate what we think is required to be successful or to reach our goals, even body goals, fitness goals, life goals, business goals, relationship goals. And we need to remember that it's actually there is less, I believe, needed sometimes than what we think. And let me explain. So I think sometimes we think that we need to be full out. Let's say we're reaching a fitness goal. We need to be full out at the gym three or four days a week. And on those workouts where we're tired, we're just angry and we're like, not gonna reach my goals because I'm having this crappy workout. And every single workout needs to be like 45 minutes to an hour of just hardcore lifting and a hiit workout. And that's the only way I'm gonna get to my goals. When in reality you're probably gonna have two workouts out of that week that aren't great and maybe one that's really epic, maybe not maybe one that's medium. And then on the days that are really good, like maximize those days, do the best workout that you can and try to push yourself wherever you can. But honestly, if you stay in momentum and you give a little bit more than you want to at every single one. So let's say you're at a two and you give a three, that's still gonna be better and you're still gonna end up reaching your goals. Much f what happens when we think we have to be full out and then we start skipping and missing our workouts? And the same is true in business where sometimes I'm like, oh my God, I only got done one thing that I wanted today out of the 15 things. And if you can just keep showing up and not avoid or quit, it's like the amount of things that you actually get done at the end of, let's even say a three month period if you just commit to showing up and knowing like, yeah, it wasn't a great day, but I'm gonna keep moving forward and do all that I is going to be game changing.
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All right, guys, so listen, whether you wake up naturally motivated, no problem. Sometimes you're gonna have days where you don't use the tools. And if you don't wake up naturally motivated, typically you start from empty, then use the tools to quickly fill your cup. The whole point is this. Your destiny is in your control. Your mood that day is in your control. Your level of motivation that day is within your control, regardless of what your starting point is.
Yeah, and I think just letting it, I just want to say, letting it be okay.
Yep.
I think accepting and letting it be okay and say, okay, here's how I feel. What's the best I can do with how I feel today?
So when Lori asked me, hey, what are your three grateful fors? What are your three excited fors? What am I excited for was, oh my God, I'm so excited for my faster mind that she proceeded to make fun of the name of. And so does my team, and so does everyone else. But if you listen to last week's episode that was the first time you probably heard that I created something that I'm calling a Faster Mind where it's an intimate group of four to six of you that are coming to the house here for a couple of days where we are rolling up our sleeves and we are going to literally break down every single barrier between where you are right now and where you want to go in just a couple day time so that you leave bridging that gap. It's going to be so intimate, so hands on and so freaking high impact. You don't want to miss this. So if you want to find out if you're a good fit for this to help grow your business quicker than ever, I want you to text me the word faster, 231-04-210416 and we'll start having a text dialogue back and forth again. Text me the word faster to 310-421-0416 Last thing I'm going to say on this, the reason I'm so excited is it's the benefits of a mastermind where you meet other like minded people and you get to collaborate with them moving forward at the same time as the benefits of a one on one VIP day, which is the intimacy of being right here, having our full attention in our home. It's the best of both worlds. So text me the word faster to 310-421-0416 masterminds like that are exactly how.
We'Ve changed our entire life.
Yep.
If you want to know the truth, you've got to have full immersion with the people. You got to have to create accountability and let me tell you, that will do it. Just showing up is going to feel like an extreme up leveling. Just hitting the checkout button is going to feel like an extreme up leveling. So you guys, we're so grateful for you and we will see you next time.
Looking forward to it.
Bye Bye.
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