We make promises to ourselves all the time but are we keeping those promises?
How to get motivated to make changes in your life? Today at Live on purpose TV.
This is a question that comes up a lot because we want an upgrade. Have you
noticed this Dan? I always want upgrade. Everybody wants an upgrade. Right? How
do we get ourselves motivated to make those changes to actually improve or
upgrade our life? I want to introduce you today to Dan Hartman. Dan is a Live on
Purpose certified coach. That means he's been through the training and experience
to share the ideas that we teach here at Live on Purpose. And Dan, you've been
through some of your own experiences with this haven't you? I have Dr. Paul and
I'm always learning. Can you just share with our viewers today a little bit
about your story and where you're coming from? Because I think that's going to
create a context that helps them to see why your story is so relevant to this
topic? Absolutely, Dr. Paul. So, like that Dr. Paul said, Dan Hartman, I'm a Live on
Purpose certified coach. Dr. Paul has been a personal mentor of mine for 6
years and throughout the 6 years we've had a lot of great experiences and talks
and one of the things I've always want to learn more about in my business life,
and my personal life is "Dr. Paul, how can I get more motivated what can I do to be
better in life?" And discussion we were having two years ago, was I wanted to be
more motivated and doing better with my health. At the time, I just wasn't
exercising very much and I came in here and I gave them all the reasons why. Okay,
well this a busier work and to have this and this going on. Oh, there's always 10
15 there always is. But Dr. Paul cut through that pretty quickly. And I said,
"Dr. Paul, how do I get motivated? I want to get motivated? What can I do for
motivation? So, I can exercise more and be more active?" So, Dr. Paul asked me two
questions that day. The first question you said, "Do, you have a checkbook on you
and how much is in your bank account?" Now, first of all, I was really really curious
whether you're asking that. And it's really interesting because A, I never
carry a cheque book with me. I write one or two checks a year if
that. And B, I usually only have maybe, you know, a couple thousand dollars in my
bank account to cover the expenses. But that day for whatever reason I had a
checkbook with me in my laptop back. And I also had $10,000 in my
checking account because I had received a sales bonus about a week before that I
had not yet allocated to anything. So, Dr. Paul said, "Dan, you have $10,000
in your account, you have a checkbook. I want you to write me a check
for $5,000." Now, I trust this man. You got nervous at that point. I actually
got excited and wondering, "Okay, this is kind of cool." But I got more nervous when
you told me what you're going to do with it. Ah. So, I wrote Dr. Paul a check for
$5,000. In fact, I have a check right here. Oh, you brought the check? I brought the check right
here. In fact, 2 years ago, right there. June 16th, 2016 for $5,000. And I put in
here life advice on the, you know, life of my demo. I remember that. So, I gave him
this check and then he said, "Okay, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to put this
in a file and you, over the next 21 days are going to walk for a mile a day." And he
said, "Dan, if you don't walk a mile a day, if you miss one day, I'm cashing your
check. And that's when I got scared. Can I add something here Dan? Because have you
noticed that sometimes, people have different recollections of the same
story? And the way I'm remembering this Dan, I had asked you what is it that
you've been promising yourself? Yeah. That you would do? Right? Because we do this
all the time we make promises to ourselves. And then we find ourselves not
keeping those promises or coming up with those 10 or 15 reasons why we,
why we can or why it's hard or why it's not going to work for us. Yeap. And I
remember as I was talking to you about this, I asked you, "What is it that you're
promising yourself to do?" Well, I'm promising myself that I'm going to get
more active, I'm going to get out and move and and work on my health. Well, what
do you mean? Well, like walking, okay? And and the goal or the promise came from
you. That's true, okay. I think that's important because you're
not doing this for me. Correct, yeah. I'm here to help you get out of your own way
so that you can do what you're promising yourself. And I remember you said, "I think
I could walk a mile a day, I could do that." And we spent some time making
sure that you were committed. That's right. Thank you for that. And that is
what I wanted to do. I mean, at the time, I just wanted to get started and I wanted
to be consistent in something. Right. And then this brings up a very important
principle about how to get motivated and that talks about pleasure
versus pain. See, at the time, my version of pleasure was sitting on the couch
watching Netflix for an hour. My version of pain was putting on my tennis shoes
and walking a mile. But I knew that it wasn't pleasurable long-term because
I was out of shape, I wasn't happy, I wanted to have more energy so I could
run around with my son. That's why I was talk to Dr. Paul. I wanted to give
motivated. So, I knew in my mind that, "Yes, I need to walk and walking is good." But I
didn't find that motivation. So, what Paul was able to do and what he told me
going back to this story is he said again, "If you don't do this one of these
days, I'm going to cash this check." And you said, "I will." Oh, I promised. I believed you.
And so, here I leave this, I leave his office that was like 4:30 in the
afternoon and I go home that day and I actually had a date that night. At 6
o'clock p.m. And I actually texted her and said, "Hey, I got some things that came
up. Is there any way we can meet at 7 o'clock?" Because, I wasn't going to go on
this date thinking about, "I had to get my walk done that day." So, I did my mile
walk and then I was so worried about losing that money. Because that $5,000
meant way more to me then walking a mile a day. This is what we're going to talk
about about what means more in the pain of the pleasure. Right. So, because that
$5,000 meant more to me, way more losing that than walking a mile a day, I was
making sure it happened. It happened. So, I had on my phone an alarm every day at 8
o'clock that said, "Did you go on your walk?" I had a second alarm on my phone
that said, "Are you sure you went on your walk?' Ah, I love it.
I'm serious. I had a third alarm on my phone there says, "Are you sure, you're
sure?" Because I didn't... You know, I'll get phone alarms or I call and dismiss that,
I'll do that later. I did not want to think that I was going to miss that. But here's what
happened. As I went through that 21 days. Every day I was like, "Oh, yeah I got to get
my walk, I'm going to get my walk done." Got to check that box. Don't lose that $5,000.
But slowly, I started enjoying the walk. I enjoyed being out there in nature,
I enjoyed the the serenity from walking and I enjoyed the thinking and I really
started to see the pleasure of the walking. Going back to that pleasure and
pain principle. Right. By the end of the 21 days. I didn't miss a day and again, I
came back in and got my check from you. Yes you did. But the point there was the
reason why I was motivated to do that as I had this pain of "If I didn't do that, I
would lose this money." Now, all of us just can't find a friend and get half of our
checking account to someone and say, "Hey, will you hold me accountable to that." So,
let's talk about the principle of the pain of the pleasure in that moment, Dr.
Paul. Right. This is such a great example, Dan. That you've illustrated with your
story. There's all kinds of reasons to avoid doing what we've promised
ourselves that we will do. Yep. That's the pain part. And there's all kinds of great
reasons why we've promised ourselves to do it in the first place. That's the
pleasure. And so, we have this approach avoidance conflict to that happens. And this
is true in your example, Dan. As you're talking about the walking, what about
your business? What about your relationships? Are there other places
where this might apply? And I think that it does apply because we're talking
about principles. What we did with the check, I'm so glad you kept that.
That is so much fun. You want back. No, I think you
should frame it somewhere. Use it in your coaching of people because that's a
compelling story. What we did with the check was we manipulated your pain. Yes.
That is simply what the check was all about. We've manipulated your pain to
where you felt, "I no longer can avoid this because the
pain of not doing what I've promised I would do is now greater than the pain of
actually doing it." Absolutely. And you get to have pain
either way. You know what, Dan? Maybe you could
talk about that for a second too. Because we kid ourselves sometimes into thinking
that the now pain is the greater pain. When really the later pain is what
causes the most distress for us. You have thought about. Yeah. So, think
about our minds our minds are these amazing things and our brains are always
wanting to protect us. You know, back in the day when we were cavemen running
away from lions trying to kill us. It's a fight-or-flight. Our brains,
they want to protect us from what it feels is painful things but not always
is it in our best interest. And so, we really have to kind of do a brain hack.
We have to remap to tell our brains that, "What I'm doing is actually pleasurable."
Because if our brain thinks it's pain, we're going to say hey, "I'm
motivated, I want to do this, and our brain is going to say, "Oh, guess what? That's
painful, let's not do that." So, let's go back to my example here. Sitting on the couch
watching Netflix is that pleasurable or painful? It's pretty pleasurable. I
probably have a soda in my hand, enjoying whatever I'm watching. It's pleasurable
in the moment. And I'm not saying Netflix is bad. There's always balance in
everything. But when I was not exercising and I was doing that all the time, the
pleasure was kind of wearing off. So, the pain of going on a walk, "Man, I got to get
up." I kept on with tennis shoes on, I got to get outside, I got a little walk and I
could just sit on the couch. So, we're talking about the now pleasure and pain.
Well, let's take it on the later. Let's say I never exercised and I just sat
there and watch Netflix every day with my soda. So, the pleasure is, "Yeah I got to
do very much. It's still enjoyable." But the long-term pain of not getting
exercise all of a sudden is, I'm out of shape. I don't have as much energy, I
can't run around with my son and play basketball, I don't have as much
confidence. So, let's take those and it's flip it around and make those our
pleasure. Now, I have energy. I'm outside of nature, I'm feeling confident about
myself and actions begets action. When we start to
feel things, it begins further action. So, if we're doing positive things, those are
going to turn into other positive things that we're doing. So, all of a sudden, we
flip it around and this says and again, we're going to extremes here. If all I'm
doing is sitting and watching TV, that is actually now the painful thing and the
pleasurable thing is being out and walking around, getting that exercising.
So, all of a sudden when we convince our mind of that, our mind is then, "Yes, let's
get our tennis shoes on." Because I know the long-term pleasure that's going to
provide. And so, our mind is on towards us. We can then get out of those roadblocks
that aren't really even our fault sometimes. It's our mind working against
us. But when we understand that, that allows us to then take more control of
our motivation. Because we all want to be motivated. We all want that upgrade. We
all hold better. I mean that's natural human emotion. We all want to
create, be creators. But we're also human and sometimes we're in our own way. You're
talking about long term, short term, now, and later. One of the hurdles that we
get to overcome from a psychological standpoint has to do with the now and
the later. For you to get up and do what you've promised yourself you would do,
means you're going to experience some mild pain right now.
You will gain the pleasure but that comes a little later. If you were to
avoid it, you get to have some pleasure right now. Because it's pleasurable to
avoid the pain, right? But that's minimal. But you create a greater level of pain later
on. Your mind will always see now pain as greater than later pain. Unless you've
consciously override that, your mind will always see now pain is greater than
later pain. That's why we did the check. Because it manipulates your pain, we
drive up the pain by about 5k and we make it now and you felt it. And so,
the now pain, your mind is going to avoid that at all cost. Yes. So, that's a little
trick that you can do. And you can use a coach like Dan
or myself to hold you accountable. But there's other ways to do this without
actually writing a check. As you get real about the pain. Is it painful to strap on
the shoes and go for a walk. Well, yeah. But how painful? Compared
to not being able to get out and do activities with your son for example.
There's a clear difference in the pain but ones now, ones later. So, you get clear
about that. Be honest with yourself really about the pain. Absolutely. And so,
really, I mean, to get motivated, find out what it is that you want. I'm a list
writer. I love writing lists and one of the things that I've done is I take a
little map 8.5 x 11 piece of paper. I write a line down the middle and put the
pros on the left side of the cons on the right side. And I list, you know, what is
it that I want? And what am I willing to sacrifice to get that? And then, you know,
there's obviously pros and cons on either side. But having that list helps
me to visually see that if I stick to this, what is that ultimate result and we
have to have that long-term vision because for us to be motivated, you know,
the best things in life usually take time. They take effort. Oh, yeah. But when
when we can see that vision and then it's important Dr. Paul to hold that
vision in our mind. To visually see yourself. We talk a lot about becoming
who we are now. So, in other words, let's say again, going back to this example,
when I want to be in better shape, you taught me a great lesson that we don't
talk about I want to be in shape or I hope to be in shape. We wake up in the
morning we say to ourselves, "I am a fit in shape person. I exercise, I
feel good." And the more that you say that to yourself even though you might
mentally think, "That's not me, I'm not doing that." But you can actually override
that and guess what? You start to believe it. And when you believe it, you start to
do it. And when you do it, you actually become what you said you were. It's
pretty crazy but it works. There's actually some power in your mind. A
little bit. A lot. And what you think matters, right. And it's always on a spectrum, anyway.
Yes. Am I fit or not? Well, you're more fit than some and less fit than others. So
you pick a position. Exactly. Right. You've probably had some
experiences like Dan. These are things that we're constantly working on. We've
got some courses for you that will help to power up your positivity in every
aspect of life. Check it out down below in the description.