Bulletproof Motivation - part 2

Hijacking Our Motivation

To improve your chances of going after those long-term goals, you need to hijack your body’s own motivation system. You need to force it to sometimes turn the hierarchy of needs on its head.

How do you do that?
One option is to try and minimize those nagging doubts and physiological needs. In other words, you make sure that you start your day full of high-quality food and you start your day with a clean slate. If you’re eating low-quality processed cereal for breakfast, then your body is going to want more sustainable energy and nutrition. Therefore, you’ll be anxious and you’ll struggle to focus on other tasks (even if you aren’t aware that hunger is the problem).

Eat a meal of complex carbs, protein, and fruits, and your body will be satiated and sustained. The result is that you’ll have one less thing on the back of your mind. Likewise, you should try to remove all nagging sources of stress.
These are jobs that you know need doing, and that are causing a mild, low-level stress. That might mean answering an email to tell someone you can’t do something for them, or it might mean arranging your car’s MOT.

Whatever the case, many of us will put off completing these kinds of tasks. In doing so though, we actually prevent ourselves from focussing 100% on our current task. Solve this problem by following the “one-minute rule.” That means
that if a job takes less than one minute to complete, you should do it right away!

Now, if you start your day with no distractions and minimal stress, you’ll be able to focus on your goals much more easily. You’ll find you are less likely to procrastinate, and you are more likely to get the work done that you really need and want to get done.

Environment

Equally important is to consider your environment. Where are you working, and what effect this is going to have on your mindset and your motivation.

One big problem that often affects our environment is untidiness. This has the effect of making us feel slightly unsettled and uneasy. That’s partly because there is too much visual information to process, partly because untidiness is just tidying work that we know we’re going to have to do later, and partly because we might unconsciously associate it with hygiene issues.

And consider this: our peripheral vision is actually more acutely sensitive to movement because we use it in order to scan for danger and predators. You might be focused on your computer screen/textbook/dumbbells… but your unconscious mind is scanning the nearby environment for threats and things that need fixing. Fix that now, and you’ll be much more focused on what you need to get done.

Only once you convince your brain that everything immediately pressing has been taken care of, will it then allow you to focus on the meaningful work toward your goals.

Using Wants to Get Out of Bed On Time, Every Time

There is another way that you can hijack your motivation system in order to get what you want.

Have you ever noticed that you struggle to get out of bed early?

This is a perfect example of motivation/discipline that many of us have trouble with. We often hear about top CEOs and entrepreneurs waking up at 4am to get in a workout before working on their projects, but most of us just can’t bring ourselves to do the same.

The alarm goes off and we roll over and hit “snooze.”

Eventually, when we’re about to be late for work, we manage to leap out of bed in a panic and then rush to get ready for the day. Using what you’ve learned so far, can you figure out what is going on here?

The issue is with your hierarchy of needs. Sleep is a physiological need and it is something that will help you to heal wounds, improve brain function, and more. Your body knows you need it and so it trumps your ambition to work out or write a novel. Only once your livelihood is in threat, do you actually manage to force yourself out of bed!

The other thing to recognize is that you will always be MORE driven by needs that are IMMEDIATE versus those that pay off in the long term. Sure, if you wake up every day at 4am and work out, you’ll eventually be in incredible shape.

Probably.
But if you stay in bed, you’ll feel amazing NOW. For definite. What wins as far as your primitive lizard brain is concerned?

So, what’s the answer?
One answer is to place something that you badly want, within reach of your bed. Take something that will serve as a strong motivation to get up, and then ensure that you only need to take the smallest possible step to get there.

An example I often use is a phone. Many of us have a strong EMOTIONAL drive to look at our phones. We want to see what our friends are saying, and we want to see if we have an email from our boss/customers etc.

These aren’t great habits, but they are deeply ingrained and we can use them to our advantage. All you have to do to look at your phone is to prop yourself up slightly. Thus the drive to find out what is going on in the world (ESTEEM) is able to briefly trump your physiological urge to stay in bed.

Look at your phone for five minutes, and the blue light from the screen will trigger the release of cortisol in your brain, helping you feel more awake.

So, think about what already motivates you every day, and then structure that to encourage yourself to work effectively.