- Hey there.
Do you ever wish that you could watch
like real life English videos on topics
that you're interested in,
but I don't know, it's just not that easy for you yet.
Well, let's watch a video together
and today the topic it's,
how to motivate yourself with rewards.
It's a good topic.
Hi, I'm your English coach, Christina,
and welcome to Business English with Christina,
where you become better at English and better at business.
Today, we're gonna watch a great TED Talk together
about how to motivate yourself to change your behavior.
You know, I don't know, maybe there's something right now
that you would like to change about your behavior.
Like, maybe you want to get out of bed
earlier in the morning and go do some exercise
or learning English, or, you know,
maybe like me trying to eat less sugar,
but it's not always easy to change those habits.
And so we've gotta find ways to do that.
And this video starts with what not to do
if you wanna motivate yourself.
And, you know, I really like laughed
about that part where Sharot is talking about
what to tell yourself when you open the fridge
for a little snack.
- Let's say you're trying to stop yourself from snacking.
What do you tell yourself?
Well, most people's inner monologue will say,
beware you'll be fat.
- Or, you know, maybe you make like threats
to maybe like scare yourself
or to scare the people around you.
You know, have you ever heard
or maybe even said anything like this.
- And if this was your kid,
you would probably tell him that smoking kills,
and by the way, he's in big, big trouble.
- Okay, so now you know what not to do to motivate yourself
because it turns out that we are actually
very resistant to warnings.
We don't like hearing bad things.
You know, we don't listen to bad news about things
that might happen to us in the future.
Honestly, like too much bad news,
you know, it leads to inaction,
like not doing anything.
Just think about, you know,
the past few years with the coronavirus and COVID
does like you so much bad news that you just feel
like you can't do anything.
Here's some good news and something that you can do,
go and get the worksheet for this video.
Because for each video, I create a worksheet for you
to help you learn new vocabulary
and remember what you are learning in these videos
and really take action.
So you can go over to christinarebuffet.com
and go get that worksheet.
All right now, back to the video.
Now, according to Sharot,
we actually have the ability
to learn more from positive news.
Sounds kind of obvious, right?
But it means that positive information
can, actually, motivate us to change
how we feel and what we do.
In fact, maybe that's really all we listen to.
- But what you can see here is that
it doesn't matter what age you are.
You can be 20, 30, 40, 50, or 60,
everyone takes in information they wanna hear
more than information that they don't.
And, so we end up with a view like this of ourselves.
(audience laughs)
- And, you know, I have to admit,
I find it more motivating
to focus on the positive things
like you've probably noticed in the videos,
we're very positive about learning English.
I'm generally, I'm quite optimistic
I think in my everyday life,
but, at this same time
we don't want to only focus on the good things.
We need a, you know, a balance
and Sharot talks about three principles
that really work to help us stay motivated.
The first one is Social incentive.
Now, what does that mean?
Basically, it's, you know, like when you know
that other people are watching you
and watching what you're doing,
like my cat back here,
I don't know, is not watching what I'm doing.
Anyway, so people are watching to see
if you're going to reach your goals,
or maybe you're comparing yourself
with others who are doing the same thing as you.
Now, the second principle,
I don't think you'll be very surprised at this one,
but it's Immediate rewards.
I mean, you know, you and I both know
that if you want to reach some big goal,
like learning English, running a marathon,
stop eating so much sugar
that is quite a long, hard process.
But, you know, the future is uncertain.
So even like smart, intelligent people
who are good at managing themselves and their time,
you know, we also need those immediate rewards.
You know, it's easier to change your behavior
if you can get some sort of like
immediate present happiness
rather than like happiness two years later.
- But what will happen if you reward people now
for doing actions that are good for them in the future?
So, studies show that giving people immediate rewards
make them more likely to quit smoking,
more likely to start exercising
and this effect lasts for at least six months.
- So what's the final principle in staying motivated
to make those big changes in your life?
Progress monitoring.
Basically, that means keeping track of your progress,
noticing the progress, noticing the improvements
that you're making or just the steps
that you're doing to move you closer to that goal.
Like for example, maybe you have like
a checklist of the things that you want to do.
And every time you do it, you check that off.
And that is such a satisfying feeling
of just checking something off your list,
or, you know, maybe in your calendar,
whenever you do something in English,
anything you just put like put it in your calendar
or write it in a notebook
and put a little smiley face next to it.
That way you see over time,
you can go back and look
and see how much you did
or how much progress you made.
And again, all of that helps you
to have that sense of control over your life.
Not like everything's too busy
and you never have time to do English
and you really wanna improve,
but it's just so hard.
Like, no we're gonna eliminate all of that,
so that you stay motivated,
even if you're just doing little things,
but, consistently, over time.
Now, if you don't use it, you lose it.
So, here's an opportunity
to practice what you learned today.
In the comments down below
tell me about one goal or habit
that you're working on right now.
And also, let's get your motivation up.
What is one immediate reward that you can give yourself
for taking a little action on that?
And, if this lesson was helpful for you
there are three things that I would love for you to do.
First, just give the video a thumbs up
and subscribe to my channel on YouTube.
It helps me to help more people
improve their business English.
You can, like I said, go over to my website
get the worksheet that goes to this video
and then come back and you can do a little bit of revision
and work on that worksheet with me and this lesson.
And then the final thing that you might want to do is
continue watching this video,
which is all of about building up your English habits.
And I don't know, maybe we'll start off
on some grand adventure,
improving your English together.
Anyway, thanks a lot for improving with
Business English with Christina,
and I'll see you next time.