I've been getting a number of questions from people in my
life who just seem to be tuning into the endless amounts
of energy
I seem to be oozing out of my eyeballs or something lately
and they go how the **** do you do it?
Are you brain washing yourself? To which I reply,
"No."
I just really love what I do, and then they puke, I don't know,
in my mind they do, I don't know. But, in this video I'm going
to attempt to explain why you needn't puke at the idea of
someone actually loving what they do because the construct
of human motivation
is more actualizable than you think.
The body of literature that currently exists to help us understand
what makes us tick can largely be broken down into two categories.
One: The mechanisms that help us achieve short-term motivation
and to the mechanisms that help is achieve long-term motivation.
Short-term motivation plays a crucial role in what we know
as Flow State.
This concept was originally coined by psychologist
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
(Whatever, I butchered it) in 1975 to describe an optimal
state of consciousness. If you've ever been in the zone,
you know exactly what being in "flow" is like. You lose all
sense of time,
you're completely engrossed by whatever it is you're doing
you find it interesting and challenging but not too challenging,
just the right amount of challenging. And of course you're
receiving immediate feedback as you go along. f you want
to learn more about short-term motivation, I'm going to provide
some resources in the description box below.
But today we're going to be talking about long-term motivation.
How do you achieve long-term motivation?
This is the million dollar question around which billions
of dollars worth of self-help books have been written.
So of course, I'm going to try to take a jab at this topic.
So let's see how it goes.
But as it turns out much of the answer lies in just getting
out of your own way.
There are two major hurdles that stand in the way between
you and living a life to your fullest potential.
Hurdle number one is the belief that you are constricted by your
present-day circumstances. In your thoughts, it might manifest
like so. You go, man
I would love to live the nomadic lifestyle and just write
books for a living but I have a mortgage to pay and a great
job that pays the mortgage.
So it doesn't it doesn't make sense for me to leave that
job now.
Or maybe you're like I would really love to take up dancing.
I want to give it a shot of always been curious about it,
but I'm 41 and I've never taken a dance class in my life
and it would be kind of silly if I were to just start today.
So, whatever, I won't. What do these two sentiments have in
common? The common emotion underlying them is fear. And I get
it. This is an emotion that we can all relate to and I'm
not going to sit here and urge you one way or another. I would
like to say however, that if your goal is to achieve that
state of waking up each day feeling motivated to start the day
and there's no getting around that emotion, that core emotion
of fear.
That's because long-term motivation is contingent on the
belief that you are free to write your own destiny.
And guess, what if you really think about it (I'm like, start sounding
like a little stoner) but whatever, bare with me. Like when
it comes to freedom, it's almost as if we are constantly
bargaining with ourselves. We say, you know, I'm fine with
my circumstances now because I'll get the freedom that I
ultimately want one day.
The thing that I've learned about freedom recently as put
in a way that really like clicked for me is that if the freedom
that you're seeking leads you to wanting more freedom than
it's not really freedom. And what freedom ultimately is...
is freedom from your mind. And if that made sense to you actually
at a comment below if that made sense to you because I would
really love to know. If that made sense to you,
then what really are your excuses?
Hope that didn't sound douchey.
Anyways moving on.
Hurdle number two is not believing that you are good enough at insert
whatever it is you'd rather be pursuing right now. By now
we know that our brain is really good at giving us a million
different reasons why something wouldn't work out.
Let's say your true passion is comedy, but you've never done
a single comedy routine in your life. And according to the
internet there are already a million and one different comics
with shows on display and they are all categorically better
than you.
"So why start now?" says your brain. Here's the thing about competence.
Competence is a function of curiosity or interest and practice.
So, if you're interested in something you already have an
edge over majority of the people around you. The thought of
learning a new skill is less daunting if it's a skill that
naturally sparks your curiosity.
It's a whole lot easier to start something if you find it
inherently enjoyable and that's your edge.
So who cares what everybody else thinks? Now, we arrive at
a point in our pep talk in which you might be going
"that sounds nice and all Julianne, but what if I don't have
a freaking clue what I'm passionate about?" I've mentioned
before that
I've been in therapy for four years and one of my favourite
ever exercises came rather early on and I loved it so much
I started sharing it with friends and family.
So I'd like to close this video by practicing this exercise
with you.
This is a practice that gets us to visualize our possible
futures and possible selves to reveal what it is in life
that actually matters to us, and it's lovely because the only
right answer as you'll soon see is the one that comes to
you. I can't sit here and tell you what your values ought
to be, what path you ought to be taking, what things you ought
to be doing. Only you can decide those things for yourself.
And what's really cool is that you already know the answer.
If you'll allow me, I would love to walk you through this
exercise right now. If at any point you want to pause the
video to properly give this practice a go I would highly
encourage you to do that. when you're ready close your eyes.
Imagine yourself at your 90th birthday party. All the
people that you care about are there, including your 120 year
old parents,
if you want them to be. Friends, family, past, present, future.
Now comes the point in the party where three people each
get up to give a speech about you.
You can take a moment and visualize who they are now and
listen to the speeches that they're giving. What kind of life
will you have lived by 90?
What will you've taught by virtue of your example?
How did you show up for the people you cared about the most
and what will they remember about you? The themes underlying
these speeches will tell you something about the things in
your life that you value the most. Creating, teaching, helping,
connecting, standing up for what is right, whatever it is you
value. These are the building blocks of a life that is characteristically
yours. Last time I checked you didn't ask to be born.
So in a sense this already all is kind of a gift.
So what's stopping you from living the life that you were
destined to live? And I leave you with that.
That's our exercise.
If you enjoyed this video, please leave a comment in the
comment section below because I'd like to know if I if you
want to be seeing more content like this from me and I'll
see you in my future videos.