Internal Motivation
Ok so you have todo lists and you have categorized them by project area and you have grouped them above the line and below the line according to what you have pre-decided your priorities are. So how come you are still not moving forward with your dreams and your todo lists contain items like – do the kids’s laundry, pick up prescriptions, mow the lawn, take out the garbage while your action records (which you are diligently keeping up with) contain a lot of – check Facebook, post on Twitter, do online shopping, watch Netflix, take a nap on the couch.
What is the best way to approach todo items which you really feel you ought to do but you just don’t seem to be able to get motivated to start. For example in the area of personal health, most of us know we should be exercising regularly, getting both aerobic and muscle training into our daily schedules, but according to a CDC report from 2018, only half of us meet the guidelines for aerobic exercise and just a quarter of us meet both.
In my practice, I do a lot of counselling and motivational interviewing of adults to try to get them to increase the amount of activity they are doing and I focus in on aerobic exercise, since I am primarily interested in reducing heart attacks and strokes in my patients, who are older and quite sedentary. Studies show that 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise is the ‘sweet spot’ for exercise so I make a strong recommendation that they aim for 20 minutes in the target heart rate for their age each day. It has been really interesting to work with people over the last couple of years and assess how likely they were to make sustained change.
Stages of Change
The dominant model of affecting change in health behaviours is the stages of change model: Pre-Contemplative -> Contemplative -> Planning -> Action-> Maintenance with Relapse potentially landing a person back at any of the previous stages. I do still use this model to discuss with patients and tell them that I am going to try to nudge them along the path towards a sustained change. But as I’m sure we can all empathize with, for myself, no matter how many times I planned to start exercising, made a plan, put it on my schedule, started to exercise, it just seemed to fall off my plans somehow.
Managing Complex Change
In searching for better understanding of why some people seem to be able to quit smoking, start exercising, reduce carbs and so on, I came across the following model, taken from the education literature. It comes from a book called Restructuring for Caring and Effective Education, and I was enchanted by the idea that one could so simply and effectively determine what the gaps were in making sustained change by were one would up. I would ask my patients when discussion change – do you feel confused about what to do? Anxious? Frustrated? Let me help you with vision, skills, incentives etc.
I dutifully gave patients a vision – 20 minutes of cardio daily (with age adjusted heart rates). I provided them with skills and resources – buy this recumbent bicycle for $250 from Walmart and put it in front of the TV. I tried to incentivize the change by showing them how this amount of exercise would reduce their risk of heart attack and stroke by 25% over ten years. I suggested that they implement this plan by getting up 30 minutes earlier in order to ensure that the exercise made it into their days.
Unlike the model suggests, I did not find that my patients segmented into six groups, characterized by their emotional state – they really seemed to fall into two main groups – those who adopted these ideas and made a sustained change and those who basically never even started.
The Model
In early 2021, I came across The Life Coach School podcast and was introduced to the model as Brooke Castillo teaches it – a variant of cognitive behavioural therapy principles.
You experience a neutral circumstance.
Your thoughts about the circumstance create your feelings.
Your feelings drive your actions
Your actions create your results
The circumstance consists of neutral facts that all people would agree on. So, for example – “My boss yelled at me” is not a circumstance because some people might think she was just speaking firmly or appropriately. The circumstances would be. I have a boss. She said words to me. Maybe even quoting the specific words would be appropriate. Your thought would be: “She yelled at me”. You might feel defensive. Your action might be to yell at her, look for a new job, etc. And your results would come from the combination of your feelings and actions.
At first the simplicity of this model repelled me and it seemed kind of vicim blame-y. I have been studying it for more than a year now and I believe this simple model is extremely powerful and has broad application. There are a few caveats:
- You must be safe in order to apply the model. It does not apply if you are in danger.
- You may want to feel negative emotions on purpose.
- You can set boundaries with other people.
- You should set clear expectations of your children and employees.
- You are welcome to make requests of your spouse.
So if you have an action you want to take, you need to spend some time really reflecting on what are the thoughts and feelings you have about that action. If you put it on your schedule and don’t do it when the alarm goes, why is that? Get really curious and be slow in this process. Most likely, the actions you are not habitually taking are due to very old thoughts which you probably don’t recognize as thoughts because they are so old they just feel like true. Until you discover these thoughts, they will continue to run the show and you will continue to be unable to make sustained change.
TL;DR
Internal motivation is generated by having a deep belief that generates feelings which naturally motivate you to take an action which will move you closer to your desired results. You cannot fake this belief with positive affirmations but you can, by deliberately examining your thoughts and feelings, gradually move closer to this belief. You can consciously choose beliefs/thoughts which will be more likely to motivate you to take action which serves your higher goals.