- Good morning, believe nation.
My name is Evan Carmichael.
My one word is believe and I believe that
entrepreneurs will solve all of the world's
major problems.
So to help you on your journey, today's
message is, motivation is garbage.
Over to you, Mel Robbins.
(rooster crowing)
♫ I wake up every morning,
♫ Espresso keep me going.
♫ I wake up every morning.
- We bought into this complete falsehood that
at some point you're going to have the courage.
At some point you're going to have the confidence.
And it's total bull, frankly.
Are we allowed to swear on this show?
- Absolutely.
- Okay.
It's complete garbage.
And so there are so many people in the world,
and you may be watching this right now, and
you have these incredible ideas and what you
think is missing is motivation.
And that's not true.
Because the way that our minds are wired,
and the fact about human beings is that we
are not designed to do things that are uncomfortable
or scary or difficult.
Our brains are designed to protect us from those things.
Because our brains are trying to keep us alive.
And in order to change, in order to build a business,
in order to be the best parent, the best spouse, to
do all those things that you know you want to do
with your life, with your work, with your dreams,
you're going to have to do things that are difficult,
uncertain or scary, which sets up this problem
for all of us.
You're never going to feel like it.
Motivation is garbage.
You only feel motivated to do the things that
are easy, right?
- Why do you think that is?
- Oh, I know exactly why that is.
Because I've studied this so much, because for me,
one of the hardest things to figure out was
why is it so hard to do the
little things that would improve my life?
And what I've come to realize and what we'll talk
a lot about today is that the way that our minds
are designed, is our minds are designed to stop you
at all costs from doing anything that might hurt you.
And the way that this all happens is, it all starts
with something super subtle that none of us ever catch,
and that is with this habit that all of us have
that nobody's talking about.
We all have a habit of hesitating.
We have an idea.
You're sitting in a meeting.
You have this incredible idea.
And instead of just saying it, you stop and
you hesitate.
Now, what none of us realize is that when you
hesitate just that moment, that micro-moment,
that small hesitation, it sends a stress signal
to your brain.
It wakes your brain up and your brain all of a sudden
goes oh, wait a minute.
Why is he hesitating?
He didn't hesitate when he put on his killer
spiky sneakers.
He didn't hesitate with the really cool track pants.
He didn't hesitate with the NASA t-shirt.
Now he's hesitating to talk, something must be up.
So then your brain goes to work to protect you.
It has a million different ways to protect you.
One of them is called the spotlight effect.
It's a known phenomenon where your brain magnifies risk.
Why?
To pull you away from something that it perceives
to be a problem.
And so you can truly trace every single problem or
complaint in your life to silence and hesitation.
Those are decisions.
And what I do and what's changed my life is
waking up and realizing that motivation is garbage.
I'm never going to feel like doing the things that
are tough or difficult or uncertain or scary or new.
So I need to stop waiting until I feel like it.
And number two, I am one decision away from
a totally different marriage, a totally different life,
a totally different job, a totally different income,
a totally different relationship with my kids.
Not like one decision, I'm divorcing you,
in the marriage example.
But one decision on, you could be having a
conversation with your spouse and you feel
your emotions rise up and within a tiny window
those emotions can take over and can impact
how your marriage goes.
Or, you can learn how to take control of that
micro-moment and make a decision to act in a way
that actually shifts your marriage.
Your life comes down to your decisions and if
you change your decisions, you will change everything.
- So I don't know that I agree completely that
motivation is absolute garbage.
I've seen motivation work for me.
I've put on a Tony Robbins CD and then want
to go off and do amazing things and I did.
I took action.
I took all my gear and I went out and would
do something that I was afraid of doing and
I took action on it.
So I know that it can work.
The challenge is, we don't have Tony Robbins
chasing around us all the time telling us
to go and do something.
And that kind of motivation is super short.
I don't wake up every day, life is amazing,
I can't wait to go crush it, this is insane.
And so that kind of motivation comes in bursts
and I think can be helpful, but it's hard to
keep a consistent and practical and ongoing basis.
Because even if I listen to that CD again or
even if I watch that video again, it starts to
lose its impact.
If you watch the same video over and over and over
again, the first time it might be really motivating.
It might make you go do something.
And then you watch it again and the impact's
not there, and the third, fourth, by the time you
get to the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth,
tenth time, it's like yeah, I've heard that message before.
You know, I've heard that.
And it's not motivating anymore.
And so that's why it's really hard to keep that
external motivation going.
I think what's much more practical, at least for me
I've seen it work consistently in my life, is one,
having an environment that is designed to help you
be more successful.
So figure out what you want and where it is.
Mine is believe.
I want to have an environment that makes me believe
in myself and the great things that I'm trying to do
on a daily basis, on a consistent basis.
The habits that you have on a consistent basis,
the people that you surround yourself with,
the media that you consume, the books that you read,
your physical environment, it all matters.
It all has an impact, every single day.
And the confidence that I've gained over the past
few years and how much of this come out on the
videos that I've made for you guys, is in great
part due to the videos that I've watched,
the videos on my channel.
By surrounding myself consistently with
successful people.
Not just entrepreneurs, people.
The way they act, the things they say,
their mindset, the way they interpret information.
The patterns start to consistently come in,
over and over and over again, whether it's a
Michael Jordan or a Mel Robbins or an
Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bill Gates or Tony Robbins
or whoever it is.
You start to see that these people think
in a certain way.
And the more you see it, not just what they
say to do, not just do this step,
but how they do it, how they react to questions,
being around them.
Because I can't be around Steve Jobs, right?
He passed away.
I'm not going to go visit his grave.
I can't be around him anymore.
But I can with the videos.
At least it works well for me.
And the more I'm around that, the more it
makes me want to raise up my game.
The more it makes me feel like I want to
go off and do bigger things.
And it's allowed me to have bolder goals,
to be more controversial, to be more myself,
to be more outgoing, to chase bigger things,
to challenge people more.
I keep doing it, right?
And so I think the environment that you have
when you have the self-awareness to know what
your one word is and build an environment around it
and habits and routines really is important.
The second thing I would say about motivation is,
I like to do trade-offs around short-term fear
and long-term fear.
And so the trick is catching the fear.
And the trick is catching yourself when you're in
the moment, when you're playing small, when
you're not doing the big thing you should be doing,
when you're just super afraid and you disguise it
as some practical reason.
You've convinced yourself there's a logical reason
why you're not doing it.
We just naturally play small when somebody asks
you to do things.
Come on my YouTube channel and be a guest.
And most people are like, oh, that's too big
an opportunity.
And I'm like, you have this opportunity!
And then they justify it with all these reasons, right?
I'm not ready.
I don't have a good message.
I don't have the gear.
I don't have a webcam.
I don't have a microphone.
All of these reasons why they can't do it but really,
they're just afraid.
That's the problem, they're just afraid.
But it's catching the fear.
They're not catching it.
They're pushing it off with practicality
but it's really fear.
And so I try to catch that fear and then replace
it with longer-term bigger fear.
That's it.
So this one thing that I'm afraid of doing
versus one hundred years old, looking back on my life,
you know, sixty years of regret.
That's scary.
That's what I try to avoid.
I tell this story about this girl in Paris
that I met where I wanted to ask her out
and I didn't and I was too afraid and
I took a picture and I didn't actually catch her
in the picture, I tried.
But I had this French scenery that I put up
on my wall at my university room, because it was
a reminder not to let opportunities pass by.
But the next time that I had an opportunity
to ask somebody out, to say yes to a business,
to do whatever the thing is I think in my head,
that would be cool to do.
But then the fear comes in.
I'm going to take action.
And looking at that poster every day reminded me
so that when I had that opportunity to join
a startup company a couple of months later
versus taking the job that I thought I always wanted,
I had that picture in my head saying,
this business may not work out.
This startup company that I'm about to join
may not work out.
Versus having this safe job that I thought
I always wanted, paying 80 to $100,000 a year.
But I didn't want to live with the regret.
I didn't want to live with the regret.
I could deal with the failure.
I could deal with the pain of it not working out.
I could give it six months or 12 months and if
it doesn't work out, but I know.
At least I know.
I should have asked that girl in France out.
So at least I know, right?
And ever since then I've tried to make that
same approach to important decisions in my life.
I try to ask myself, yes, I'm afraid of this.
If I can catch it, if I can catch the fear,
I'm afraid in the moment, but if I don't do this,
am I going to regret this for the rest of my life?
And if the answer is yes, then I know
I have to do it and I force myself to do it.
And it works.
At least, it works for me.
So the question of the day to day is,
I'm curious, what do you think of motivation?
How do you deal with?
Does it help you long-term, short-term?
I'm very curious about your habits and
your general thoughts on motivation.
Leave it down in the comments below.
I'm excited to see what you have to say.
I also want to give a quick shout to Mel Busolo.
Mel, thank you so much for picking up a copy
of my book, Your One Word.
It really means a lot to me and
I hope you enjoyed the read.
So thank you guys so much for watching.
I believe in you.
I hope you continue to believe in yourself
and whatever your one word is.
Much love and I'll see you again tomorrow morning
for another shot of Ent-spresso
♫ I wake up every morning
♫ Espresso keep me going
- Decision making is a process, right?
The question is, what filters are you using
to make decisions.
Are you making decisions based on the financial
rewards or are you making decisions based
on how easy the work will be?
I mean, I remember in college they would give you
this book where all the students would rate
the classes and the would rate things like
how easy the class was, and how much they liked
the professor.
And the first year I picked all my classes based
on workload, and I picked everything a low workload.
And pretty bored, didn't work very hard, which
was fine, but nothing was dynamic and nothing
really excited me.
And I, thank goodness, learned that and so the
second year I picked all my classes by professor
rating, regardless of the workload.
So every class I had, I had these dynamic, amazing,
incredible human beings passing on their knowledge
and you were excited to work hard for them.
And so again, the question is, what are the filters
we're using?
So if you're only chasing the mighty dollar,
then you will have jobs that will pay you
a little more than the last, but
are you enjoying yourself?
And I talked to a guy recently, who was in,
he's in bad shape.
He really hates his life and he's really depressed
and he doesn't know what to do.
And so we're going through all his old jobs
and I said, give me a job that you've loved.
And he hadn't.
Every single job he's chosen out of college,
he picked because of the money and if something
offered him more somewhere else, he took it, regardless.
And the amazing thing is, he plateaued.
Because if you're only chasing the result, if you're only
chasing the thing that makes it easy, right, then
eventually you will get bored or they'll get bored
of you, and you plateau.
In other words, chasing the almighty dollar,
if that's your only thing, it eventually flattens out.
Whereas if you're chasing the thing that excites you,
the human beings to be around, the work that excites you,
the stuff that, you know, you can get passionate about.
The irony is that you'll actually make way, way more.
Because you're excited and they appreciate your
excitement and they reward your excitement and you're
better at your work because you want to work harder
and all that stuff.
You don't have to strain to work harder.
So decision-making is simply a matter of filters.
And so I've made decisions in my life that I
would rather be happy than right.
I'd rather do good than get rich.
And so the decisions I make put me in positions where,
when I leave any engagement, when I leave any meeting,
I feel that I've contributed.
Rare are the times anymore when you walk around
going, just think of the money, just think of the money,
think of the money, you know.
Because that doesn't feel nice.
And the experience I have, I don't enjoy
traveling to them and I don't enjoy traveling home.
Where if I have an amazing experience, I am
looking forward to getting there and I'm excited
when I leave.
So it's just decision, decision-making is
just a matter of what filters you use and if
you're good about keeping those filters up and
clear, then make your decision.
I don't judge anybody by how, if they choose
to use different filters.
These are just the filters I choose to live my life.
Not right or wrong, just those are my decisions.
That's my filter.