167: Master Your Motivation by Susan Fowler

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1. 00:00:00 It's a momentous day, Joe Buellig, because we are officially on circle, thanks to all
2. 00:00:07 of your hard work and moving everything over.
3. 00:00:10 Well, it's moving most things over.
4. 00:00:12 It seems like there's a few things we keep finding.
5. 00:00:14 It's like, "Oh, yeah, we had this tied to that."
6. 00:00:17 Oh, yeah, recommendations aren't there.
7. 00:00:19 We should figure that out.
8. 00:00:20 Okay.
9. 00:00:21 Well, good news is I have a backup of the whole previous structure, so I can still go
10. 00:00:25 get all the things if we need to.
11. 00:00:28 Question is, where does it all go?
12. 00:00:31 That's the main thing to answer.
13. 00:00:33 But yes, we are on circle.
14. 00:00:34 Super exciting.
15. 00:00:35 I know that for our pro members, what we've been calling premium members, pro members,
16. 00:00:42 those words are all kind of the same thing at this point anymore.
17. 00:00:46 You should have gotten an email from the system or me.
18. 00:00:49 I'm not sure how that actually came out with an invite that gets you access to the premium
19. 00:00:54 side of it, the pro side of it for a trial period.
20. 00:00:58 Then you'll just have to enter in your card information and then it will continue from
21. 00:01:02 that point on.
22. 00:01:03 If that gives you any fits, let us know.
23. 00:01:06 That's really the only part of the process that is that important right now.
24. 00:01:11 Super exciting.
25. 00:01:13 Yeah.
26. 00:01:15 By doing this, we have basically been able to clean a lot of things up.
27. 00:01:20 The URL, I think, stays the same, right?
28. 00:01:24 It's bookworm.fm/membership if you want to join.
29. 00:01:28 You can actually join the circle community without paying for the extra stuff.
30. 00:01:35 Just come, make recommendations, join the chat, all that kind of stuff inside the community.
31. 00:01:41 There's also, we have added events.
32. 00:01:44 When we do the live recordings, you don't just find out an hour before when Joe sends
33. 00:01:49 the tweet out.
34. 00:01:50 We usually pick the time at the end of the recordings and we put that on the calendar.
35. 00:01:55 Well, actually now there's a calendar event that you can RSVP to if you want.
36. 00:01:59 It's got the link to the YouTube live stream, which I think is pretty cool.
37. 00:02:05 Then there's also a couple of additional feeds.
38. 00:02:09 We have the occasional sponsor for bookworm now, which is awesome.
39. 00:02:13 If you are a pro member, then you get access to a special section of that circle community,
40. 00:02:20 which has not only the book notes, but also some additional goodies like the wallpaper
41. 00:02:25 and the extra feeds.
42. 00:02:28 So I say feeds, plural, because Joe committed to this.
43. 00:02:32 I created more work for him, but he's good with it, which we all need to thank him for.
44. 00:02:37 Well, there's the normal podcast, which you've been listening to, subscribed to for very
45. 00:02:43 long time.
46. 00:02:44 There's also the pro version, which is ad-free.
47. 00:02:51 And then there is the bootleg, which is basically the moment that we connect for the live calls
48. 00:02:59 on YouTube.
49. 00:03:00 Joe hits the button for the backup recordings.
50. 00:03:05 He's going to take that audio.
51. 00:03:06 So all of our mistakes, all of our fighting with our gear, all of the pen chatter before-
52. 00:03:15 Why do people want this?
53. 00:03:17 Well, I don't know.
54. 00:03:19 One thing I think is kind of cool is this running joke between Blake and Carol and us
55. 00:03:24 and the live chat is the "Pend of the Day" thing.
56. 00:03:27 So we tend to talk about things that we know not everybody is going to care about, but
57. 00:03:31 when we see people in the chat, we'll sometimes talk about some- or go nerdy about some of
58. 00:03:36 some different things.
59. 00:03:37 I don't know.
60. 00:03:38 This is a nerdy podcast to begin with, but we get extra nerdy sometimes.
61. 00:03:42 We get a little bit silly sometimes.
62. 00:03:46 That is available also right after we record the live show.
63. 00:03:50 That's typically like a week before the actual show comes out.
64. 00:03:54 So if you want to get the episodes early, that would be another reason just to get the
65. 00:03:57 bootleg.
66. 00:03:58 But if you can wait, no- no- no, you don't need to do anything, but if you want all the
67. 00:04:03 extra stuff, it's the same price, $5 a month, $50 a year, and it's a great way to support
68. 00:04:07 the show.
69. 00:04:08 So thank you to everybody who has done that.
70. 00:04:12 But yeah, I'm excited that this is now in circle.
71. 00:04:15 Circle is what I've been using for the Faith Base Proactivity community, and I've used it
72. 00:04:19 for part-time YouTuber Academy and Ship30 and stuff like that.
73. 00:04:22 It's just a great platform for connecting with people, and I'm excited to see you all
74. 00:04:26 over there.
75. 00:04:27 Yeah, it's really cool.
76. 00:04:29 So I'm excited to see everybody make their way over there.
77. 00:04:33 So yeah, if you want to join, again, you don't have to join the pro side of it if you don't
78. 00:04:36 want to.
79. 00:04:38 But if you want to join the community even without that, it's just club.bookworm.fm.
80. 00:04:43 Same place the Discourse site was sitting.
81. 00:04:46 We just moved it over to circle.
82. 00:04:48 So same URL, all the things.
83. 00:04:50 But if you had an account on the Discourse and were not a pro member, you'll need to set
84. 00:04:56 up a new account on the Circle account.
85. 00:04:58 Once you already have a Circle account, then you just join the community, I guess.
86. 00:05:01 I think that's how that works.
87. 00:05:02 I'm still figuring out Circle, in case you didn't know this.
88. 00:05:05 I'm a part of, I think, six different Circle communities at this point.
89. 00:05:09 So one of the things I like about Circle is you've got the switcher on the sidebar.
90. 00:05:13 So you can jump back and forth between the different communities without ever having to
91. 00:05:17 leave that website.
92. 00:05:20 And there's a pretty great iOS app, probably Android app too, I think that's out now.
93. 00:05:24 I know that came after the iOS app, but which can give you access to all your different
94. 00:05:29 Circle communities.
95. 00:05:31 So yeah, thanks, Joe, for making the switch.
96. 00:05:35 I think we're there.
97. 00:05:37 Yay.
98. 00:05:38 All right.
99. 00:05:41 Let's talk about action items.
100. 00:05:45 You've got one here.
101. 00:05:46 How'd you do with your tech shutdown?
102. 00:05:49 Yeah, so I've had, I think, a couple Sundays since we talked about this.
103. 00:05:55 This was mainly like a Sunday afternoon type action item, which was basically to try shutting
104. 00:06:02 down as much tech as I can on Sunday afternoons, trying to create a bit of a, like, I don't
105. 00:06:09 want to say oasis, but a separation zone, if you will, from tech in general.
106. 00:06:14 And basically what I did was make sure that my phone was sitting on a counter right next
107. 00:06:21 to our Bluetooth speaker, where like, because we tend to use it for playing music on Sunday
108. 00:06:26 afternoons.
109. 00:06:27 Like that was all it was allowed for.
110. 00:06:31 And it's something that I believe is going to continue to sit there on Sundays because
111. 00:06:35 it was honestly pretty freeing just to not have to worry about anything on Sunday afternoons.
112. 00:06:42 So again, I would do it all day, but my job is on Sunday morning, mostly.
113. 00:06:49 So can't really do that.
114. 00:06:50 That would be a bad day.
115. 00:06:52 So I don't do that, but whenever I get home, a lot of times I'll connect it to the speaker,
116. 00:06:58 hit play, and that's as far as it goes.
117. 00:07:00 So then it stays there the rest of the afternoon.
118. 00:07:02 So that has been super helpful.
119. 00:07:05 I'm glad for taking that one on, probably continuing that one for quite some time.
120. 00:07:09 Cool.
121. 00:07:11 So I had a similar action item to unplug on the Sabbath.
122. 00:07:16 And I think I mentioned last time my strategy for this was going to be to create a focus
123. 00:07:20 mode, Sabbath focus mode, which I did do.
124. 00:07:24 And it does work well.
125. 00:07:27 Only annoying thing about it is that my iPhone likes to make suggestions on other things
126. 00:07:34 that I should do with this Sabbath focus mode.
127. 00:07:37 And I don't want any of the suggestions.
128. 00:07:40 So maybe there's a way to turn off focus mode suggestions that I just haven't dove into
129. 00:07:45 settings to figure out.
130. 00:07:48 But it's working well.
131. 00:07:50 I just wish the additional stuff would go away because I have intentionally kept it simple.
132. 00:07:55 Thanks, Siri.
133. 00:07:56 I got this one.
134. 00:07:58 I know that for a while I've been using the work focus mode for a variety of reasons.
135. 00:08:05 But this is super nerdy.
136. 00:08:08 I set up a Siri shortcut that will, when I run it, it turns on that work focus mode
137. 00:08:13 and then also starts a timer in toggle.
138. 00:08:16 So it does both of those simultaneously.
139. 00:08:19 And then I can trip it again and it'll reverse the process, shut the timer off and turn the
140. 00:08:23 focus mode off.
141. 00:08:25 But because I was doing that for three or four days, it learns like, oh, when you get
142. 00:08:29 to this location, you're turning this mode on.
143. 00:08:31 Do you want us to do it for you automatically?
144. 00:08:33 No, I want to control that.
145. 00:08:34 Because sometimes I want to turn that on when I'm not at that building somewhere else.
146. 00:08:39 I don't want you to do all this fancy stuff.
147. 00:08:41 Just let me turn it on and off.
148. 00:08:42 It's OK.
149. 00:08:43 But after like three or four days of telling it no, it quit asking.
150. 00:08:47 So I don't know how long it takes for it to stop asking that question, but it's annoying.
151. 00:08:55 Yeah.
152. 00:08:57 So speaking of shortcuts, by the way, I need to point this out.
153. 00:09:02 I would be derelict in my duties of mentioning obsidian every single episode if I did not
154. 00:09:05 do this.
155. 00:09:07 Are you aware of this app?
156. 00:09:10 And I'm using air quotes here called actions for obsidian.
157. 00:09:14 No, what is this?
158. 00:09:16 I've not heard of this.
159. 00:09:18 So this is basically a bridge between obsidian and shortcuts.
160. 00:09:28 So it's made by this guy who also developed a community plugin, which adds the ability
161. 00:09:36 for these different callback URLs to be accessible in obsidian via shortcuts.
162. 00:09:44 And then it adds 30 plus actions to shortcuts.
163. 00:09:49 So you can do things like take the output from a shortcut and insert it into a placeholder
164. 00:09:58 in your daily note, or you can get the results from a data view table, or you can transfer
165. 00:10:07 all of your appointments from your calendar into your daily note at placeholders, things
166. 00:10:11 like that.
167. 00:10:13 It basically turns obsidian into like an Apple native app in terms of the support for shortcuts.
168. 00:10:22 And interesting.
169. 00:10:23 And using this at a very, very low level, but it is a really cool.
170. 00:10:29 And I feel like if you looked at this, you would probably really like it.
171. 00:10:35 Actions for obsidian.
172. 00:10:36 This is on iOS.
173. 00:10:37 It's on the Mac.
174. 00:10:39 I believe it's coming out for iOS soon.
175. 00:10:44 But right now it only works on the Mac.
176. 00:10:47 Yeah, it's on the Mac app store, the website.
177. 00:10:50 If you hover over the iOS one, it actually changes to available soon.
178. 00:10:53 So he's still trying to figure out some of the sandboxing stuff on iOS.
179. 00:10:58 But if you use obsidian on your Mac, this is pretty cool.
180. 00:11:00 It's got a couple different pricing tiers based and you pick the one based on like how
181. 00:11:05 useful it is for you, which is kind of a cool pricing model and it's got a 14 day free
182. 00:11:09 trial.
183. 00:11:10 It starts at 799 as a one time purchase.
184. 00:11:13 But the URL is obsidian.actions.work.
185. 00:11:18 And it's pretty great.
186. 00:11:21 Has nothing to do with our action items though.
187. 00:11:23 So I see that.
188. 00:11:26 I will go back and report on my last action item, which was to check out Bookshop.
189. 00:11:31 I did.
190. 00:11:32 I didn't buy anything off of Bookshop.
191. 00:11:35 I don't think I'm going to buy anything off of Bookshop.
192. 00:11:38 Why is that?
193. 00:11:39 I feel like it's the sort of thing that would be like a gold mine for us.
194. 00:11:45 So the fact that you're saying you don't think you'll buy anything off of it makes
195. 00:11:47 me very curious now.
196. 00:11:49 Well, I mean full disclosure, we do share affiliate links to books that we talk about
197. 00:11:56 in Bookworm.
198. 00:11:57 So if you are going to buy a book that we recommend and you click on the link in the
199. 00:12:03 show notes, that takes you to Amazon and we get a small kickback from that.
200. 00:12:08 So that is another way you can support the show.
201. 00:12:11 Even if you don't like affiliate links, now you know, and you can avoid them.
202. 00:12:15 Obviously there.
203. 00:12:16 So I'm not going to use it for any of the Bookworm stuff unless we just made that decision
204. 00:12:20 together that we don't care about that extra affiliate income and we're just going to support
205. 00:12:25 the local bookstore because it's the right thing to do.
206. 00:12:28 I would be okay with that.
207. 00:12:29 You could talk me into that.
208. 00:12:31 But it's just not as simple.
209. 00:12:34 It's not as efficient.
210. 00:12:35 I buy so many books.
211. 00:12:37 I don't want to have to go there first every time and then go somewhere else when they
212. 00:12:41 don't have what I want.
213. 00:12:43 So they did have the book that we're covering today.
214. 00:12:47 And I don't really blame them for that.
215. 00:12:49 This one I hadn't really heard of until Martin recommended it.
216. 00:12:51 So this isn't like everybody's got this one sort of a deal.
217. 00:12:57 But just the fact that they may or may not have what I'm looking for.
218. 00:13:02 That's additional time, additional complexity.
219. 00:13:04 I'm not going to do that.
220. 00:13:06 Maybe I should.
221. 00:13:08 But I can tell you, I know myself.
222. 00:13:10 I'm not going to do that.
223. 00:13:13 So I don't know.
224. 00:13:14 I'm not going to say other people shouldn't use it.
225. 00:13:16 Go ahead.
226. 00:13:17 I love the premise.
227. 00:13:18 But yeah.
228. 00:13:22 I looked at the website, poked around on it.
229. 00:13:24 They didn't have the book for today.
230. 00:13:26 So I'm like, well, that's a bummer, but I'll try it again.
231. 00:13:30 Went back and looked at it again and I could feel my motivation waning every single time
232. 00:13:34 I went to the website.
233. 00:13:37 So yeah.
234. 00:13:39 All right.
235. 00:13:40 So I won't do it then.
236. 00:13:42 Did you check it out?
237. 00:13:43 No, I have not looked at it.
238. 00:13:45 Yeah.
239. 00:13:46 I think it's easy to get excited about some of these action items and the books that we
240. 00:13:49 read and the more distance you get from them, the less important they are.
241. 00:13:52 This one was never really that important to begin with.
242. 00:13:54 And so let's just say this one failed.
243. 00:13:58 It was such a, at least to me, it was ended up being such a minor thing that I completely
244. 00:14:02 forgot that it was the thing you were doing at all.
245. 00:14:05 Yeah.
246. 00:14:06 It didn't even register past the recording time.
247. 00:14:09 So.
248. 00:14:10 Fair enough.
249. 00:14:11 All right.
250. 00:14:12 Let's talk about today's book.
251. 00:14:14 Today's book, which I foreshadowed as not available on Bookshop, is Master Your Motivation
252. 00:14:22 by Susan Fowler.
253. 00:14:24 And this was a recommendation from Martin.
254. 00:14:27 He I think is on the chat today.
255. 00:14:30 So yeah, this will be a part to hear your insights as we go here, Martin.
256. 00:14:37 This is a pretty short book, broken down into three parts and an introduction.
257. 00:14:46 I actually don't mind that.
258. 00:14:47 I think I had a kind of moment of clarity when I was looking at this book because it
259. 00:14:53 is pretty small.
260. 00:14:54 And the subtitle is three scientific truths for achieving your goals.
261. 00:14:57 So you could take the approach of like, Oh, well, they obviously just landed on the three
262. 00:15:01 things and then they develop this whole message around this because it was a convenient number.
263. 00:15:05 However, there's actually a lot of science you can tell has gone into this.
264. 00:15:10 And I did not think that that was a superficial thing for a simplicity of organization.
265. 00:15:16 And by the time I got done with this book, I was like, you know what?
266. 00:15:18 Maybe I need to reconsider my stance on three part books because we tend to write that off
267. 00:15:25 right at the beginning.
268. 00:15:26 And to be fair, a lot of the books that we have read don't need to be three different
269. 00:15:30 sections.
270. 00:15:31 It is a bit of a stretch.
271. 00:15:34 But I feel like this one's pretty clean.
272. 00:15:36 So there's the introduction, which is why motivation science matters.
273. 00:15:40 Then part one is the truth about motivation.
274. 00:15:42 Part two is motivation is a skill.
275. 00:15:44 And then part three, what is stopping you?
276. 00:15:46 And there's different models associated with specifically part one and part two.
277. 00:15:51 So part three is basically everything else.
278. 00:15:53 And I feel like it's structured pretty well.
279. 00:15:56 What was your first impression of this book?
280. 00:16:00 And even more granular, you know, what about the topic of motivation?
281. 00:16:05 When I picked this one, were you excited by it or did you find yourself resisting this
282. 00:16:12 topic?
283. 00:16:13 It was kind of a mix of both in that, like, I know motivation is something that I tend
284. 00:16:19 to struggle with.
285. 00:16:20 I'm aware of that.
286. 00:16:22 So the concept of reading a book about motivation, pretty excited about that.
287. 00:16:28 But whenever it has something like three scientific truths for achieving your goals and master
288. 00:16:34 your motivation, like that's pretty high claim.
289. 00:16:38 And kind of makes me think, hmm, is this going to be one of these philosophical grand ideas
290. 00:16:44 books that is like almost impossible to implement except for like .01% of the population?
291. 00:16:52 What was my skepticism coming in?
292. 00:16:55 Pre-read on the book?
293. 00:16:57 So it's like, okay, how's this going to go?
294. 00:16:59 It's either going to go in the territory where this is life-changing for Joe, anyway, or
295. 00:17:05 it's going to go down the territory of this is baloney.
296. 00:17:10 It's possible it fits somewhere in the middle, but my expectation was it was going to go
297. 00:17:14 one of those two directions.
298. 00:17:16 All right, what did you think overall just at the beginning here, like, which way do you
299. 00:17:26 find yourself being pulled?
300. 00:17:28 Between those two directions?
301. 00:17:29 Honestly, I think I'm somewhere in the middle.
302. 00:17:31 As weird as I think that that is, like, I don't know that I have clean, like, this is
303. 00:17:40 going to make a big difference to me in this area.
304. 00:17:43 Like, this is a lot of, like, here's how you should think type of book, and those types
305. 00:17:48 of books can be awesome, but I think it's sometimes difficult to know, is this book one
306. 00:17:56 that's going to be awesome for me long term until I've had, you know, a few months to
307. 00:18:02 just see how it impacts my continual mindsets beyond the time I'm reading the book.
308. 00:18:08 But I don't know that I'm going to have super clean answer to that right now.
309. 00:18:14 At the same time, like, I know that the way that she's coming at this, again, you mentioned,
310. 00:18:20 like, the three-partedness of this, and it's one that we tend to rail on a little bit.
311. 00:18:28 It's like, oh, no, here we go, another three-part book.
312. 00:18:32 But at the same time, this is doing a pretty good job of just kind of walking us through
313. 00:18:38 the process of, here are the components of motivation.
314. 00:18:44 And then here are some ways that you can go about learning the skill of motivation, basically
315. 00:18:52 explaining how that works.
316. 00:18:54 And then at the end, kind of walking us through what is the process that's going to break
317. 00:18:59 it down.
318. 00:19:01 So when you've got it laid out like that, it gets kind of hard to argue with.
319. 00:19:09 But I think the proof is in the action on this one, like, sure, what actually comes to fruit
320. 00:19:15 after having read this.
321. 00:19:16 I can tell you that just noticing different scenarios, like, okay, well, what's motivating
322. 00:19:23 me to complete my credit card statement for the month?
323. 00:19:28 And what is the method that I'm using to motivate myself on that?
324. 00:19:32 And then seeing how that is terrible is super helpful.
325. 00:19:38 But I can't say that I would have expected understanding that until I read this.
326. 00:19:43 So it has been helpful in that sense.
327. 00:19:46 Okay.
328. 00:19:47 Well, I guess I picked this book because I was interested in the topic of motivation, but
329. 00:19:53 didn't have anything specific that I was looking to change.
330. 00:19:58 There wasn't a reason that I wanted to do a book on motivation just other than it was
331. 00:20:07 an interesting topic to me because we've talked about willpower and a lot of like the creative
332. 00:20:13 stuff is there's this imagery of conquering the resistance and things like that.
333. 00:20:18 I've kind of long believed that motivation is more important than willpower or maybe even
334. 00:20:26 discipline.
335. 00:20:27 I've over-ride that certain situations, but I didn't have like a specific situation where
336. 00:20:31 I was like, I want to apply this.
337. 00:20:33 Just the topic was interesting to me at the time.
338. 00:20:37 And this was a recommendation that that looked pretty good.
339. 00:20:40 So we picked it up and let's jump in here.
340. 00:20:44 The first part we're going to talk about is just the introduction.
341. 00:20:50 And one of the things that I liked about this introduction is just the way that the stage
342. 00:20:55 is set for this discussion on motivation.
343. 00:20:59 The introduction has a subtitle of why motivation science matters.
344. 00:21:03 And there's two big things here that kind of stood out to me.
345. 00:21:06 Number one, she directly addresses Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
346. 00:21:10 I'm not sure what you think about Maslow's hierarchy.
347. 00:21:13 Do you think like, oh, this makes a ton of sense and this is the way the world works or
348. 00:21:16 do you think it's a bunch of baloney?
349. 00:21:17 I don't know what it's it's it's one that like I've seen it so many times and then I've
350. 00:21:23 also seen so many people break it down in different ways.
351. 00:21:26 It's like, okay, this is one that sure, I mean, there's there's got to be some foundational
352. 00:21:32 truth there somewhere, but the subtleties might break down in a variety of ways.
353. 00:21:39 So I can't say that I have a strong opinion.
354. 00:21:41 I wouldn't come up to you and say, Maslow's hierarchy is horrific.
355. 00:21:44 You should never pay attention to it.
356. 00:21:45 I would never say that.
357. 00:21:47 I'm also not going to come up to you and say, Hey, you really need to think about this.
358. 00:21:51 This is a big deal.
359. 00:21:52 I'm not going to do that either.
360. 00:21:53 It's like a neutral point for me.
361. 00:21:56 Well, she basically says the first in the nicest way I've ever heard.
362. 00:22:01 She says that Maslow's hierarchy of needs has never been empirically proven, which that
363. 00:22:08 statement kind of was shocking to me when I heard that because I know people who take
364. 00:22:13 Maslow's hierarchy as like this is gospel truth on the way that humans are wired.
365. 00:22:19 And I've always thought it was a little bit, I don't know, just never really sat right
366. 00:22:24 with me whenever I looked at that.
367. 00:22:26 Like you look at it and it kind of makes sense, but I never was able to buy into it 100% and
368. 00:22:32 I never really understood why.
369. 00:22:35 And so I felt validated by that statement.
370. 00:22:39 And then she kind of talks about the thing that is more important in her words.
371. 00:22:44 And I think I would side with her on this and that is the self determination theory, which
372. 00:22:50 is the foundation of motivation science.
373. 00:22:52 Now, that term self determination, basically what that means is that you are the captain
374. 00:22:58 of your own ship and you have the ability to chart your own course and you can become
375. 00:23:02 the type of person that you want to be and create the life that you want to live.
376. 00:23:07 And that is something that I have actually brought up many, many times on this podcast.
377. 00:23:14 We've talked about it a lot, but it stems from me from the family business.
378. 00:23:20 My dad started a software company and developed a whole bunch of products based off of a whole
379. 00:23:25 bunch of research on the topic of emotional intelligence and social emotional learning,
380. 00:23:30 things like that.
381. 00:23:31 Self determination is a big part of that.
382. 00:23:33 So for a long time, I worked with the family business and we sold educational assessment
383. 00:23:39 skill building products to schools and the populations that we worked with were special
384. 00:23:44 education primarily or at risk and self determination specifically is the thing that can turn an
385. 00:23:50 at risk kids life around because they typically don't come from the best scenario and they're
386. 00:23:56 firmly entrenched in victim thinking.
387. 00:23:59 And as long as they continue to think that way, it's a self fulfilling prophecy.
388. 00:24:03 Your environment doesn't create an opportunity for them to succeed and I want to reiterate
389. 00:24:09 here that that doesn't mean that I recognize that bad things happen to people and sometimes
390. 00:24:15 it's not your fault.
391. 00:24:16 But when it happens, you can accept that you have the power to change it or not and it's
392. 00:24:22 much more freeing to embrace the self determination theory.
393. 00:24:26 So self determination, I totally understand how this can be the foundation for motivation.
394. 00:24:33 And I really enjoyed selfishly, I guess, seeing it here.
395. 00:24:38 What do you think about this?
396. 00:24:41 The self determination piece.
397. 00:24:43 Yeah.
398. 00:24:44 And also just as like the, this is kind of a launching off point for the rest of the
399. 00:24:48 book, obviously on motivation.
400. 00:24:50 Do you see the connection there and what do you, what do you think about the case that
401. 00:24:54 she's making here?
402. 00:24:55 Yeah.
403. 00:24:56 I think she's got a pretty solid case in that you've got a lot in your head that can completely
404. 00:25:06 change how you see a situation or see a scenario happening.
405. 00:25:12 Whenever I think about like what, what motivates me to get up in the morning and exercise.
406. 00:25:18 When I think about something like that, it can change from the simple thought process
407. 00:25:25 of this is a great way for me to get energy in the day.
408. 00:25:27 I'm excited to go get my energy for the day.
409. 00:25:31 That's very different than, I don't want to get out of bed.
410. 00:25:35 Like those are completely different ways of thinking about the exact same scenario.
411. 00:25:39 And in one of those cases, it makes it easy to get out of bed and get going.
412. 00:25:44 And in the other case, you don't ever want to get out of bed.
413. 00:25:48 So just, just knowing that and that's kind of what she's laying out here.
414. 00:25:51 And she does end up talking through that throughout the book, pointing the whole topic
415. 00:25:57 at that concept and knowing that that is all in my head, it gets kind of hard to argue
416. 00:26:05 with, especially when she's got a lot of the science that proves that that's the case.
417. 00:26:11 So I don't know that I have any arguments on it, but I think she does a pretty good
418. 00:26:14 job of setting up the foundation for the rest of the book with it.
419. 00:26:17 What's your mental state after this point in the book?
420. 00:26:21 Are you, all right, I'm excited, let's make this happen.
421. 00:26:24 Or are you like hesitant as you walk into the next section?
422. 00:26:32 At this point, I'm like, prove it.
423. 00:26:35 Okay, this might be great, but I need you to prove it.
424. 00:26:39 Gotcha.
425. 00:26:40 Well, I was definitely excited by this.
426. 00:26:44 Yes.
427. 00:26:45 And I want to point out that a lot of my opinion on that and the reason I had that viewpoint
428. 00:26:53 is just the whole ADD thing.
429. 00:26:55 Like, sure, that's great in general population terms, but does that hold true in every scenario?
430. 00:27:02 She didn't really call out as far as I remember anywhere in the book, exceptions to these
431. 00:27:07 rules.
432. 00:27:08 Yep.
433. 00:27:09 So that being the case, it would make me think that her assumption is this works for everybody.
434. 00:27:14 Yeah.
435. 00:27:15 So I don't think she really has any qualifiers to any of it, which is sometimes, in a lot
436. 00:27:24 of cases, that usually means that they either didn't think about it or they have thought
437. 00:27:28 about it and chose to leave that wide open because they know that it is applicable to
438. 00:27:33 everybody.
439. 00:27:34 And I think it's really hard to know which way they intend that or the way that it came
440. 00:27:39 across.
441. 00:27:40 Like, did they even think about it?
442. 00:27:41 I don't know.
443. 00:27:42 I think going through this, like, I think at this point, I understand that this is very
444. 00:27:49 likely going to apply in my scenario, but when I was going through it at the time, it's
445. 00:27:57 like, "Okay, I need you to back this up.
446. 00:27:59 I need you to prove it."
447. 00:28:03 Sure.
448. 00:28:04 Well, I mean, that's a great place to go into the next section.
449. 00:28:09 So the actual meat of the book starts with part one, which is the truth about motivation.
450. 00:28:17 And there are five chapters here.
451. 00:28:19 I don't want to go through all five of these chapters.
452. 00:28:21 I've kind of grouped the outline here under the three different parts, but I will outline
453. 00:28:27 the chapters here real briefly in this first part.
454. 00:28:29 So chapter one is three scientific truths.
455. 00:28:31 Chapter two is motivation isn't what you think.
456. 00:28:33 And then chapters three through five get into the three truths.
457. 00:28:37 So chapter three is create choice, chapter four, create connection, chapter five, create
458. 00:28:41 competence.
459. 00:28:42 Okay.
460. 00:28:43 So that actually is the first thing I wanted to discuss here is I feel like in chapter
461. 00:28:51 one, she makes a very good case for the way that she has deconstructed maybe the whole
462. 00:29:00 idea of motivation.
463. 00:29:02 She mentions that we have a natural yearning to thrive.
464. 00:29:04 And I like that word thrive.
465. 00:29:07 That's not the word I was expecting, but it was the one that instantly resonated with
466. 00:29:11 me.
467. 00:29:13 And then she says that to thrive, we need three things.
468. 00:29:15 We need choice.
469. 00:29:16 We need connection and we need competence.
470. 00:29:20 And in the back of my mind, the whole time I'm hearing her talk about these three things,
471. 00:29:24 I'm thinking about the burnout inventory that we took and how these things are directly
472. 00:29:29 connected there, although I couldn't map them live here for you.
473. 00:29:33 It is clear to me that these things and whether you have these or not have these this and
474. 00:29:38 this is directly or inversely maybe connected to the amount of burnout that you feel and
475. 00:29:45 burnout essentially is the complete absence of motivation.
476. 00:29:50 You can't summon the energy to act.
477. 00:29:53 And that's how she defines it actually is the energy to act.
478. 00:29:56 All right.
479. 00:29:57 So that being said, there are these three things that we need choice connection and
480. 00:30:02 competence.
481. 00:30:03 I think we should talk about these a little bit.
482. 00:30:06 So when you create choice, your energy is increased.
483. 00:30:15 When you don't, your energy is diminished.
484. 00:30:18 When you create connection, the energy is there that you need to act.
485. 00:30:25 But when you don't, your energy is compromised.
486. 00:30:28 It's kind of like sabotaged.
487. 00:30:31 When you, you need to create competence, when you don't have competence, then your energy
488. 00:30:37 is blocked.
489. 00:30:38 Like it's there, but it can't manifest.
490. 00:30:40 And when you create choice connection and competence, you can flourish.
491. 00:30:45 But when they, these things are eroded, you languish.
492. 00:30:50 I will pause there and just, you know, get your thoughts on the, that, that those things
493. 00:30:55 as a whole.
494. 00:30:56 And maybe we can dive into these a little bit deeper component by component.
495. 00:31:02 Yeah.
496. 00:31:03 These three different pieces, like choice connection competence, like those are the three parts
497. 00:31:09 that she's going to use as like that.
498. 00:31:12 If you have those three motivation comes and she did define motivation as the energy to
499. 00:31:17 act, which is interesting to me just because like so many times we think about like, I'm
500. 00:31:23 just not motivated to, I don't even know, it seems like whenever I hear people talk
501. 00:31:28 about not being motivated, it's usually around something they need to act on.
502. 00:31:33 But there's also times when it's something they just need to think about like, no, I
503. 00:31:37 just wasn't motivated to think through that scenario.
504. 00:31:39 Like that, that seems to come up as well.
505. 00:31:41 So it is interesting to me that it's the energy to act is what she's referring to here.
506. 00:31:48 Though you could argue that thinking through a scenario would be an action, like it could
507. 00:31:52 be a physical, like typing something out or writing it out by hand.
508. 00:31:57 That's a digression.
509. 00:31:58 But the three pieces, choice connection competence, I don't have anything that would tell me
510. 00:32:03 that I could argue with these.
511. 00:32:05 I started trying to like process the scenarios in the past where, and she calls us out when
512. 00:32:11 you have these three, the flow state tends to come.
513. 00:32:15 And I was trying to process like, what are the, what are the times when I achieve that
514. 00:32:20 flow state?
515. 00:32:22 And then I was attempting to figure out if I had those three different components, but
516. 00:32:25 at the same time, like some of those are so far removed that I don't know that I could
517. 00:32:29 accurately answer that question of, did I have all three of these?
518. 00:32:33 I know that some of the more recent scenarios, the answer was yes.
519. 00:32:39 And the times when I don't want to do something, because this is common, I don't want to do
520. 00:32:45 that.
521. 00:32:46 And though in those scenarios, at least one, if not two, in a couple cases, all three of
522. 00:32:53 these were missing.
523. 00:32:56 At least my view of it, they were missing.
524. 00:32:59 We'll talk about that a little bit later, what I mean by that.
525. 00:33:01 But the, the, the construct here of choice, the, like these C three C's, like it just,
526. 00:33:08 it seems like it's the sort of thing that just makes sense.
527. 00:33:10 Once she explains it, and once she starts kind of going through some of the science behind
528. 00:33:14 each of them, it's like, yeah, I, sure.
529. 00:33:17 Yeah, I guess I don't have anything to argue with you on.
530. 00:33:21 I kind of want to have something to argue with you on, but I just can't find it.
531. 00:33:26 And as much as I wanted to, like this is, this is kind of the part in the book, whereas
532. 00:33:30 okay, this is, this is probably something I need to embrace and just take on like my
533. 00:33:35 skepticism was starting to fade a little bit here.
534. 00:33:40 Really because of like the scientific proof that comes with it.
535. 00:33:44 I don't know that like it's a scenario where there are stories and examples of each of
536. 00:33:51 these, and you could easily take those stories and then internalize them as like, yeah, this
537. 00:33:57 works really well.
538. 00:33:58 I should do those things.
539. 00:34:00 But I don't know how that pans out real world internally for each of us.
540. 00:34:06 Like what is that?
541. 00:34:07 What does that even mean?
542. 00:34:12 Are these fluke scenarios that she picked out?
543. 00:34:17 I doubt it.
544. 00:34:18 But at the same time, it's like, I've not done this firsthand.
545. 00:34:22 So there's a piece of me that's probably always going to be a skeptic until I've done that.
546. 00:34:27 So which is why like, I'm just kind of curious to see how the next two weeks goes and seeing
547. 00:34:32 how this pans out.
548. 00:34:33 Pieces tie together to help create motivation.
549. 00:34:37 But again, I haven't quite figured out how to write that down.
550. 00:34:41 Like how do I tell you this is what I want to do other than just here's a way that I'm
551. 00:34:46 hoping to think over the next two weeks.
552. 00:34:49 Sure.
553. 00:34:50 Did I do it or not?
554. 00:34:51 Maybe?
555. 00:34:52 I don't know.
556. 00:34:53 I don't know that I could tell you when we're done.
557. 00:34:54 But it's something I'm curious about.
558. 00:34:56 Yeah.
559. 00:34:57 Let's kind of break these down one by one.
560. 00:35:00 So the first one is choice.
561. 00:35:04 And she points out that when you think you can't have something, it ends up becoming
562. 00:35:10 the only thing you can think about.
563. 00:35:14 And how again, with all of these, she would say we have this innate need for these things.
564. 00:35:20 But when she's talking about choice, she's talking about we need to perceive that we
565. 00:35:23 are the ones in charge of our own actions, that we have options.
566. 00:35:26 And to create choice, there's different things you can do.
567. 00:35:29 You can perceive you have choices.
568. 00:35:31 You can recognize and feel you have options within your boundaries.
569. 00:35:33 You can feel it here and control of your actions.
570. 00:35:36 But the thing that really stood out to me from this section is that even if you don't
571. 00:35:40 have freedom, you can still experience choice.
572. 00:35:44 So this is entirely based on your perspective.
573. 00:35:48 Now I have felt this way before where it's like, I don't have any options.
574. 00:35:52 I have to remain committed to this choice that I made.
575. 00:35:57 And reading through this chapter, I was able to identify different scenarios out the course
576. 00:36:01 of my life where it's like, you know what, I was totally looking at that from the wrong
577. 00:36:05 perspective.
578. 00:36:06 I felt trapped and I felt my motivation being diminished.
579. 00:36:12 Right?
580. 00:36:13 I've been in that place where it's really, really hard just to get up and go to work
581. 00:36:18 in the morning.
582. 00:36:20 And I realized after reading this chapter that nothing about my situation would have
583. 00:36:27 needed to change in order for me to feel completely different about it.
584. 00:36:32 And that can make you feel uncomfortable again, depending on whether you buy into the self-determination
585. 00:36:36 theory or not.
586. 00:36:37 Right?
587. 00:36:38 But when you admit that it's your fault, that's actually freeing because it means that you
588. 00:36:42 are the problem, but you're also the solution.
589. 00:36:45 The power lies within you to change your world.
590. 00:36:50 And I think that's a pretty powerful idea.
591. 00:36:53 What about you?
592. 00:36:54 Do you feel currently like you have choice or maybe you pick a scenario from your previous
593. 00:36:59 experience and maybe how this played out a little bit different?
594. 00:37:02 Well, I know that this is, you know, in Martin's comments and hang on it.
595. 00:37:07 This is the section where she talks about man's search for meaning because it's important
596. 00:37:10 to point out that this is, you know, choices not
597. 00:37:15 freedom.
598. 00:37:16 Like those are two different things.
599. 00:37:18 And the fact that she calls out Victor Frankel here in this choice piece, he had no choice.
600. 00:37:24 He could not leave.
601. 00:37:26 He was in camp and there was no way he was going to get out of that concentration camp.
602. 00:37:32 Like that's, that was his sentence, basically.
603. 00:37:36 And yet he felt he had a choice.
604. 00:37:41 So who am I to argue with this concept of I can change my mind and I do have a choice,
605. 00:37:51 no matter how bad the situation appears.
606. 00:37:54 Like that, that's not something I'm allowed to use as an excuse.
607. 00:38:00 That gets kind of difficult for me to come to grips with just because I want to blame
608. 00:38:05 something.
609. 00:38:06 Like I want to have an excuse if I don't get something done or I don't want to be in
610. 00:38:11 a situation.
611. 00:38:12 Like I want an excuse and in, you know, most cases I want to blame somebody else.
612. 00:38:18 But whenever I think through, you know, different scenarios where, you know, maybe I've got
613. 00:38:24 an event at the church and they need help setting up a specific set of tech for it.
614. 00:38:31 And I don't want to go help.
615. 00:38:32 Like that does happen.
616. 00:38:35 You would think I would be all over it, but there's some situations where I just don't
617. 00:38:39 want to.
618. 00:38:40 And some of that has to do with the attitude of the other person and how they approached
619. 00:38:47 me and how they asked for help, what their expectation is of me.
620. 00:38:51 Do they expect me to do everything last minute and tell me an hour before it's supposed to
621. 00:38:55 be done?
622. 00:38:56 Or do they tell me it's going to be a really big deal three months out and then they give
623. 00:38:59 me tons of time to work on it.
624. 00:39:01 I'm still not going to do anything until, you know, the week of, but at least we know
625. 00:39:04 what's coming and I don't have to try to gather all the details.
626. 00:39:07 Like those two different scenarios, I tend to have very different reactions to and it's
627. 00:39:12 primarily just because of an external thing that I've placed at the forefront of what's
628. 00:39:17 motivating me to act.
629. 00:39:19 It's my choice on what I'm focusing on.
630. 00:39:23 And to me, that's the critical point here is like what you're focusing on is the choice
631. 00:39:27 you're making.
632. 00:39:29 I could focus on the positive aspects of it and have one viewpoint.
633. 00:39:35 I have a very optimistic viewpoint on it or I could focus on the negative sides of it
634. 00:39:40 and have a very pessimistic, you know, kind of an upset mentality over it.
635. 00:39:45 So having that choice is super important, but I don't like coming to grips with that.
636. 00:39:52 Well, the relationship aspect of it leads into the connection part, which this is interesting
637. 00:40:01 to me and I would actually defend your lack of motivation to go help somebody after reading
638. 00:40:08 this because I had to kind of wrestle through this part, but connection is authentically
639. 00:40:13 caring about others and feeling cared for by them.
640. 00:40:18 And I think it is okay to say I don't have the relationship that I should have with this
641. 00:40:29 person.
642. 00:40:30 And do what you will with that, right?
643. 00:40:32 And you can do things on your end maybe to fix that relationship.
644. 00:40:37 I'm thinking of a situation from the day job where there was somebody that I work with
645. 00:40:43 very closely now.
646. 00:40:45 And just the way things went down at the beginning of my work there for six, nine months, there
647. 00:40:52 were a lot of changes being pushed through.
648. 00:40:53 And I was the new guy and basically the entire team kind of assumed that all of these in
649. 00:40:58 their view negative changes that were happening were being pushed through by Mike.
650. 00:41:03 And to this day, there are still attitudes that I need to work on, but this one person
651. 00:41:10 specifically, they had that because of the atmosphere of the day job.
652. 00:41:16 And then all of a sudden I'm working very closely with her.
653. 00:41:19 She's on my team, right?
654. 00:41:22 And we've been working closely together now just for a couple of months, but the way that
655. 00:41:29 we work is totally different.
656. 00:41:31 And essentially what she found out was what the narrative that was being told through
657. 00:41:37 the grapevine at the company was not reflective of me as an individual.
658. 00:41:43 And it's kind of been completely different to the point where that narrative is still
659. 00:41:48 being spun and in our connect yesterday.
660. 00:41:50 She's telling me that she heard stuff from people and I don't want to know who it was.
661. 00:41:54 I don't need to know who it is individually, but she's like, just, you know, this is still
662. 00:41:59 going on.
663. 00:42:00 And she's getting visibly upset that people are thinking about me that way.
664. 00:42:04 Yeah.
665. 00:42:05 And I share that story just because it became clear to me when we had that conversation,
666. 00:42:11 how much the connection and the relationship had improved and how differently the way that
667. 00:42:18 we work and the quality of the work that we're able to do together has changed.
668. 00:42:25 And is that my fault that it's still that way with the rest of the people?
669. 00:42:31 No, not at all.
670. 00:42:35 But you know, I'm going to do what I can to improve it still.
671. 00:42:39 I'm not going to be like, well, you guys are the ones who need to change your thinking
672. 00:42:42 about things.
673. 00:42:43 It'd be nice if I had a little bit more support there, right?
674. 00:42:47 I'm asking for that.
675. 00:42:49 Maybe I'll get it.
676. 00:42:50 Maybe I won't.
677. 00:42:51 We'll see.
678. 00:42:53 But I'm not going to let it stop me.
679. 00:42:55 But also I'm not going to because the other approach that I would typically take as well,
680. 00:42:59 this is my fault and it's completely on me to change this.
681. 00:43:03 No, I have choice.
682. 00:43:04 I have options, right?
683. 00:43:06 So for me, I'm starting to see how these things kind of fit together.
684. 00:43:11 And overall, what it's done is it's helped me feel more confident in my abilities.
685. 00:43:16 Maybe that is the third one here too.
686. 00:43:18 And I don't want to just talk through this whole section of my own.
687. 00:43:20 I want to hear what you have to say too.
688. 00:43:21 But the competence piece is being able to experience progress, gain mastery, feel confident
689. 00:43:28 and resilient.
690. 00:43:29 Well, what I realized was that I have grown a lot in my abilities and my skills.
691. 00:43:34 When I first came into this position, I didn't think I could do it.
692. 00:43:37 I've learned a lot though.
693. 00:43:38 And I realized I'm actually really, really good at what I do.
694. 00:43:43 I looked at some charts of the revenue for the organization and it's actually gone off
695. 00:43:48 a cliff since January of last year.
696. 00:43:50 And you just look at that when you're like, "Holy cow, this company is in big trouble."
697. 00:43:53 But then you look at the profit one and you see it in the last six months, we're just
698. 00:43:56 crushing it.
699. 00:43:57 Right?
700. 00:43:58 So, hey, good job me.
701. 00:44:00 I am actually good at this.
702. 00:44:03 And so I was viewing myself as not very good at my job because of a lack of connection,
703. 00:44:11 which I have no control over.
704. 00:44:13 I can't change the story that people tell in their heads.
705. 00:44:17 I'll pick away at it here and there when I can.
706. 00:44:19 But I realized that that was creating this limiting belief in my mind and I was starting
707. 00:44:24 to feel depressed.
708. 00:44:25 And that's really a big reason why I was so burnt out.
709. 00:44:29 It's like, "Nothing I do here matters.
710. 00:44:31 Nobody cares."
711. 00:44:32 Right?
712. 00:44:33 I had to get over that.
713. 00:44:35 Yeah.
714. 00:44:36 I know that as I look at these three different components, like choice, if I have a choice
715. 00:44:42 about what I'm going to do or how I perceive the thing I'm going to do.
716. 00:44:46 And I'm well connected with the people I'm doing it with or at least with the purpose
717. 00:44:52 behind it.
718. 00:44:53 And then I feel like I have all the skills to do it.
719. 00:44:55 Like if you start putting those three pieces together, getting the motivation to do something
720. 00:45:00 is easy.
721. 00:45:03 But you remove one of those three.
722. 00:45:05 Like take the competence piece you were talking about in your role.
723. 00:45:09 If you take on a new role and you feel like it's outside the zone of your current skill
724. 00:45:14 set, you really have one of two things you can do.
725. 00:45:17 You can either go at it and try to figure out how to do that well or you can say, "I'm
726. 00:45:24 terrible at this" and do a terrible job.
727. 00:45:28 You can get better at it.
728. 00:45:29 And if you take it and get better at it and you develop your competence in that area, it
729. 00:45:34 then becomes something you want to do more of.
730. 00:45:37 And I've kind of seen this in the world of running sound boards for church events and
731. 00:45:43 bands and such.
732. 00:45:44 I've found that when I first started doing it, it was interesting but I was always frustrated
733. 00:45:48 by it or didn't really want to do it just because I felt like I could never quite get
734. 00:45:53 the band to sound good.
735. 00:45:57 And there's a whole bunch of reasons for that.
736. 00:45:59 Learning how to mix live is a whole different animal than from the recording and editing
737. 00:46:04 piece.
738. 00:46:05 It's different in so many ways.
739. 00:46:07 It's the same in a lot of ways but at the same time it's very different.
740. 00:46:10 You don't have the time to work through things so you just treat things differently.
741. 00:46:15 And learning how to do things live and getting better at that, right now if you told me I
742. 00:46:21 needed to go run sound for a band, I'd be pretty amped about that.
743. 00:46:24 That would be pretty exciting to me just because I know even if it's on a sound board
744. 00:46:29 I've never used before, that's totally fine.
745. 00:46:32 I know the concepts well enough at this point that I would be pretty excited about that
746. 00:46:36 but that's because my competence level in that world has increased such that it's something
747. 00:46:41 that I feel like I could do a really good job at.
748. 00:46:45 So anyway, when you have these three, it's a big deal.
749. 00:46:48 And I feel like the more I think through different scenarios and what's motivating me
750. 00:46:52 to do something or not to do something, I can usually trace it to one of these three
751. 00:46:59 is missing somewhere.
752. 00:47:01 So again, I don't know how to argue with her on this.
753. 00:47:06 Yeah, that's the main point with chapter two.
754. 00:47:12 So I kind of doing this out of order.
755. 00:47:14 So we talked about choice, connection and competence already but that's three, four
756. 00:47:18 and five.
757. 00:47:19 Now going back to number two, when it comes to motivation, the quality of your energy
758. 00:47:22 matters.
759. 00:47:23 So when you create choice, connection and competence that generates this high quality
760. 00:47:26 motivation, which leads to optimal motivation.
761. 00:47:32 And this is the point where she talks about how willpower and discipline are red flags
762. 00:47:36 because they're a warning of suboptimal motivation.
763. 00:47:41 And I specifically chose this point after we talked about choice, connection and competence
764. 00:47:46 because I think it's really easy to see that she's right here.
765. 00:47:51 And all the studies about willpower and discipline, it doesn't mean that those things should
766. 00:47:56 be ignored.
767. 00:47:58 But I do think that at least myself, I was tending to view willpower and discipline,
768. 00:48:07 the Roy Bauma, my studies and all that kind of stuff.
769. 00:48:11 I was relying on that stuff too much.
770. 00:48:14 And it's easy to see after going through chapters three, four and five, how if you really can
771. 00:48:18 dial in choice, connection and competence, you can create that feeling where you get
772. 00:48:22 up in the morning and you're excited to do what you have to do.
773. 00:48:25 And it doesn't matter how much willpower or discipline you have, that perspective is going
774. 00:48:31 to make the difference.
775. 00:48:32 You compare that to the burned out stage where you're dreading going into the office and
776. 00:48:36 you look at your output at the end of the day, absolutely, you're going to get more work
777. 00:48:39 done and better work done when you have the motivation regardless of whether you wear
778. 00:48:45 the same thing every day or you are trying to decide what to have for breakfast.
779. 00:48:51 I mean, those are the types of things that all those little productivity tips and the
780. 00:48:55 life hacks, which really just kind of drive me nuts now.
781. 00:48:58 It's like, got to preserve your willpower, got to make sure that you have it for the
782. 00:49:02 decisions that really matter.
783. 00:49:04 Well, no, if you're excited about the decisions that you have to make, then it doesn't really
784. 00:49:07 matter.
785. 00:49:08 It's kind of my takeaway from this.
786. 00:49:11 If you have limited motivation, if you haven't ever considered choice, connection and competence,
787. 00:49:16 then yeah, probably you do need to make sure that you manage that stuff because you don't
788. 00:49:20 have much to go around.
789. 00:49:22 Yeah, this is, I mean, it is a big deal, right?
790. 00:49:26 The more I think about what motivation isn't and how we've previously thought of, like,
791. 00:49:34 you got to be disciplined, motivate yourself.
792. 00:49:38 That concept, whenever she starts talking about, here's kind of my view on this whole
793. 00:49:44 first part, right?
794. 00:49:45 So the three pieces, these three C's, choice, connection and competence.
795. 00:49:49 If you just replace the term discipline, self-discipline specifically, and replace that
796. 00:49:57 term self-discipline with choice, connection and competence, like that collective motivational
797. 00:50:02 framework, you can pretty much do a straight copy, replace, find and replace just anywhere
798. 00:50:10 you see that.
799. 00:50:11 And I was trying to think through, like, you know, you got to be disciplined to do your
800. 00:50:14 workouts in the mornings.
801. 00:50:15 So if I do these three things, workouts get to be a lot easier.
802. 00:50:22 You know, it takes simple stuff, like doing push-ups.
803. 00:50:25 Like, if you're going to do push-ups for your exercise, like, if you're not good at push-ups,
804. 00:50:30 or you can't do more than one, you don't have competence in doing push-ups.
805. 00:50:36 So you don't want to do a workout because it's just going to accent the point that you
806. 00:50:40 can't do this.
807. 00:50:41 But if you go, if push-ups is the thing you want to do, go look up progressive push-up
808. 00:50:46 workouts, like, ways that you can make them easier so that you can do a bunch of them,
809. 00:50:53 and then it gets to where you can eventually get to where you're doing 10 push-ups at a
810. 00:50:57 time, like, legitimate ones.
811. 00:50:59 So finding ways to make yourself competent in that, like, that's just a silly, simple
812. 00:51:04 cartoonish type answer, right?
813. 00:51:07 But it isn't self-discipline in that case.
814. 00:51:11 It's just purely trying to make it so that you have these three components so that you're
815. 00:51:16 motivated to do it.
816. 00:51:18 Having self-discipline and disciplining yourself so that you have the motivation to do something,
817. 00:51:23 like, that doesn't really work that way.
818. 00:51:26 At least not long-term.
819. 00:51:27 It can in the short-term, but this is why our wonderful New Year's resolutions last about
820. 00:51:34 a week and a half, because they just don't make it past that point.
821. 00:51:38 Yep.
822. 00:51:40 So you're talking about the discipline, and I think another word that goes along with
823. 00:51:46 that is, like, diligence.
824. 00:51:49 And I'm going to share something in the chat here.
825. 00:51:51 Toby, while all of our kids are homeschooled and we do classical conversations, part of
826. 00:51:56 classical conversations is you have to learn Latin.
827. 00:51:59 Yeah, our kids are learning Latin, too.
828. 00:52:02 Okay.
829. 00:52:03 So Toby posted this thing in the faith-based productivity community about -- he did a word
830. 00:52:08 study for diligence.
831. 00:52:11 And what he found was that the English word for diligence is a very different definition
832. 00:52:19 than the Latin root that it's kind of based off of.
833. 00:52:22 And the Latin root, essentially, I'm paraphrasing this.
834. 00:52:25 It's all about love, right?
835. 00:52:26 So when we think about diligence, we think about, "I have to do this thing that I don't
836. 00:52:30 want to do," or discipline.
837. 00:52:33 It's like, "I'm going to show up and do the hard thing."
838. 00:52:36 And I realized, as I was reading through this post that Toby put together, if it's based
839. 00:52:40 out of love, then really do what you love.
840. 00:52:43 There is some truth to that, but you have to create the motivation to love what you do.
841. 00:52:49 It's not -- you just find the fun thing, and then you do that the rest of your life, but
842. 00:52:53 you find the thing that you have to do, and you create the motivation through the three
843. 00:52:57 levers that she's talking about here, choice, connection, and competence, and then you bring
844. 00:53:03 that perspective to the thing that you have to do.
845. 00:53:09 And I thought that was pretty fascinating.
846. 00:53:12 He gets into some different Bible verses that talk about diligence.
847. 00:53:16 And if you read those through the lens of it's being motivated by love, it totally changes
848. 00:53:22 the definition.
849. 00:53:25 You can pick and choose, obviously, individual things and do the big Hebrew and Greek word
850. 00:53:30 studies and make those mean what you want, which you've got to be careful when you're
851. 00:53:34 doing that sort of interpretation of a religious text.
852. 00:53:37 But I think it's a pretty cool idea.
853. 00:53:39 Yeah, I'm just kind of glancing through Toby's post here.
854. 00:53:44 It's like, "Huh, that'll make you kind of wonder."
855. 00:53:47 The root of the word diligent coming from the Latin word that involves love.
856. 00:53:55 And then...
857. 00:53:56 Interesting.
858. 00:53:57 That'll mess with your head a little bit.
859. 00:53:58 Complementary to that is the Latin root for the word passion, which is petit, which means
860. 00:54:04 to suffer.
861. 00:54:05 Right?
862. 00:54:06 So passion isn't do what you love, but what do you care enough about that you're willing
863. 00:54:09 to go through some things?
864. 00:54:10 In other words, what do you have enough motivation for to show up?
865. 00:54:15 Yeah.
866. 00:54:18 And round around we go.
867. 00:54:20 Yeah.
868. 00:54:21 That's the whole point, I think, leading into part two here.
869. 00:54:25 I think this is a great place to transition because part two is motivation is a skill.
870. 00:54:31 So all of this stuff that we're talking about in terms of your perspective and bringing the
871. 00:54:34 motivation to what you need to do, you have the ability to get better at this.
872. 00:54:42 And this one is broken down into three different chapters.
873. 00:54:45 So chapter six, identify your Outlook, chapter seven, shift your Outlook, chapter eight,
874. 00:54:49 reflect on your Outlook.
875. 00:54:50 She's got a very simple diagram here of how these things are kind of like a flywheel day.
876. 00:54:56 They feed each other.
877. 00:54:58 Let's start with identify your Outlook.
878. 00:55:01 She shares the spectrum of motivation model here.
879. 00:55:04 Do you remember this?
880. 00:55:05 Yeah.
881. 00:55:06 She's got it in the back cover of the book too.
882. 00:55:08 Yep.
883. 00:55:09 It makes it easy to find.
884. 00:55:10 Yeah.
885. 00:55:11 I like this a lot.
886. 00:55:14 You want to try to explain this to kind of walk through like what this is visually?
887. 00:55:18 Yeah.
888. 00:55:19 So basically there's six different ways that you can view your, maybe not view, but six
889. 00:55:26 different ways that your motivation, your Outlook on motivation can be seen.
890. 00:55:31 And three of these are what she calls suboptimal and three of those are optimal.
891. 00:55:36 And the three suboptimal would be disinterested, external and imposed.
892. 00:55:44 The easy way to come at that is the disinterested is you just don't care about something at
893. 00:55:50 all.
894. 00:55:51 So your view on a specific situation is you have no interest in it whatsoever.
895. 00:55:56 So obviously you're not going to be motivated to do anything about it.
896. 00:55:59 You could have an external Outlook on a situation or a thing, which would just mean you're looking
897. 00:56:05 at external rewards incentives and the like to motivate you to do something.
898. 00:56:11 You could have an imposed Outlook, basically someone else, someone else's view being given
899. 00:56:17 to you.
900. 00:56:18 This probably comes into play a lot from like what your parents told you, things you said
901. 00:56:22 over and over and over again.
902. 00:56:23 She told the story about someone who parent, his parents always told him he needed to finish
903. 00:56:29 what he started and he was obese.
904. 00:56:33 So he took it literally in every sense and didn't even realize that that's what he was
905. 00:56:37 doing.
906. 00:56:38 He would load his plate up and then eat more than he wanted to, but he had to finish it
907. 00:56:42 because you always had to finish what you start.
908. 00:56:45 So like stuff like that is where that one comes in.
909. 00:56:48 But then you get to the three that are kind of above the fold, if you will, that are in
910. 00:56:53 the optimal Outlook territory, aligned, integrated and inherent.
911. 00:57:00 Basically you're aligned with like the values of something.
912. 00:57:05 There is the integrated where you're kind of like, I kind of struggled with this one,
913. 00:57:09 but like you're a part of the whole thing, like what you value and what they value is
914. 00:57:13 the same thing and you're good at it, blah, blah, blah, all the things.
915. 00:57:17 So you become really well intertwined with the situation.
916. 00:57:21 And then there's inherent where you're motivated to do something just because the nature of
917. 00:57:26 the thing aligns so perfectly with what you see your mission in life is that you can't
918. 00:57:34 see why you wouldn't do it.
919. 00:57:36 So it kind of takes it so far that not doing it is more of an issue than doing it.
920. 00:57:42 So the motivation is like second nature at that point.
921. 00:57:45 So those are the six different parts.
922. 00:57:47 At least those are in the chart graph of sorts in the back of a back of the book.
923. 00:57:52 Yeah, exactly.
924. 00:57:53 And the point that she makes around this is that you're always motivated.
925. 00:57:56 The question is what kind of motivation do you have and add a little bit of additional
926. 00:58:00 context to this, there is an X and Y access to this.
927. 00:58:06 So from the point in the lower left, that is low quality.
928. 00:58:10 And then whether you go up or to the right, it's a scale of high quality.
929. 00:58:15 And the two axes are on the X axis on the bottom, you've got psychological needs on
930. 00:58:20 the Y axis.
931. 00:58:21 So going up, you have self regulation.
932. 00:58:24 So there's this kind of curve with these different types of motivation.
933. 00:58:29 What's most interested is way in the bottom.
934. 00:58:31 And then there's external and that is all based off of like the carrot and the stick
935. 00:58:36 analogy.
936. 00:58:37 Yep.
937. 00:58:38 And she kind of dispels that throughout the rest of this book and saying that's not a
938. 00:58:42 good way to do it.
939. 00:58:43 Although I think a lot of businesses and organizations still view that as like the way
940. 00:58:48 to motivate people.
941. 00:58:52 And then the imposed one is the one that's interesting to me.
942. 00:58:54 That's the third one and you're getting kind of like right in the middle of the graph
943. 00:58:58 them, but you're still a little bit below that line that you were talking about.
944. 00:59:02 And that's the one that I think it's easy to slip into.
945. 00:59:07 You just assume these things and you don't ever question them.
946. 00:59:11 And then they kind of drive a whole bunch of behavior.
947. 00:59:16 And so I realized recently that I had fallen into this one specifically.
948. 00:59:24 I didn't want to let people down.
949. 00:59:26 So I've come pretty far in terms of my needing to be a people pleaser, but I realized that
950. 00:59:32 this is kind of the motivation that gets me to go back to that is they have this expectation,
951. 00:59:42 whether that's real or it's imagined.
952. 00:59:45 I attached to that and then I kind of feel like it doesn't matter what sort of circumstances
953. 00:59:50 I'm in what kind of obstacles I'm facing, I will produce the result that they expect.
954. 00:59:58 And I kind of had this moment of clarity when I was looking at this, it's like, huh, so you
955. 01:00:02 mean I don't have to just assume that?
956. 01:00:04 Well, what does that look like that?
957. 01:00:06 It means that I have permission to say those expectations.
958. 01:00:12 I am not going to be in alignment with going back to the first section.
959. 01:00:16 Like I have choice now.
960. 01:00:18 Even if I'm not going to take that choice, it is at least a choice.
961. 01:00:22 Right?
962. 01:00:23 So I think there's a lot of people who maybe you find yourself in a job and you feel like
963. 01:00:28 I can't get out of this job, but I don't like it.
964. 01:00:31 Right?
965. 01:00:32 Well, if you are able to actually flip that switch and say, you know what, I could actually
966. 01:00:38 go get another job.
967. 01:00:40 I could, I don't want to.
968. 01:00:42 Right?
969. 01:00:43 It's a lot of work.
970. 01:00:44 I don't know what's out there.
971. 01:00:46 That's scary.
972. 01:00:47 But these are all legit resistance and legitimate things that you have to take into consideration.
973. 01:00:54 But if you can overcome all of that and realize that you do have the option, that kind of
974. 01:01:00 changes everything else.
975. 01:01:04 And that's the thing that gets you from that low level motivation to a higher level of
976. 01:01:09 motivation.
977. 01:01:10 And that's ultimately what we're after.
978. 01:01:12 That's what this whole part is about.
979. 01:01:14 You have to first of all identify where you're at because you always need to know where you
980. 01:01:19 are before you can know where you are going.
981. 01:01:22 Okay?
982. 01:01:23 So you kind of have to buy into this spectrum of motivation model at the beginning, which
983. 01:01:26 is why I brought it up.
984. 01:01:28 But then from there, the second step is to shift your outlook.
985. 01:01:32 Okay, this is where I am.
986. 01:01:33 I'm going to create choice, connection and competence as I attempt to shift from one of
987. 01:01:38 these lower levels of motivation to a higher level of motivation.
988. 01:01:41 And then there are different things that you can do in order to get to that.
989. 01:01:45 I've got a couple of action items from this book.
990. 01:01:48 I'm actually, I think all of them come from chapter seven.
991. 01:01:52 So I come through my outline here.
992. 01:01:55 So number one is to make a list of what I value.
993. 01:02:02 And there are different things that you can use to figure that out.
994. 01:02:05 One of the things she suggests is how do I spend my time and my money, right?
995. 01:02:09 Or thinking through where are the discrepancies between my espoused values and my developed
996. 01:02:14 values?
997. 01:02:15 I think that's a really cool way of saying like everyone has this idea of the type of
998. 01:02:20 person that they want to be, the values that drive their actions.
999. 01:02:24 I'm this type of person.
1000. 01:02:25 Well, do your actions actually back that up?
1001. 01:02:28 Because if not, there's a disconnect there and you have to figure that out.
1002. 01:02:33 But then ultimately, I mean, I love this whole discussion of values and core values.
1003. 01:02:38 You know, we've got core values for our family.
1004. 01:02:40 This is a big thing for me, personal mission statement, all that kind of stuff.
1005. 01:02:43 But I feel like she frames it really well in this, this chapter about how not all of
1006. 01:02:47 your beliefs are values, but all your values are beliefs.
1007. 01:02:50 All right.
1008. 01:02:51 So we'll unpack that.
1009. 01:02:53 No, not everything that you think is going to be a primary value.
1010. 01:02:57 It's not going to be a driver of your actions and motivations, but all of your values will
1011. 01:03:02 drive those actions and the things that you do.
1012. 01:03:06 And ultimately, all of those values are personal choices.
1013. 01:03:09 So there's no right or wrong way to do this, but you got to figure out what these are
1014. 01:03:12 for yourself.
1015. 01:03:13 I kind of want to go back to the motivational outlooks because you were talking about like
1016. 01:03:20 this imposed outlook.
1017. 01:03:23 To me, that's the one that I probably suffer from the most.
1018. 01:03:27 Like just adopting somebody else's like this.
1019. 01:03:31 This is the expectation that somebody else has set.
1020. 01:03:34 I do not want to be that person who lets them down.
1021. 01:03:39 And that's where like the people pleaser perfectionist can come in and kind of bringing that into
1022. 01:03:47 chapter seven, the one you're talking about, shift your outlook.
1023. 01:03:50 To me, that was the, to me, that's like the critical chapter in the whole book.
1024. 01:03:56 It's not quite in the middle of the book, but it's like a core component of the entire
1025. 01:04:01 book.
1026. 01:04:02 It's like, okay, here's how motivation works.
1027. 01:04:04 Here's where it's flawed.
1028. 01:04:06 Here's how you can view that motivation.
1029. 01:04:09 Like, what is it that's actually motivating you now?
1030. 01:04:11 Now, here's how you can change it.
1031. 01:04:13 Like that's the part to me that kind of puts the rubber to the road on this.
1032. 01:04:20 Like here are some examples here are ways that you can start to identify how you're viewing
1033. 01:04:27 a situation.
1034. 01:04:28 And I've kind of alluded to this throughout the episode.
1035. 01:04:31 It's like, here's where like just knowing that these three components are there tweaking
1036. 01:04:37 one of those three or adding or subtracting different scenarios or different things in
1037. 01:04:43 a specific conversation or project, then it can completely change the way you're coming
1038. 01:04:49 at it.
1039. 01:04:50 Like there's even a story of how there was a, I think it was a branch manager found out
1040. 01:04:54 their company was going to be shut down in two years time.
1041. 01:04:59 So she could either, you know, lamented it and people could have, you know, quit ahead
1042. 01:05:05 of time because it's going to get shut down.
1043. 01:05:07 Anyway, they could have done all that, but instead she viewed it as a chance to celebrate
1044. 01:05:11 everything the company had been doing for the last 25 years and made it a big deal and
1045. 01:05:18 completely changed the whole outcome.
1046. 01:05:20 Nobody quit early on that whole team.
1047. 01:05:23 So like that's a big deal.
1048. 01:05:25 And it's purely because of a change and a shift in your outlook on the situation.
1049. 01:05:30 Like that's the part that I think would be the most critical at least for me, just trying
1050. 01:05:37 to figure out how that works and how can I get that to work for me.
1051. 01:05:42 I, again, I don't, I don't really have, I didn't write down any action items on this,
1052. 01:05:48 but like this is the part that got me thinking about, okay, I need to do something.
1053. 01:05:53 I don't know what other than like, let's pay attention to what is happening and how these
1054. 01:06:00 things are panning out because I feel like this is something that I need to continue
1055. 01:06:06 to work on.
1056. 01:06:07 And yet I know that it's one that I haven't had a lot of success with in the past.
1057. 01:06:11 So this whole section on shift, which does lead into the next one on reflect, like just
1058. 01:06:16 reflecting on the outlook that you have.
1059. 01:06:19 Like those two in conjunction with each other, like I feel like those could have a pretty
1060. 01:06:24 big impact.
1061. 01:06:25 Absolutely.
1062. 01:06:27 And the framing of the reflect section, which I think is really powerful, is that when you've
1063. 01:06:33 created choice, you can initiate more when you've created connection, you can develop
1064. 01:06:37 more when you've created competence, you can build more and just that framing, I really
1065. 01:06:41 appreciate basically what she's saying is that the minute that you start to make any
1066. 01:06:45 sort of progress, that's just the beginning.
1067. 01:06:48 There's a snowball effect here, but it's also not systematic.
1068. 01:06:52 It's not formulaic.
1069. 01:06:54 It's not just do these three things.
1070. 01:06:56 Like you have to figure out for yourself what progress looks like in these different
1071. 01:07:02 areas.
1072. 01:07:04 But I think it is really powerful.
1073. 01:07:06 At this point, the reflect piece is very important because you have to recognize your
1074. 01:07:11 success and your ability going all the way back to self-determination.
1075. 01:07:14 It's like, see, see, you could do it.
1076. 01:07:17 Even if it's just a little bit.
1077. 01:07:18 And then it's okay, so you've done this now, let's do it on a bigger scale.
1078. 01:07:23 And when reflecting, she talks about focusing on the why, the goal of asking why?
1079. 01:07:28 Mindfulness.
1080. 01:07:29 Is that word again?
1081. 01:07:32 But one thing that is interesting, she calls out here, is that mindfulness isn't much
1082. 01:07:39 harder than mindlessness.
1083. 01:07:42 And that's kind of challenging if you're going to sit and wrestle with that.
1084. 01:07:45 So you're saying that all this trouble I have with mindfulness meditation, it's actually
1085. 01:07:52 not that much harder for me to just drift from thing to thing and scroll through the
1086. 01:07:58 endless feeds.
1087. 01:07:59 I'm kind of speaking generically now, although mindfulness meditation is something that
1088. 01:08:04 I have struggled with.
1089. 01:08:05 I kind of think that my reason I've kind of struggled with that is I have a different
1090. 01:08:09 form of that in the prayer practice that I've established.
1091. 01:08:12 So I just don't see the need for that.
1092. 01:08:15 I do think I would be beneficial if I was able to cultivate it and make it a discipline.
1093. 01:08:20 But the motivation isn't there.
1094. 01:08:22 However, looking at this, maybe I need to go back and revisit that.
1095. 01:08:25 That is not an action item.
1096. 01:08:27 The thing I'm calling out here is that we tend to just default to a lot of our choices.
1097. 01:08:34 It's kind of our brain's efficiency mechanism.
1098. 01:08:36 90% of what we do is based off of habit.
1099. 01:08:39 Well, if we'd never really thought about it.
1100. 01:08:42 We never really tried to deconstruct those things and figure out ways that we can create
1101. 01:08:46 motivation to either do the right thing or not do the wrong thing.
1102. 01:08:50 Again, deciding for yourself what those are, that's our own fault.
1103. 01:08:56 And the fact that we haven't been mindful about the or intentional about those choices,
1104. 01:09:02 he's basically saying, there's no excuse here.
1105. 01:09:05 It's really not that hard.
1106. 01:09:07 You just have to be aware of it.
1107. 01:09:08 You have to be aware of your feelings.
1108. 01:09:09 You have to be aware of the reasons behind your motivations and you have to be able to
1109. 01:09:14 recognize new perspectives and try them out, which kind of gets into the whole idea of
1110. 01:09:20 the mental models and just the way that you think about things, which obviously that's
1111. 01:09:26 a topic that I'm really excited about and interested in.
1112. 01:09:30 But she kind of sets this up in a way that I feel like there's more options going back
1113. 01:09:35 to choice.
1114. 01:09:36 I feel like I have some possibilities available to me with this now that I didn't feel previously
1115. 01:09:46 if that makes sense.
1116. 01:09:47 And that's really the whole power of this last step because again, this feeds the next
1117. 01:09:52 step.
1118. 01:09:53 All right.
1119. 01:09:54 So when you reflect, you're actually looking at where you are again and has that changed
1120. 01:09:59 from previously and if it has or if it hasn't, you know, why and what are you going to do
1121. 01:10:04 about it?
1122. 01:10:05 It's this perpetuating cycle and you can either direct it and it can be positive or you can
1123. 01:10:12 just default to it and it can be negative.
1124. 01:10:15 One of my favorite parts of that chapter reflect on your outlook towards the beginning
1125. 01:10:19 of it, she makes the comment, "Talking to yourself isn't crazy," which I appreciate
1126. 01:10:25 because I'm regularly asking myself questions, myself, listen to me, "myself questions," maybe
1127. 01:10:31 there's multiple of me.
1128. 01:10:32 Well, that would actually explain quite a few things.
1129. 01:10:37 I mean, you can ask yourself questions.
1130. 01:10:38 You can have conversations with yourself.
1131. 01:10:41 I've started doing this verbally, which is entertaining for my kids.
1132. 01:10:45 It's like, "Why did you do that, Joe?"
1133. 01:10:47 Like I will ask myself that question out loud, very emphatically at times and like, "Dad,
1134. 01:10:55 you dropped your hammer."
1135. 01:10:56 It's like, "That's where it went."
1136. 01:10:59 Good job, Joe.
1137. 01:11:00 I will do stuff like that.
1138. 01:11:02 Now that's not exactly what she's talking about, but she's essentially referring to asking
1139. 01:11:07 yourself questions, answering those questions.
1140. 01:11:10 Why was I afraid to go into that meeting?
1141. 01:11:13 What was it that was causing anxiety about going into that meeting?
1142. 01:11:15 Why was I not?
1143. 01:11:16 Okay, well, there was this person in there that I don't get along with.
1144. 01:11:19 Why don't you get along with them and just running down that process and just trying
1145. 01:11:25 to figure out what is it about that particular meeting that's got you out of sorts.
1146. 01:11:29 So I really appreciate that.
1147. 01:11:32 I'm glad that it's okay that I can talk to myself.
1148. 01:11:34 I'm going to continue doing that and hopefully it's not weird.
1149. 01:11:38 Or maybe it is weird.
1150. 01:11:39 It's okay.
1151. 01:11:41 That actually begins to get into this last section.
1152. 01:11:44 So let's go to part three next, which is what is stopping you.
1153. 01:11:49 This is basically where she disarms a lot of the excuses.
1154. 01:11:53 Starting with chapter nine, "I can't shift."
1155. 01:11:55 Chapter 10, "Beware fatal distractions."
1156. 01:11:58 Chapter 11 is "Work hazards."
1157. 01:12:00 And then chapter 12 is, "Can people change?"
1158. 01:12:03 All right, so chapter nine, "I can't shift."
1159. 01:12:05 This is all about limiting beliefs and knowing yourself.
1160. 01:12:09 And this is kind of where she talks about journaling, providing an opportunity for mindfulness.
1161. 01:12:15 And this is another version of talking to yourself.
1162. 01:12:17 Yep.
1163. 01:12:18 Right?
1164. 01:12:19 But she says that you can't thrive when you carry a backpack full of junk food motivation.
1165. 01:12:23 And I point and it's like, "Oh, she's reading my mail."
1166. 01:12:28 So there's a lot in this that is going to force you to take a hard look at yourself.
1167. 01:12:33 And if you bought into the self-determination theory, you're comfortable with that.
1168. 01:12:37 If not, I can see why this would, you might just disconnect at this point altogether.
1169. 01:12:43 Chapter 10, "Beware fatal distractions."
1170. 01:12:46 This is kind of where she talks about how the world is energy.
1171. 01:12:49 And the real question is, "What are you doing with it?"
1172. 01:12:52 So we can just get sucked up into the busyness or we can be intentional and direct our intention
1173. 01:12:58 where we want it to go.
1174. 01:13:00 We can be in power of it or not.
1175. 01:13:03 But the last part in, well, chapter 11 is work hazards.
1176. 01:13:07 And this is where she encourages you to look beyond the incentives and working for the
1177. 01:13:11 wrong reasons will ultimately diminish your results.
1178. 01:13:14 She talks about connection network, which I think is really important.
1179. 01:13:17 And she mentions that connection is eroded when you experience unfairness.
1180. 01:13:22 So that is really something for me to be considering with working with the team.
1181. 01:13:31 I don't have an accident associated with that, but that was one of those things like, "Hey,
1182. 01:13:34 kind of look for this, right?
1183. 01:13:36 See if you can recognize what it's happening and do what you can to avoid it."
1184. 01:13:39 But the last part, I think, is the really cool part.
1185. 01:13:42 We're all constantly changing.
1186. 01:13:44 So yes, people can change.
1187. 01:13:46 Everything everyone goes through predictable stages of concern during a change.
1188. 01:13:50 So it always is going to feel weird at first and you don't have to feel bad about that.
1189. 01:13:54 But then there are questions that you can ask yourself, which kind of gets you thinking
1190. 01:13:58 about things through the right lens.
1191. 01:14:00 Again, I love me some questions.
1192. 01:14:02 So what choices do I have?
1193. 01:14:04 What meaning can I make from all of this?
1194. 01:14:06 What can I learn?
1195. 01:14:07 You know, those are just some examples of questions.
1196. 01:14:10 I'm sure there's lots of other ones that you could use.
1197. 01:14:12 But what I really like about these questions is it's all based on what am I going to make
1198. 01:14:18 of the situation that I am in.
1199. 01:14:20 It's not how am I going to change the situation?
1200. 01:14:23 How am I going to change my circumstances?
1201. 01:14:25 Although what choices maybe is a little bit in that direction.
1202. 01:14:28 But then like what meaning can I make from all of this?
1203. 01:14:30 All of this doesn't change.
1204. 01:14:32 But the meaning that I glean from it, that absolutely can change.
1205. 01:14:37 Or what can I learn from this season or this failure that I find myself in the middle of?
1206. 01:14:42 Well, I can take something from that, something positive and I can use that next time.
1207. 01:14:46 So I think that's a really cool way to end the book.
1208. 01:14:50 Yes.
1209. 01:14:51 That kind of left me with can people change when I read the title?
1210. 01:14:57 I was like, well, yeah.
1211. 01:15:00 Duh.
1212. 01:15:01 Yes, you can change.
1213. 01:15:04 That's probably going back to mindset with Carol Dweck.
1214. 01:15:07 So that to me was an obvious one.
1215. 01:15:10 I think that's a rhetorical question to be honest.
1216. 01:15:13 I think so too.
1217. 01:15:15 You're supposed to, well, yeah, of course people can change because the next question then
1218. 01:15:19 is, well, why don't they?
1219. 01:15:20 Correct.
1220. 01:15:21 Yes.
1221. 01:15:22 And that's kind of where I was going.
1222. 01:15:23 I was like, well, yeah, people can't change.
1223. 01:15:26 But that's pretty much an obvious point at this time.
1224. 01:15:31 Like everybody knows that.
1225. 01:15:32 Yes, you can change things.
1226. 01:15:34 The trick here is she goes through the process of explaining that changing a situation doesn't
1227. 01:15:41 necessarily mean changing the situation.
1228. 01:15:45 It primarily means changing you and the way you're perceiving a situation.
1229. 01:15:52 And that's convicting in itself.
1230. 01:15:58 I don't really want to come to grips with that one because it means that I'm going to
1231. 01:16:03 have to change things.
1232. 01:16:04 My motivations are going to change because it's all in my head in making that edit.
1233. 01:16:12 So yes, there's a lot of good that can come from just realizing in my own mind what it
1234. 01:16:21 is that what can lead to that change.
1235. 01:16:25 So I just have to come to grips with that.
1236. 01:16:27 It's not necessarily something that is an enjoyable process, but it is a good one to
1237. 01:16:33 work through.
1238. 01:16:34 Yeah, anything else you want to talk about in this?
1239. 01:16:38 Or should we wrap it up there?
1240. 01:16:41 I am good to wrap it up.
1241. 01:16:43 All right.
1242. 01:16:44 Well, let's go into action items then.
1243. 01:16:47 I have two of them with this book.
1244. 01:16:52 The first one I mentioned already and that is to make a list of what I value.
1245. 01:16:59 But the other one comes from that same chapter.
1246. 01:17:02 I don't think I mentioned this one.
1247. 01:17:04 That is to craft my own credo.
1248. 01:17:05 Maybe I did talk about this.
1249. 01:17:07 The word credo.
1250. 01:17:08 I don't really like she use some examples.
1251. 01:17:12 This is just like a rallying cry for yourself personally.
1252. 01:17:16 I've got the core values.
1253. 01:17:17 I've got the life theme.
1254. 01:17:21 I want to though create kind of like a manifesto.
1255. 01:17:25 I think I talked about this previously and I've done some work on it, but this gave me
1256. 01:17:31 inspiration to go back and revisit it.
1257. 01:17:34 I don't know if this is going to be for me personally or something a little bit larger.
1258. 01:17:39 One of the things I've been thinking about is faith-based productivity is my brand.
1259. 01:17:42 What does that even mean?
1260. 01:17:45 I actually have this idea to create a faith-based productivity manifesto.
1261. 01:17:50 I think that that is going to be very much a personal manifesto, but I might make it
1262. 01:17:56 public and share it with people also.
1263. 01:17:58 I'm going to commit to working on this.
1264. 01:18:00 I don't know if it's going to be finished by next time.
1265. 01:18:02 I'm going to do some work on my manifesto/credo.
1266. 01:18:06 How about you?
1267. 01:18:08 I'll take on one just because this will make it a little bit easier to put.
1268. 01:18:13 I've been trying to think about this as we've been recording here, but I want to work through
1269. 01:18:17 these three C's on three different situations.
1270. 01:18:21 I'm going to do my best to document some of this in my own notes that I can share next
1271. 01:18:27 time because I think it would be interesting to see some of this in practice.
1272. 01:18:31 I've been struggling to figure out how to explain some of this on the show.
1273. 01:18:34 I want to work through some of this, and then that should help, at least for me, try to
1274. 01:18:41 submit some of the details here.
1275. 01:18:43 I want to give it a run because this seems like the sort of thing that could be pretty
1276. 01:18:49 life-changing, but I want to prove that.
1277. 01:18:54 How do I summarize your action item?
1278. 01:18:57 The way I wrote it was worked through the three C's on three situations.
1279. 01:19:03 That's the way I wrote it on my own notes.
1280. 01:19:06 All right.
1281. 01:19:07 Style and rating?
1282. 01:19:09 Go for it.
1283. 01:19:11 I picked this book.
1284. 01:19:13 I will go first, and I will share that I really enjoyed this book.
1285. 01:19:18 I don't really know what I was expecting other than I wanted something good about motivation.
1286. 01:19:23 I feel like this book delivered.
1287. 01:19:25 Thank you, Martin, for the recommendation.
1288. 01:19:29 It's a short book.
1289. 01:19:31 It's 150 pages-ish, but it's pretty big type.
1290. 01:19:36 It's pretty visual.
1291. 01:19:38 I didn't track the time that I spent reading this one, but felt like I could crank through
1292. 01:19:43 it pretty quickly.
1293. 01:19:44 Did you feel the same way?
1294. 01:19:45 Yeah.
1295. 01:19:46 It was a fast read for me.
1296. 01:19:48 It was one of those that I've been reading a couple other books, primarily one in the
1297. 01:19:54 meantime, because this one was pretty quick and easy.
1298. 01:19:58 Yep.
1299. 01:19:59 I will say, I was nervous when I got the book and looked at the title, "Three Scientific
1300. 01:20:04 Truths for Achieving Your Goals."
1301. 01:20:07 You pointed out goals, Mike, you good with this?
1302. 01:20:10 Right.
1303. 01:20:11 Yep.
1304. 01:20:12 There really wasn't a whole lot around goal setting.
1305. 01:20:16 Maybe I would, if I was writing this pick a different subtitle, but I understand why she
1306. 01:20:20 did that.
1307. 01:20:21 I mean, everybody is pretty familiar with and really she's talking about the motivation
1308. 01:20:26 to follow through and do the things that are important.
1309. 01:20:28 Right.
1310. 01:20:29 So this is a perfect compliment to all of the books that we've done on habits, like atomic
1311. 01:20:36 habits and tiny habits specifically.
1312. 01:20:40 I feel this book is a good compliment to those two.
1313. 01:20:43 Tiny Habits Kinda talks a little bit about some of this stuff, but I feel like Susan Fowler
1314. 01:20:47 does a great job of addressing the topic directly and doing it succinctly.
1315. 01:20:54 And like I mentioned, there's obviously a lot of science and research that has gone into
1316. 01:21:00 this that is evident in the way that it's written.
1317. 01:21:03 There's a lot of personal stories of people who work through this stuff, which honestly,
1318. 01:21:07 towards the end, I found myself kind of skipping through some of those.
1319. 01:21:11 But I don't think there's a whole lot of fluff in this book.
1320. 01:21:17 So pleasantly surprised by it.
1321. 01:21:19 I actually like the three parts.
1322. 01:21:22 I feel like they're packaged really, really well, especially once I got to the end of
1323. 01:21:26 this book felt like, you know, that was really well written.
1324. 01:21:31 And I think this is one that just about everybody should read.
1325. 01:21:36 I don't have any other books on motivation to compare it to.
1326. 01:21:40 I know somebody mentioned Drive by Daniel Pink in the chat.
1327. 01:21:46 But I have not read that one.
1328. 01:21:48 And from what I understand talks about these same concepts, but has some different terms
1329. 01:21:53 for it.
1330. 01:21:54 I also know that one's quite a bit longer than this one.
1331. 01:21:57 So I don't know.
1332. 01:21:58 I feel like you really can't go wrong if you're interested in this topic at all.
1333. 01:22:02 This is a pretty great read.
1334. 01:22:06 How do I rate this book?
1335. 01:22:08 I don't know.
1336. 01:22:10 Because I feel like it's really good.
1337. 01:22:12 I feel very inspired walking away from it.
1338. 01:22:14 I feel like all of this stuff is instantly applicable to me.
1339. 01:22:21 You do have to kind of wrestle through the fact that if I'm just now coming to the topic
1340. 01:22:26 of motivation, is this book really that life changing?
1341. 01:22:29 I don't have a track record to support that one way or the other.
1342. 01:22:35 But that's really the only thing negative I can say about it.
1343. 01:22:38 So I think that's going to keep me from rating it five stars, but I am going to rate it four
1344. 01:22:42 and a half.
1345. 01:22:44 I really have trouble picturing a book about motivation that I would have enjoyed more
1346. 01:22:53 than this one.
1347. 01:22:54 And again, I kind of went into it with a side eye like I'm interested, but I'm not sure
1348. 01:23:00 this is exactly what I'm looking for.
1349. 01:23:03 And what I got was something I really enjoyed.
1350. 01:23:07 And I think is going to be very largely beneficial and very generalizable to just about anybody
1351. 01:23:12 in the bookworm audience, even if you feel like you don't struggle with motivation.
1352. 01:23:17 I feel like there's very clear framework here for you to figure out how to make it even
1353. 01:23:24 better.
1354. 01:23:25 And so it's not going to give you these are the things that you need to do.
1355. 01:23:28 You have to manufacture that yourself, but it gives you the understanding of the levers
1356. 01:23:33 that you can pull.
1357. 01:23:34 And I think it's a really good book.
1358. 01:23:36 So thanks Martin for the recommendation.
1359. 01:23:39 So I have to say that the whole goals thing, I'll say this, I have this book sitting on
1360. 01:23:47 the table.
1361. 01:23:48 A lot of times I'm reading over breakfast or right before breakfast.
1362. 01:23:51 And it's usually sitting on the table and my wife will see it.
1363. 01:23:54 And I'm always interested to know what her opinion of it is because she is not a self-help
1364. 01:23:58 business book person and thinks that it's a little bit ridiculous from time to time,
1365. 01:24:03 some of these.
1366. 01:24:04 And this one was like the epitome of all the things that are like make funnable when it comes
1367. 01:24:08 to these types of books.
1368. 01:24:10 It looks like it was designed in Microsoft Word on the front cover almost.
1369. 01:24:15 And three scientific truths for achieving your goals.
1370. 01:24:17 Like it sounds kind of like a cheesy subtitle, right?
1371. 01:24:20 But at the same time, once you get through the first couple chapters, like she's kind
1372. 01:24:27 of got you hooked at that point.
1373. 01:24:29 And it's one of these that I kind of wish that there was a little bit more from an editor's
1374. 01:24:36 stance on setting this up.
1375. 01:24:39 I feel like the title and subtitle and stuff, they don't really do it justice.
1376. 01:24:44 It's one of those don't judge a book by its cover scenarios, even though like the cover
1377. 01:24:49 is kind of what we use in a lot of ways to pick books.
1378. 01:24:52 Like that, a recommendation in a short bio is sometimes all it takes to make it onto
1379. 01:24:58 bookworm despite some of the marketing emails that people send us from time to time.
1380. 01:25:04 So like I feel like this one doesn't really do it justice for what's inside of it.
1381. 01:25:08 So there's a lot of really good stuff in here.
1382. 01:25:11 I think this is one that's going to kind of permeate a lot of different arenas and have
1383. 01:25:18 a longer term impact.
1384. 01:25:20 That's my suspicion.
1385. 01:25:21 Of course, I have no way to prove that right now.
1386. 01:25:25 But that's that's my speculation at this moment.
1387. 01:25:27 Again, I don't think the like when I was starting going through it was like I was very skeptical,
1388. 01:25:33 like you giving it the side eye goals, huh?
1389. 01:25:36 Yep.
1390. 01:25:37 All right, here we go.
1391. 01:25:38 This will be interesting.
1392. 01:25:39 What are you doing, Mike?
1393. 01:25:40 Like I know you kind of look at me sideways whenever I pick certain books.
1394. 01:25:44 This was me looking at you sideways when you picked this one and going through it though,
1395. 01:25:49 I'm fairly convinced that this might have a very big long term impact.
1396. 01:25:57 And I think that whether or not you fall into the category of someone who struggles with
1397. 01:26:02 motivation or not, you're probably going to pick up some good stuff from this.
1398. 01:26:07 So like you, I'm grateful to Martin for recommending it.
1399. 01:26:12 Like you, I don't think it fits the five oh category.
1400. 01:26:17 So I'll join you at the 4.5.
1401. 01:26:19 I just feel like it's a really good book, but there are other really good books that
1402. 01:26:24 are better yet.
1403. 01:26:25 I just don't know what they would be in the world of motivation.
1404. 01:26:28 But 4.5 seems to be a pretty good spot for this one to land.
1405. 01:26:33 All right.
1406. 01:26:35 So let's put master your motivation on the shelf.
1407. 01:26:41 What's next, Joe?
1408. 01:26:43 Coming up next is a potentially controversial book, which will be an entertaining chat,
1409. 01:26:49 I'm sure.
1410. 01:26:50 12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson.
1411. 01:26:54 This is one that is written by a guy who it seems like people love or hate.
1412. 01:27:00 And I'm not sure which team is bigger than the other.
1413. 01:27:05 I know that they're both very large.
1414. 01:27:08 So it should be a good one.
1415. 01:27:12 It'll be fun.
1416. 01:27:14 All right.
1417. 01:27:15 And then after that.
1418. 01:27:17 Ah, after that, I don't know.
1419. 01:27:21 I do have to pick one.
1420. 01:27:22 Okay.
1421. 01:27:23 Well, this is what I'm going to pick.
1422. 01:27:25 This is one that Toby turned me on to was a recommendation by Ali Abdahl.
1423. 01:27:34 And Ali Abdahl, I find his book recommendations.
1424. 01:27:36 I either absolutely love them or I completely disagree with them.
1425. 01:27:40 Usually I can tell right from the video that he's recommending it.
1426. 01:27:45 This one, I feel like this one I have a pretty good feeling about.
1427. 01:27:51 So this one was recommended to me by Ali Abdahl via Toby who watched the video and then
1428. 01:27:57 I went back and looked at it and like, yeah, this one sounds pretty cool.
1429. 01:28:00 The Pathless Path by Paul Millard, imagining a news story for work in life.
1430. 01:28:08 So we're inviting some existential crisis into our lives maybe, but this one, I've heard
1431. 01:28:14 some good things about and I'm going to drag you along.
1432. 01:28:18 The whole crisis.
1433. 01:28:20 That sounds exciting.
1434. 01:28:21 Well, it should be entertaining at the very least.
1435. 01:28:26 Yes.
1436. 01:28:28 I promise that is not how we pick books.
1437. 01:28:30 It's usually something we're somewhat interested in at least.
1438. 01:28:34 Well, I am interested in this one.
1439. 01:28:36 I think I'm at the point where maybe you could call it a midlife crisis, right?
1440. 01:28:42 But I'm just reevaluating where am I at in my life?
1441. 01:28:45 Where do I want the rest of what do I want the rest of my life to be about?
1442. 01:28:48 I mean, that's part of my mission and all the personal retreat stuff kind of contributes
1443. 01:28:54 to that as well.
1444. 01:28:55 But it's just been something I've been thinking a lot about and this book looks pretty legit.
1445. 01:29:00 So I want to dig into it and hopefully it helps a few other folks along the way.
1446. 01:29:08 Cool.
1447. 01:29:09 All right.
1448. 01:29:10 Well, thank you everyone for listening.
1449. 01:29:14 Thank you to everybody who attended the live recordings.
1450. 01:29:16 Please reminder if you are in the Bookworm Club, which you totally should be, there are
1451. 01:29:20 events which show you when these recordings are going to happen and links to the YouTube
1452. 01:29:25 live pages so you can join in the chat.
1453. 01:29:29 If you want to be extra awesome, you can sign up to support the club and become a pro member,
1454. 01:29:35 five bucks a month, 50 bucks a year.
1455. 01:29:37 You get access to the book note files that I create, the Mind Node files.
1456. 01:29:42 So we've got both PDFs and the editable Mind Node files.
1457. 01:29:45 You get the Bookworm wallpaper and you get actually three different feeds for the show.
1458. 01:29:49 You got the normal one, you get the pro show, which is the ad free version and then the
1459. 01:29:54 bootleg, which gets uploaded after the live recording.
1460. 01:29:58 So you get a little bit early and you get to hear all of the mistakes that Joe and I
1461. 01:30:02 make and how stupid we sound.
1462. 01:30:04 So if you want to make fun of us, we make zero mistakes zero.
1463. 01:30:09 That is false.
1464. 01:30:11 But if you want to make fun of us, that's the one to listen to.
1465. 01:30:16 Yes, that'll be very fun.
1466. 01:30:18 Also if you want to get to the pro membership thing, I also put it in another redirect I
1467. 01:30:22 should tell you about Mike.
1468. 01:30:23 It's bookworm.fm/pro.
1469. 01:30:24 So you can get there/membership/pro either one.
1470. 01:30:28 To me, pro just seemed easier because I am what we call lazy.
1471. 01:30:32 So there's that.
1472. 01:30:33 Also if you're one of these amazing people who reads along with us, pick up 12 rules
1473. 01:30:37 for life, Jordan B. Peterson, and we'll cover that one with you in a couple of weeks.