Stop Searching For Motivation
15 Jan 2024 · 22 min
Rob Dial argues motivation is unreliable and shouldn't drive your actions. Instead, build consistency through small habits, a 100-day challenge, and tracking streaks on a calendar. Research shows motivation actually follows action, not the other way around.
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Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host Rob.
Dial.
If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you love this podcast, subscribe please. Do me a real quick favor. Give us a rating and review however you're listening to us. It allows us to be found by other people. It helps grow the show and allows you to pay it forward just a little bit for the show to grow. So if you do that, I would greatly appreciate it. Today we're going to be talking about motivation. I'm going to be telling you why motivation sucks, why you don't want to be motivated, and why you should stop trying to focus on motivation. Now. I hate if I'm being honest with you, hate being labeled a motivational speaker. Because the last thing that I want to do is just try to sit around and motivate people. And the reason why is because what I truly want to do is I want to give people tips and tricks and tools to understand themselves so they can get past themselves so they can create the life that they want. I want to give them psychological studies, I want to give them anecdotal stuff around what happened in my life, around what happens in clients life over the years. And what I don't want to do is give someone like a rah rah. You can do it. You could be motivated and be a quote unquote motivational speaker. And everyone thinks that they want to be motivated. Like man, I would be, my life would be so much better if I just woke up and I was just motivated. I'm here to tell you, you don't, you don't want to be motivated. If you're thinking that you need to be motivated before you take action to create the life that you want, you're going to be sitting on your ass for a really long time. You will not get what you want in this world. If you're thinking that you're just waiting for motivation. But if you're not searching for motivation, you're searching for something else. What is the thing that you should be searching for? If you're not searching for motivation, you don't want to be motivated. What you truly actually want to develop inside of yourself is consistency. Consistency wins every single time. I know a lot of successful people, they're usually not the most successful people. I'm sorry, they're usually not the most motivated person, they're usually not the smartest person, they're usually not really outliers in anything in life except for they show up every single day. They're consistent. And so if you want to develop a character trait within yourself, consistency is what you want to develop in yourself not being motivated. I will always, if I'm not a betting man, but if I was a betting man, I will always place a bet on the person who's the most consistent over the person who is motivated. Motivation is fleeting. Motivation is just this thing that's just sometimes here and sometimes it's not. And I woke up and the weather's not what I want it to be and I didn't sleep as well, so I'm not motivated today. Motivation is fleeting and as I said, consistency is a character trait. And if it's a character trait, it's something that you can improve on. It's not something that you're born with. It means it's something that you can improve on. Consistency is part of some of it's something you can develop into yourself. It's not pre wired and like, oh well, you know what, I wasn't born consistent. So I guess I'M just screwed in this life because for me, I expect, if I'm being honest with you, if I'm being fully honest with you, I'm not the most motivated person. I'm inherently lazy. If you ask me, I'd rather do nothing than do something. I'd rather sit on the couch than do nothing. But I know that just sitting on the couch and doing nothing every single day is gonna lead to a life that I don't really want. So I do take action towards what is that I want. I expect that most days I'm not going to be super motivated. I do. You may be, you may not be, I don't know. But it doesn't really matter if you're a motivated person or not a motivated person. When you focus on just being consistent, eventually you will win. That's what it comes down to. You will win. When you hope for motivation, you'll lose most likely. You know, if I'm on a weight loss journey and I'm trying to lose weight, I can work out when I'm motivated and I can say, well, hopefully I get enough, motivate. Maybe I'll drink some coffee, maybe I'll listen to a great speaker today and I'm going to feel like going to the gym. Or I could be consistent because consistency doesn't say, I'll work out when I'm motivated, consistently says, I will do this no matter what. I'm going to go to the gym. No matter what happens, no matter how much sleep I get, no matter how work is, no matter what happens, I'm going to do it some way. You know, let's say, for instance, you plan to work out. We've all been in this situation before, right? You plan to work out today and just shit happens. Life. Life happens as it tends to do. And you know, maybe you didn't sleep very well and maybe you took the kids to school and then maybe you went to work. Then you had to stay at work really long because your boss threw something extra on the plate and you were planning on working out after work, but now you don't have time to get that workout in. So you don't get to go to the gym. Cause you gotta take your kids and pick them up from soccer practice and you gotta bring them home and then you gotta give them dinner, then you gotta get them ready for bed and then you gotta put them to bed and so you don't have time to go to the gym. Okay, sometimes that happens. But consistency is not saying, well, I didn't have time to go to the gym consistently says I was said I was going to do it no matter what. So if I can't make it to the gym I can still go for a run outside. I can still pull up YouTube and get a 20 minute nonstop high intensity workout in my living room because I said I was going to do it today. I wasn't able to go to the gym, but at least I'm getting my workout in. Consistency is I was committed to working out today and I will not go to bed until it is done. At the beginning of the year, we tend to think more about our habits and reflect on things we do every day.
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dial not oops, I ran out of time. Hopefully I'll get some time tomorrow. That's not what consistency is. Consistency is I said I was going to do it. I'm going to get it done. Consistency is the type of person says, I said I was committed to making 100 calls today. I'm going to figure out a way to get it done. If I have to go home and take my numbers with me, I'm going to get those done. Consistency is the type of person that says, I was committed to posting on Instagram today about my business so that I can get more prospects and more eyes on my business. I'm not going to bed until it's done. Consistency says, I was committed to shooting and editing a YouTube video today. I'm not going to bed until I get it done. Consistency is I said I was going to do it and I'm going to do it no matter what. It drives me crazy how many people say they're going to do something and then they don't show up for themselves. They'll show up for everybody else when everybody else is watching, but they won't show up for themselves. The most important person for you to show up for is yourself. It's not will I get it done? It's I will get it done. I will move my schedule around. I will figure out whatever I need to do. I'm going to have to get it done. And ultimately, here's the important thing for you to realize if you're going on a new journey, like a weight loss journey, and you are now going to start going to the gym when you're saying yes to something, you're also saying no to other things. So if you're saying yes to going to the gym, you're going to have to say no to certain things that you used to say yes to. Maybe you're not going to be able to watch Netflix every single night. You're going to have to make space for that. You're going to have to make space for, you know, not scrolling through Instagram all damn day. You're going to have to say no to some things, and your schedule is going to have to shift just the way that it goes. You can't be the exact same person, expect that you're just going to somehow get different results than you've ever gotten in your life when you're consistent. Here's what's interesting about it, though. When you're consistent, you actually tend to become more motivated. There's a whole lot of psychological studies that find that motivation actually follows action. So most people. And what I was. Before I ever started reading these studies, what I was thinking was that I need to wait until I'm motivated and then I'll take action, right? I'm gonna. I'm gonna chug some coffee, and then I'm gonna hopefully get some motivation to go for a run, right? And that's what I would think. I'm gonna chug some coffee, I'm gonna listen to David Goggins, and he's gonna yell at me and tell me about how I need to get my shit together and it's gonna make me want to go for a run. I. Right, well, okay, you could do that and you could wait, and hopefully it comes through. You could still chug your coffee, you could still put on David Goggins, but just go outside and start jogging. And what happens is as your heart rate starts going, you actually start to become more motivated to go longer. Have you ever had a moment where, like, you don't want to go to the gym and then you're. You just fight your way into the gym? You get into the gym, you don't want to be there, and then 30 minutes in, 45 minutes in, your heart rate's going, you're moving, and then you actually go longer, you're like, you know what, I could probably go an extra 10 minutes, right? That's because motivation follows the action. Most people hope for motivation to take action. You need to get yourself moving, whatever it might be, and take action to have a shot at being motivated. And so let me give you a couple tips to kind of help you through this process and help you get better at being consistent in what is that you need to do. Because once again, like I said, the most successful people that I know, one of the few skill sets that they have. Because a lot of times when you've meet someone who's very successful, they're not outliers in a whole lot. They're pretty normal people. One of the things that I've noticed is that they're very freaking consistent. So if you want to be successful, whatever success means for you, you've got to be consistent. So the biggest key I can give you, the first thing, is to start small. One of the things that people tend to do is they tend, you know what I want to do, I want to change my life. And so they try to overhaul everything. And when you try to overhaul everything and you try to get out of your comfort zone in many different ways, your subconscious, your ego is going to fight that thing like crazy and it's gonna make it way harder. And so what I would recommend is start small. Pick one thing. Listen to me, one thing. Cause if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably a little bit of an overachiever. You probably wanna do better. And you're like, okay, Rob says one thing, but I'll do two. No, listen to me. Pick one thing and one thing only and say, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm going to work out every day for the next 100 days, whatever it is. I'm going to make 100 cold calls every day for the next 100 days. I'm even going to do it on the weekend. I'm going to, you know, put up a YouTube video every single day for the next 100 days. Social media posts every day for the next 100 days. Whatever it is that you need to do, pick one thing and do it every single day, no matter what, for the next 100 days. I'm going to wake up at 6am every single day for the next 100 days. And don't do more than one thing. Listen to me, don't do more than one thing. I promise you, okay? Most people are like, let me add five new things to my life.
Let me change.
Let me see. It ends up being too much. They stop following through a weekend. And then what I want you to do is you pick that one thing, you get it done, and I want you to track it. This is really key. I wrote about this in my book and it's called the Seinfeld Calendar. You get a calendar and Every single day that you get this thing done, you check that day off on the calendar. So you take a calendar, you know, the old flip calendars, whatever it might be, maybe it's, you know, pictures of shirtless firemen, whatever it is that you
have pictures of dogs.
Someone this past Christmas gave me a calendar that was dogs pooping in beautiful places. So I have a calendar now. I could take my dogs pooping in beautiful places calendar. And whenever I get my one thing done for the day, I take my marker and I put a big red X through that day, and then I do it tomorrow to put a big red X that day. And what tends to happen is you start to have a chain of days in a row. And once you start to have a chain of days in a row, you really start to not want to break that chain. And so it might be 11 o' clock at night. You're like, oh, my God, I forgot I was supposed to get my workout in today. And you get out of bed because you don't want to break that chain, right? So you get a calendar and you track it. Every day that you get it done, you just put an X on that day. And so what are a couple things that I would recommend? A couple things that I would recommend that you do is to find what I recommend is called a keystone habit. And so a keystone habit, you may have heard me speak about this before, is super important. I'll give you a couple of examples of them as well. When you look at, like, a Roman arch, the keystone is the stone that's in the very center at the highest point. And what happens is they're developed so that gravity pulls that stone into place. And when gravity pulls it into place, it actually locks all of the other stones in place. And so the idea of a keystone is that a keystone affects all the other. All the other stones. And so a keystone habit is a habit that. That affects many other areas of your life, not just one. And so I'll give you a couple of examples, and you can find your own keystone habit and do it for 100 days. I've talked a lot about working out this episode. Not intentionally, it just ended up happening. But working out tends to be a keystone habit. I don't care if you eat healthier. I don't care if you do anything else. All I want you to do if working out is your keystone habit, is to just get a workout done every single day for 100 days. Your body can get better. You can go for runs, you can lift heavy, you can do stretching.
You could do hot yoga.
You could do pilates, you could play basketball. You could do whatever it is that you need to do to get that body physically moving every single day. And because of the fact that that became your keystone habit, it starts to affect other areas of your life. And you start to think to yourself, well, you know what? I'm putting so much effort into working out, I might as well eat a little bit healthier. I tend to eat like crap. Okay, yeah, I'll start eating a little bit healthier. You know what? I'm gonna start drinking a little bit more water. You know what? I'm really sore today. I know that recovery, most important part of recovery is sleep. I'm gonna get a little bit more sleep. I'm gonna try to sleep for nine hours today. I'm gonna push myself to do that. You know what? I've been working really hard on myself. I'm going to work really hard on working out. I'm going to eat a little bit less sugar. I'm going to get all of the sugar out of my house. You know what? I've been working out so much, I'm going to drink a little bit less alcohol. And so even though you were just focusing on only working out, it made you eat healthier, it made you drink more water, it made you get more sleep, eat less sugar, drink less alcohol. And so working out tends to be a really good keystone habit. Another one that tends to be really good is waking up early. And when I say waking up early, I don't mean even though my good friend wrote, like, my very first coach that I ever had wrote the book the Miracle Morning, which has sold, like, over 2 million copies, even though he wrote that I don't care if you do any morning routine. All I want your keystone habit to be is your feet hitting the floor and you not going back in bed when you said you were going to. And the reason why is because when you work, if you're like, you know what? I'm gonna wake up an hour early. We wake up an hour early. And after a while, you're sitting there and you're just staring at the wall, and you're like, I should probably do something. And so you're waking up early, it turns into working out, it turns into journaling another day, it turns into reading another day, it turns into meditating another day, it turns into going for a walk or doing some yoga. And so all your feet had to do was hit the floor and your keystone habits done, but it turns into a Little bit of working out turns, a little bit of journaling, a little bit of reading, a little bit of meditating, a little bit of walking, yoga, all of that stuff. But as long as you feed, hit the floor, you have completed that task. Maybe eating healthy is another thing that you could decide that is going to be your keystone habit, because you start eating healthy and that's all you do. But then you stop drinking so much alcohol, you start doing a little bit more yoga, you start drinking more water. So my question to you is, what is your keystone habit? What is the one habit that you could do every single day for the next 100 days, even if you're going on vacation? You know, if you're going on vacation and working out tends to be one of the things that you're gonna, you're gonna go for. Well, if you know you're vacationing and you don't have your hotel picked out, well, maybe see if you can get a hotel that has a gym and you just build that in. Or maybe you bring your running shoes. Whatever it is, I want you to look at it instead of saying, oh, my God, well, what's in the way? And gonna hold me back from getting this keystone habit done. It's like, hey, even though I have this coming in, my, my in laws are coming in, or I'm going on vacation, whatever it might be, I'm still going to complete this task for the next 100 days. That's what I want you to focus on. After you get done with the 100 days, move on to the next thing, do whatever it is that you want. But really, what we're trying to do is we're trying to be consistent with whatever is going to move the needle in our lives and to show up every single day. Because in order to get the life that you want, you don't need to be outstanding, you don't need to be better than everybody else. You don't need to be motivated. You don't need any of that stuff. You just need to be more consistent than anybody else. If you just are more consistent than anybody else, you're going to win at life. That's the thing that I've come to find. And so how can you be more consistent and stop trying to be so motivated? So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode. Hey, please do me a favor. Spread the love. Share it on your Instagram stories. Tag me obdialjr. R O B D I A L J R. That way we can you know, have more people become aware of this podcast and if, you know, if it helped you, hopefully it'll help somebody else who follows you as well. And so it allows us to grow through the grassroots. So it'd be great if you could help us out that way. Also, if you love this, probably love my book as well. I put out a book a couple months ago and it is based around the whole psychology of taking action and how to take action, how to get past your fears, how to stop procrastinating, how to actually build habits in your life. So if you want to get that book, wherever you get books, it's called level up, how to get focused, stop procrastinating, upgrade your life. It's available wherever books are. Sure, you probably love that book as well. And with that I'm going to leave the same way leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.
Instagram Teen accounts have automatic protections for what teens see and who can contact them. Plus time management tools. And Instagram will continue adding built in safety features to help create age appropriate experiences. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online@instagram.com teenaccounts.
Oh joy.
Another day, another buzz delayed.
Look on the bright side, you can finally catch up on podcasts.
You don't mind running late.
What's your deal?
What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation Fees. I got one line of 5G for just $25 a month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee for my talk text and data.
Only $25. I'm going to Metro when we hop off.
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Just bring your number.
$30 first month and $25 after with autopay price guarantee exceptions. Apply CSI for details.