More tools at DocSnipes.com
hey there everybody and welcome to this video that answers the question why do I give up so easily I'm your host Dr Donnelly Snipes first reason you may give up easily is a lack of motivation or
what behavioral analysts sometimes call Behavior strain when the effort to do something is more
intense than the rewards that are coming in you're probably not as motivated for example
if you're going to a job and you're getting paid 7.25 an hour you may be less motivated to get up
and go to work than if you're getting paid 25 an hour there are five different types of motivation
if you'll remember physical motivation is how does it improve the way I feel my energy my pain
my ability to sleep my health so if something has physical benefits to it we want to recognize that
affective motivation is how it makes you feel emotionally does it make you happy
does it make you curious or does it stress you out cognitive motivation is number one how it
logically makes sense cognitively I can look at it with my wise mind and say yes this is
the right thing to do to help me move toward my rich and meaningful life but also cognitively if
you are doing this Behavior whatever it is it helping you feel clear-headed and smart if you
will or is it just compounding your awareness of brain fog and difficulty concentrating
environmentally your motivation can be impacted by the people around you are they building you up do
they make you look forward to doing this or are they pulling you down and relationally what are
your motivations for doing this is engaging in whatever this behavior is is it going to improve
your relationships either with other people or with yourself with your friends with your family
with yourself we want to look at all of those relationships and say if I achieve this goal if
I accomplish this thing how is it going to impact my relationships or is pursuing this goal actually
hurting my relationships because it's sucking my time and energy away from them so you need
to look at your motivation and figure out why you want to do it and whether it's worth the effort
poor goal setting is the next problem that causes people to give up too easily if you will when you
don't set correct or effective smart goals it's difficult to know where to begin or what steps
to take in what order and how long they should take I know if I get furniture in the mail that I
have to put together I look at it and I kind of go cross-eyed because it's just it's overwhelming to
me so think about a thousand piece puzzle if you dump it out on the table how do you figure out the
best way to solve it do you flip all the pieces over first and then arrange them by color or shape
or do you put the frame together first how is it that you solve a puzzle you're setting goals for
what you need to do first I need to do this then I need to do this so it's not overwhelming and you
don't just sit there and look at all those pieces going I have no freaking clue where to start
training for a marathon is very similar you need to know how long is it going to take if
I want to train for a marathon can I expect to be able to go from being a couch potato to
running a marathon in six weeks well that's not realistic so that helps me identify how long it
should take how long should it take you know on average for me to be able to go from not working
out at all to running a mile in 11 minutes and progressing from there relationships are the
same way and I know you're like well we want to have goals in our relationship where do you
want to see this relationship going those are your goals and how are you going to get there
relationships don't just happen they need work you need to pay attention to them you need to
work on things and nurture that relationship and if you don't then the relationship is
likely going to dissolve you may give up on a relationship really quickly because you haven't
set those goals and haven't determined how you're going to handle different steps along the way
discomfort is another reason you may give up easily there's an old saying that change causes
crisis and crisis causes change when you're doing something you're probably changing in some way you
may be learning something a new skill or you may be trying something new but you may give up if
it's uncomfortable and this can be physical or emotional discomfort so for example when you're
learning a new sport like golf or football or hockey or tennis or whatever initially you may go
out there and you're using muscles you ain't used before and it can be really uncomfortable and you
may wake up the next morning and go oh and now not gonna do it and you give up because the Pain's too
much you went in and did too much too fast because you didn't set good goals and now you're in too
much pain and you're experiencing that behavior strain your brain saying this ain't worth it
emotional is also another type of discomfort if you're trying to learn this Sport and you're
out there and you're practicing and you're not getting any better or you're not getting better
as quickly as you think you quote should you may start to feel stressed or inadequate and give up
it's like I'll never get this right and give up so it's important again to recognize how long should
it take you to learn how to throw a tight spiral or how to serve the perfect serve in tennis or
whatever you're talking about hobbies are the same way if you're learning how to put together model
airplanes or whatever the hobby is if you do it too quickly it may cause you physical discomfort
two of my hobbies gardening and crochet you would think those are pretty benign Hobbies
but you use a lot of muscles doing both of those that you don't normally use with crochet there
are a lot of fine hand movements that can make aggravate tennis elbow and make your forearms
really sore and with gardening oh there's lots of muscles you use and if you do it too fast
and you don't and you're not careful about your your form for example it can cause physical pain
and then when you've got physical pain and you're not making progress on it you can get frustrated
and that can cause you emotional discomfort and then you may give up and then relationships again
are the same way hopefully relationships are not going to cause you physical pain in any sort of
way but they can cause you emotional discomfort as you start getting to know somebody and start to
trust them a little bit more and feel vulnerable you may start feeling terrified and then you just
say nope done I'm out of here because it's too scary or the first time you get into an argument
it may be too scary because you are fearful that they're going to reject you or abandon
you so you just cut bait you would rather be the one you would rather be the dumper
than the dump e so to speak so you're maintaining some sense of power and control
lack of knowledge is another reason people give up if you're doing something you've never done
before and you reach a sticking point and then you don't know how to keep going or you're not
willing to ask for help then you're probably just going to sit there stuck until you give up
Sports hobbies and relationships it applies pretty much everywhere but we're going
to continue to use these three different examples if you are trying to learn how to
serve a ball in tennis and you've watched YouTube and you've gone out there and tried and you're
just not getting it or you're still not able to get it the way you think it should be then what
do you do if you don't have the knowledge then you have to be willing to ask somebody who's an expert
to help you out in golf in tennis in a lot of sports other people that are watching you or
being videotaped and watching your tapes can give you more information to help you figure
out what you're doing wrong but then a lot of times it takes an expert to help you figure
out how to fix it so lack of knowledge can cause you to get stuck and then feel like it's hopeless
relationships again the same way which is why a lot of people go to couples counseling they get to
a place where they're at an impasse they're stuck and they don't know how to resolve the issue so
they seek out feedback from a counselor or a clergy member or a family member who can help them
move through somebody who has been there before or who knows how to get through this type of problem
if you can't then you just stay stuck and eventually give up
attention deficit well if you've got attention deficit whether it's because of a trauma history
or you have ADHD or whatever the reason if you're having difficulty focusing uh that's going to make
it harder to stay motivated and it's going to make it harder to stay focused especially on things you
don't want to do when you want to do something your brain releases dopamine that says oh yeah
let's keep doing this if you don't want to do something like your taxes or laundry or homework
then it's harder to make yourself stay focused so it's important to recognize that some of this is
neurochemical repeated distractions may cause you to feel like you're not making any progress so if
your attention deficit isn't necessarily because of ADHD or even if it is but if you're regularly
being distracted then you're not going to make progress as quickly because your attention and
energy is being pulled and so you're splitting your time and energy between what you need to
accomplish and everything else you may look at your progress and get frustrated and say I'm never
going to get this done I remember I felt that way about my dissertation many times and then give up
and a low frustration tolerance for complex tasks due to a Time intensive focus and this
is especially true of people who actually have ADHD things that require them to focus and pay
attention to detail for an extended period of time especially if it's not something they're
interested in can be maddening and when they start losing focus they get frustrated and
then that frustration turns into anger and irritability with themselves sets off the
stress response system makes it more difficult to focus and it's just a downward spiral from there
so attention deficit is important if you have difficulty focusing figure out why and what things
you can do in order to improve your focus and even sort of cajole or trick yourself into doing
things you don't like doing for example saying if I write this chapter or this paper that I've got
to write for school then I can go to the movies tonight or if I do this then I can do that so
you're setting rewards as soon as I get this done I can do something I enjoy and that can make it
easier or if it's something like folding laundry that you really hate to do pair it with something
that you like doing talking to your friend on the phone or watching television um or listening to a
television show while you're folding laundry there are ways to increase your dopamine
levels which increases your motivation and your attention uh four things that you don't like to do
impatience is another reason you may give up quickly which kind of goes along with
low frustration tolerance but impatience is thinking that you need to be an expert the
minute you start you need to be Joe Namath the minute you walk onto the football field
when you're six years old you need to be an expert painter like Bob Ross the minute you
open a canvas you need to be an expert at relationships as soon as you get into one
and that's just not how life works and even if you've been in relationships before or played
Sports before or done different Hobbies every situation is slightly unique so you're not
going to be an expert at how to handle things with this person in this relationship at this
time you're going to have to learn about that person a little bit and adjust along the way
exhaustion is another reason you may give up easily poor time management always saying yes
to other people yes I'll do this yes I'll help you with that yes I'll do that project well that may
be nice but that can make you get really exhausted and when you're tired it's harder to focus and
it's harder to stay motivated to do things and your frustration tolerance goes down significantly
forgetting is another reason with our busy lives it's easy to forget things that are not essential
to our daily lives however if you don't work on or nurture things that are important they will fail
so maybe you decided you're going to learn how to play tennis and that's wonderful and then but
you don't make a time three days a week to go out and play tennis you just say I'm going to practice
I'm going to go out and play tennis three days a week and then life happens and you start doing
what you need to do for life but unfortunately you forget or you don't make time to go and practice
the tennis and then all of a sudden a Year's passed and you've made zero progress and then
you get frustrated same thing with relationships and or Hobbies too but with relationships if you
forget to nurture those relationships they can dissolve you can give up on a relationship or
you can say you know now the relationship has deteriorated so much it's beyond help so it's
overwhelming and just fine peace out um so it's important to recognize that forgetting to use
your energy to nurture uh the relationship and to work on the relationship with regularity can
make it more difficult to keep it going and make you more likely to cut bait if you have not put
a lot of energy into it it's a whole lot easier to say you know that this isn't working see ya
powerlessness is another reason that people quit really easily and if you have a can't
do attitude or low self-efficacy and that's a belief that you can't do it that is also going
to contribute to quitting a lot more easily giving up a lot more easily because in the back of your
head you start something telling yourself ah you probably ain't going to be able to do this
and so you set yourself up for failure it's important to acknowledge what you
can do and what you don't know hey I want to do this I want to try to do this
but I'm going to have to learn and in order to learn I will take these steps
fear of failure and rejection is another reason that people give up really easily if you have
been raised to be perfectionistic that it's only good enough if it's perfect or you are only good
enough if you're perfect then you may quit really quickly on something so you don't have a lot
invested and you can back out and have an excuse for not completing it so you don't fear failure or
rejection you don't present a finished product and have somebody go yeah that's not quite it
if you have expectations of failure then you may give up easily like we just talked about and if
you self-handicap it is also a way of addressing fear of failure and fear of rejection if you know
that something has to be done but you just keep putting off doing it you keep procrastinating
that's a way of self-handicapping so if you do it and somebody doesn't like it you can say oh well I
ran out of time so you actually self-handicapped so you had an excuse for not doing it well and
I know that's not giving up so easily another example would be procrastinating to the point
that you can't get it done and then needing to ask for an extension and you just keep asking
for extensions because you don't want to turn in a finished product and re and risk rejection
the activity identify three to five things that you have given up on easily
review the reasons we just discussed and identify which ones contributed to your giving up
identify ways you might have been able to prevent those things from causing you to give up
and then identify one thing you're working on right now and what strategies now that
you know some of these different strategies or different issues what strategies can you use
to prevent giving up and to keep pushing forward to achieve whatever this goal is
behaviors communication people give up for very different reasons to increase your belief
that you can complete the things you start it's important to address the reasons that you give up
start with small tasks or goals to ensure success so start with
something you can accomplish in a day or a week and examine what may
make you give up there and then progress from there to some of the harder things