d8) Inspire, Act, Succeed: The Motivation Triad

 Inspire, Act, Succeed: The Motivation Triad

Today I want to talk to you about the motivational triad, I want to talk about this because I want to show you why you are doing what you are doing, or more likely not doing what you want to be doing, so you have more compassion and understanding for yourself. 

Because if you’re doing things that you don’t want to do or you’re wishing you could change your habits, or you’re frustrated by your lack of progress and as a result you are beating yourself up, I want you to stop. Stop beating yourself up and learn how your brain is wired and learn how to re-wire it.

And just that you know, I say this to you with all the love and compassion I have and I know how hard it is, because my coach had to just tell me last week to stop beating myself up, stop being hard on myself, and to start taking control of myself with compassion and self-love. So know that you are not alone if you struggle with this, I am right there with you.

First we need to understand we can not make progress with self-criticism and beating ourselves up. Understanding why we’re doing what we’re doing or often more like not doing what we said we're going to do will help us big time. 

That's why I want to tell you what I learned how your primitive brain is wired so that you’ll stop beating yourself up for it and know that dealing with it differently is doable.

What is the motivational triad?

Well thanks for asking, The motivational triad are three principles, seek pleasure, avoid pain, and be efficient. Animals and humans were all designed with these three principle motivations, they increased the odds of our survival over time.

These three motivations have made sure that we were fed, that we procreated, and they have helped us reduce and even avoid threats to our survival. The are very important and do a lot of good for us, but in our modern world they can and do also keep us stuck. The motivational triad explains why we have such a hard time changing our habits, or improving our life, stepping out of our comfort zone.

1: Our brain seeks pleasure  

mainly short-term pleasure, that's why we eat that donut even though we want to lose weight, or we buy more stuff even though we have a house full of stuff already, or watching Netflix instead of tidying our home and office or working on another goal. 

2: our brain wants to avoids pain at all cost

any pain, even healthy growing pain, or healthy pain of not giving in to sugar cravings or feeling our negative emotions instead of going shopping or binging Netflox. 

3: and our brain wants to be efficient  

this is a biggie, because change uses up a lot of energy and our brain wants to save energy, it tries to avoid any change in order to be efficient. It wants to stay efficient and save energy by being in the familiar and established habits, the automated habits. But this way we are staying stuck in auto-pilot, whether it serves us and our goals and intentions or not.

Your brain will fight you

That's why our brain will not understand what you are trying to do and will fight you every step of the way because decluttering will bring up

new experiences: very inefficient and scary for the brain

possible failures: we could throw out something and then regret it for example which is scary, our brain wants to protect us from failures

confusion: you wonder if you want to keep an item or letting it go, 

fear and doubt: worrying that we will need the item in the future, worrying we might regret the decision or letting it go

It will tell you for example "I've never been organized, my mother already called me a clutter-bug", and this will hold you back every single time. This is mental clutter that needs to be release, decluttered, let go of.

You can take control of your brain

But we also have a part of our brain, the pre-frontal cortex, that we can train to manage our primitive brain, like a loving parent that helps their child through a temper tantrum and to do the right things.

1: instead of seeking pleasure, 

we need to go for discomfort. What does this look like? Start choosing what you want in the long term over the pleasure you could experience in the short term. Give up immediate pleasure watching Netflix for 10-15 minutes of decluttering so that you can experience long-term pleasure. But expect your brain to complain, to wine, to prefer you don’t do it but get ready to choose discomfort on purpose and do it anyway.

You guess what number two is, right?

2: Instead of avoiding pain 

we need to open up to it. Our primitive brain associates fear with danger. It genuinely is just trying to keep us safe. But there is no danger from decluttering and letting go of things other than not processing our challenging feelings or trying to avoid them. Sometimes we are afraid of the sentimental feelings that come up when decluttering, we are trying to avoid them, and stuff them down, but what I am asking you is to go ahead anyways, be willing to feel those emotions and free yourself from the clutter that holds you back. And then

3: instead of trying to be so efficient

we need to recognize the value that comes from making an effort to live with intention. Our brains are capable of change; new thoughts, new feelings, new action patterns. We don’t have to just keep recreating the things and experiences from our past.

To do that we have to stop defining ourselves by who we were in the past, by those outdated thoughts and beliefs - hello mental clutter - that aren’t serving us anymore, and we need to practice at that. This means work, this is not efficient in the beginning and needs lots of energy, but we can do it.

To do that we can shift our perspective and instead of finding evidence in the past, we need to look to the future. You need to create and focus on a strong vision of how you want your environment to be, what a supportive environment means to you, what organized means to you and most importantly, how good it would feel, how much calmer and at peace you would be and how much more productive and efficient you could do your work in your life and business

Step 1: you need to figure out your why, 

since Simon Sinek published his bestseller Why we all know how important the why is. Why do you want to declutter and get organized? What is your no matter what reason, your why? It needs to be a compelling reason

I could think of a few great reasons: 

you want to reduce stress, many studies confirm the correlation between clutter and stress

you want to reduce overwhelm  less stuff leads to more clarity

you want to be healthier dust that collects around clutter has an effect on your health

you want to be healthier there is a correlation between clutter and body weight, you eat healthier in a clean and clutter free kitchen, but also because you are not so stressed out and overwhelmed you have mental bandwith to choose and prepare healthy foods

you want to have more time less stuff more time

Step 2: Commit to your why

A lot of people are not really committed, they just really like the idea of being organized and living a clutter-free life but don't want to do anything for it.

Without a strong why and being committed you might give up the minute it becomes a bit hard, the minute you are confused, the minute you worry that you could make a wrong decision. That's why the second step is to make a commitment to your why.

That's where Intention Rituals come in. I personally set my intentions every New Moon, but it doesn't matter what day or date you choose, it just has to be more than just a New Years resolution. Your New Years resolution or intention for the year needs to be supported by monthly intention reminder sessions and most likely daily reminders

Thank you for embarking on this motivational journey with us through "Inspire, Act, Succeed: The Motivation Triad." We hope this exploration has sparked a flame of inspiration within you.

If you've found our content valuable, don't forget to like, subscribe, and share. Together, let's spread the motivation and empower others to embark on their own paths to success. Remember, inspiration leads to action, and action paves the way to success. Keep inspiring, keep acting, and keep succeeding. Your journey to greatness is just beginning!