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This past week I've been thinking a lot about the different strategies we use to motivate ourselves to do hard things.
Specifically, hard things that take months or years to achieve.
Hard things like transforming your fitness, building a business, writing a book, picking up a new language, quitting smoking etc.
If you're like me, you've probably started on something like this, felt super motivated for bit, then the motivation waned a little, and then you just kinda stopped ...
Until the next surge of motivation and then the cycle repeats.
How do you break out of these cycles? How do you stay motivated?
The most effective way to stay focused on a goal or build a habit involves three steps:
When you make it real you take some action to transform your goal from an idea in your mind to something concrete in the real world.
This could be as simple as writing it down on a sticky note and pasting it on your computer or it could be as complex as creating a detailed plan or scheduled and buying gear.
In this step you make a commitment to your community and ask for their support.
Your community can be your family, friends, professional network, social following, or a coach.
This is a very scary step for a lot of people because it carries so much social risk. As soon as you tell the people around you about what you're doing you risk public failure.
The fear of public failure or humiliation is very real and is rooted in our evolutionary biology. If an organism is rejected by its tribe, which it depends on for safety and support, it can literally die.
While the stakes in our modern world aren't as high, our mammalian brains don't know the difference.
And this same fact is what makes social support and pressure so powerful.
If you've ever done a workout class (or been to high school for that matter) you'll be familiar with this effect. You know that feeling like everyone around you is looking at you?
In a workout class, you don't slack as much or quit in the middle, even if it's really hard, because you don't want to be embarrassed. You don't want to be rejected by the tribe.
Of course the truth is that no one else actually cares that much and they're all busy worrying about how they look ... but that's exactly the point. This tribal pressure is universal and very powerful.
Similarly, when we hire a coach or a personal trainer, we're not just buying expertise, we're buying concentrated social pressure and accountability. It's the same phenomenon.
This step represents the highest level of motivation. That is the motivation rooted in your identity and sense of self.
You workout every day because you are the kind of person who works out. If you were to skip a day or slack off you would feel bad because that behavior is inconsistent with how you see yourself. You are a healthy person.
In this final step you go from making the source of motivation external to internal. You can only internalize the change after you've been doing something for long enough. Long enough that it becomes part of how you see yourself.
Where most people struggle is they try to skip right from the goal in their head to being internally motived.
This is really, really hard to do.
It's far scarier, harder, and a lot more work to go through the steps of making it real and telling the tribe but in my experience it's really the only guaranteed way to push yourself when you're not feeling motivated.
Making it real gives you structure and focus. Telling the tribe holds you accountable and reinforces your identity. After a long enough period of doing something consistently you start to identify with the new behavior and that's when you see results.
Good luck!
Nick