62. The Secret Sauce of Self-Motivation

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there and welcome to episode 62 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, sports nutritionist personal trainer, health and fitness expert, and the weight loss coach for runners. weight. The weight loss coach for runners actually did a whole podcast episode about this called a weight loss coach for runners.

Yes, because here’s the thing, on average runners carry around too much body fat runners are notoriously unhealthy people. Okay, on average. Now you may be thinking, Patrick, that’s not me, I’m super lean, I’m super fit, I’m super healthy. If that is the case, awesome, good job. Unfortunately, that’s not the norm. The majority of runners are carrying around a little too much body fat, they’re a little unhealthy.

And I noticed this in myself, I noticed this and other runners and I made it my life’s mission to help runners become more metabolically healthy, to change their diet, change up their nutrition, so that they can be the healthiest human beings possible. And keep running like we want to keep running. Running is good. We love running, we want to keep doing that.

So I focus on weight loss. You know, we talk about weight loss a lot here on the podcast. And in the Facebook group, we talk about the importance of getting down to your kind of natural weight. But the goal the real goal is to become healthy as healthy as possible. The weight loss is sort of a nice side effect of that.

So what I do in my coaching practice is help runners become the healthiest they can possibly be. We work on putting together the right combination of nutrition and exercise and mindset and stress reduction and all these other things to make you as healthy as possible. And the coaching I do is part guidance, part support system, part encouragement, part motivation, which we’re talking about today.

In part accountability, to keep you on track to keep you doing those things that maybe you don’t want to do, so that you can become the person that you all timidly want to become. If you’re interested in learning more about coaching, you can apply. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/coaching.

All you’ve got to do is click the apply button, answer a couple of questions you and I will get on a call together we’ll talk about this I’ll explain the program we’ll talk about what coaching looks like how it might help you. It may not be a good fit for you, and that’s fine. But let’s talk about and let’s find out, okay, we’ll talk about your goals, what it is you want to achieve. And we’ll see if working with me is a good way to get you there – runningleanpodcast.com/coaching.

Another thing I wanted to talk about was the Facebook community. So we have this amazing, supportive and motivational community on Facebook called the Running Lean community. Just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community, you will find us there. We’re doing all kinds of challenges and this month, March is motivation month over in the Running Lean community.

And I’ll talk more about that in just a minute. But let’s just suffice it to say that this month we’re focusing on ways of motivating one another encouraging one another to do hard things and sharing our experiences. Okay, so just check us out over in the Running Lean community on Facebook.

Today’s topic, I’m going to be talking about motivation. And today I’m kind of giving you a little recipe, what I call the secret sauce of self-motivation. So like I said all month long during March we’re sharing motivational tips and talking about motivation and how to create more motivation over in the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook.

And you know whether it is you want to run faster you want to run farther you want to dial in a nutrition plan, you want to lose those winter pounds. You need the motivation to make it happen. But most people severely lack motivation. Most people are just motivation deficient.

And this lack of motivation is keeping you stuck. You’re never making any progress towards your goals, and you just feel sort of self-defeated. Well, we don’t want that, we want to feel self-motivated. So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to be sharing my secret sauce of self-motivation.

I want you to think of this as a recipe that you can put together to help you create, and stoke that inner fire. That thing that like keeps you going right, so you can accomplish the big goals that are so important to you.

Right before I get into that, I just wanted to share this five-star review, somebody shared a five-star review on the podcast. And they did this over in Apple podcasts. And you can do this too, just go to Apple podcasts and scroll down to the Running Lean podcast and scroll down to where you see the review section. And you can leave a quick review, I would love it if you could do that. It would just mean a lot to me to know that this is helping you in some way.

And this is from BH1955. And the review said, “I was not feeling like running yesterday, but I decided that I would find an episode that would motivate me. Speaking of motivation, I found Episode 43, which was embracing discomfort. It really helped me to get through my run. Thanks so much, Patrick, for your podcast.”

You’re so welcome. Yeah, that’s a good one. And that motivation is what we’re talking about here all this month, but especially in this episode of the podcast. So why is March motivation month? Well, here’s what happens at the beginning of the year, we feel really motivated, right?

In January, people join gyms like crazy gyms are full, like, it’s insane, right? Everybody’s motivated to like, get healthy and change their diet and start exercising. And I’m going to start running every day or whatever it is, we’re feeling really fired up and really motivated in January, right? But then, you know, you kind of lose your motivation a little bit by the end of February, you’re like, Yeah, whatever, you know, the gym sort of empty out again.

And as we begin March, you know, it’s pretty easy to go to the gym, and you know, there’s really not many people there anymore. People aren’t running as much, they’re not exercising as much, they’re not sticking to their plan, they just kind of go back to doing the stuff they used to do. They’ve lost their motivation. All right.

And why is this, you know, why do people get motivated and then lose it? Why do people not stay motivated, and that’s kind of what I want to talk about today. And it really has little to do with, you know, what your capabilities are. So, there are people that accomplish some great things, right?

And you can look to these people and go like, oh, that person, they must have something that I don’t because they’re doing these amazing things. You know, I looked at, I used to look at ultra runners and go, I can’t believe that guy ran 100 miles, they must have something mentally that I don’t or some genetic, you know, character that I don’t have.

And I have to tell you, it has very little to do with innate capability, it has very little to do with genetics. People that accomplish great things, it’s not because they’re luckier than we are. I think it has everything to do with self-motivation. And motivation is, is just a feeling.

You know motivation is like when you feel motivated, you feel like doing something, right. When you’re not motivated, you don’t feel like doing something. And so a lot, oftentimes, I’ll ask my clients, I’ll be like, okay, you said, you’re going to stick to your plan this week. Why didn’t you do that?

You’re going to stick to your healthy eating plan, or you’re going to get up early and run. You set up a schedule for running three days a week, you didn’t do it, or maybe you know, we’re gonna start. We’re doing a daily journaling practice or lift weights a couple of times a week, whatever it is.

And then I’ll say, you know why didn’t you do that? You said you were gonna do that we made a kind of an agreement that you were gonna do that and then you didn’t do it. Why is that? And they’ll start with excuses.

They’ll start with oh, it was cold outside or I had a hard day at work or, you know, I just had a late-night or had to wash my car. or whatever they’re blaming their lack of, you know, wanting to do something or the reason they didn’t follow through with what they said they’re going to do.

They’re blaming it on outside events, circumstances, other people, whatever. But then I keep pushing them. It’s like, no, really, why didn’t you do that? And what it comes down to, you know, once I get through about four or five of these different excuses, is, they usually say something like, well, I just didn’t feel like it. They were not motivated to do that thing. They didn’t have the motivation. And that’s interesting, isn’t it?

And so I would say, like, Well, what did you do instead? What what did you feel like doing? Well, I just felt like sleeping in, or I just felt like eating ice cream and the cookies, or just felt like watching Netflix, or I just felt like scrolling through social media, you know, instead of journaling, or whatever it was.

So they felt like doing those things, but they were, but not feeling like doing the harder things, you know, and what it comes down to. And in my opinion, what it comes down to is like, we categorize things as like, easy stuff, and hard stuff, like some things you feel like doing.

And we kind of put these in the easy bucket, you know, it’s like, well, you know, I feel like just sitting on the couch and scrolling through Instagram. That’s easy. That doesn’t take any effort. So I could just do that. I’m motivated to do that all day long, right? I’m motivated to eat a whole pizza and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream every single day. Like I can do that without even thinking about right, that’s easy.

And then we have things that we don’t feel like doing, this is the hard stuff. Okay, so, you know, running, sticking to your running schedule, when it’s cold outside, getting up early to do some journaling, or, you know, sticking to your healthy eating plan. That stuff can be hard to do. Why is that hard? And why is this other stuff easy?

And part of it comes down to habit. You know, I talked a lot about habits in the last episode. So if you haven’t listened to that already, definitely check it out. Last week’s episode was called Making Healthy Habits Stick, and some good stuff in there that I think is going to be really helpful for you.

But the difference between the hard stuff that we don’t want to do, we don’t feel motivated to do. And the easy stuff that we just we can do without even thinking about it is it kind of comes down to habit, it kind of comes down to what we’ve been doing over and over and over again for our whole lives, you know, times, decades, at least, right.

And if you have a habit of every time you come home from work, you plop down on the couch, and you know, eat a whole bag of potato chips, and scroll through Instagram, that’s going to be kind of your go-to that’s going to seem easy. That’s the habit, that’s just the thing that you do without even thinking about it. Right.

If on the other hand, you wanted to establish a new routine and a new habit of like, instead of doing that going good coming home from work, throwing on your running shoes, and heading out the door for a little 5k that’s gonna feel really hard to do. That’s not going to be easy, because it’s not a habit yet, you know, it’s going to require you some effort to get going with that, right.

And that effort that I’m talking about kind of boils down to motivation. Are you motivated to do that thing or not? Now, here is the real problem with when we when we choose the easy stuff when we choose the easier path, the easier softer way over the hard stuff.

When you keep doing that, when you keep choosing easy, you will never become more than who and what you are right now. You will never grow as a human being as a person. You’ll never get faster as a runner, you’ll never get stronger. You’ll never get leaner, you’ll never become healthier. You’ll never become an emotional badass, which I think is one of the coolest things you can become.

You’ll be nothing more than you are right now. And you know some people are fine with that. Some people are like cool, you know, I’m just good with who I am where I am right now. I want to stay right here. And that’s fine if you want to do that. But for you, the person that’s listening to this podcast, most of the people that listen to this, want to become more.

I know you do because you tell me every single day I hear it from people all the time. I want more, I want to become fitter, healthier, stronger, leaner, faster. But here’s what happens. If you don’t lift weights, if you don’t do that hard thing, you’re going to lose muscle, you’re gonna just keep getting weaker. If you stop running, if you just quit, you know, you’re never going to become faster, you’re never going to run another marathon, you’re never going to set that PR, you’re never going to know what you’re capable of.

If you just keep blaming everybody else for how you feel playing the victim, you give out your power away, you’re powerless. The way you think and feel is controlled by everybody, but you. So for me, when I think about this, I think that even worse than staying where you are, is where you end up if you always choose easy.

Where are you going to end up if you always choose easy? You’re probably going to get fatter, you’re probably going to become more unhealthy, you’re going to get slower, you’re going to get weaker, you’re going to become less emotionally evolved, you begin to degrade as a human being, your human starts to wear down.

Like when you throw an old battery in a drawer, right? This battery that’s like brimming with life just starts to drain away, and the life just starts draining out of it over time. Just like that old battery in the back of the drawer, you become lifeless. I don’t think that’s what you want. I think you want to become more.

And if you do want to become more, you got to do the hard stuff. No one ever got stronger by thinking about lifting weights and sitting on the couch watching Netflix eating a big bag of potato chips. No one ever ran their fastest marathon by sleeping in every Saturday morning and saying screw it to all those long runs. Right?

I know you know this. We all know this. We all know what we have to do. But we don’t do it. We all know we got to do the hard stuff. But we don’t do it. Why don’t we do it? And it boils down to this like, I don’t feel like it. I just don’t feel like it. I’m not I don’t have the motivation. And I know that I experienced this too sometimes still.

And I’ll tell you, this whole podcast is about what I do to get out of that cycle. Because if I’m in that cycle of like, I don’t feel like doing this thing. Now I know I should do it. I know it’s like, gonna push me outside my comfort zone and make me a better person make me healthier, make me stronger.

I don’t feel like going to the gym sometimes and lifting weights. Lately, I’ve been doing this really intense, really hard weightlifting workout. It’s short, it’s only about half an hour, but it is intense. And you know what? Sometimes I don’t feel like doing that on my this is going to hurt. It’s going to feel terrible. But I do it anyway.

So it’s this whole idea of like, I don’t feel like it, I need motivation. Well, you got to make that motivation. So we’re going to talk about that in a minute. But here’s something I need you to understand. This is like the premise of everything I’m going to talk about here. And that is that you don’t find motivation out there. You create it within every single time.

All motivation comes from within you, you make your own motivation. 100% of the time. There’s no magic motivation dust that you can sprinkle in your morning smoothie. Although, I think there’s a very cool idea, right? I think maybe somebody should invent that thing. That’d be amazing. So you make your own motivation, right?

It comes from within you create it, even though you may not even know you’re creating it, you create it. So you might get motivated because you hear somebody speak you might hear some speaker that’s like super motivating and you’re like, oh, I feel so motivated to like take action. Right?

And you may be feeling that way right now. Like you may be like, oh, yeah, I listen to your podcast, Patrick and I get super motivated. I hear people tell me this all the time. It’s so motivating this podcast, so motivating. But here’s a fun fact. You guys, I’m not motivating you. You’re doing it. You’re motivating yourself. It’s not the words I’m saying that are getting you motivated. It’s your own thoughts and feelings about these words.

So, I need you to understand this concept, everything you feel every emotion that you experience. Emotions are things like anger, sadness, frustration, stress, happiness, joy, and motivation; these are all emotions. Every emotion is caused by a thought. You cannot experience an emotion.

You cannot experience an emotion without first thought of having a thought about something. Right? So you may be angry, but you’re angry because you had a thought about what your boss said to you. It’s not the words he used. It’s what you make those words mean, that causes you to be angry.

You may be frustrated with your kids, because they’re not doing their homework. But it’s not the fact that they’re not doing their homework that’s got you frustrated, it’s your thoughts about it? What’re you making it mean? Oh, it means they don’t listen to me, it means they’re going to grow up to be, you know, serial killers are whatever you’re telling yourself about this thing that’s causing you to get frustrated.

It’s never outside circumstances that cause emotions. It’s always, always, always your thoughts about those circumstances. This is such a basic concept that I need you to understand. Because motivation is an emotion. Motivation is a feeling. Your thoughts create your motivation. You’re not being motivated by the words, I’m saying you’re being motivated by the story, you’re telling yourself about what these words mean to you. That’s what’s really getting you motivated.

So right now, you’re thinking about what all this means to you how it applies to you and your life, and how you’re going to apply this to your unique situation. It’s all those thoughts that are creating your inner motivation. Okay. I hope you’re understanding this motivation is an inside job, you create your own motivation, by your own thoughts. Okay.

So, just so we understand, we’re all starting from the same place here. Okay. So how do you create the motivation that you need to do the hard stuff like what’s the secret sauce of self-motivation? So here’s, I’m going to break it down into a few things that you can do, I got like four things I’m going to have you work on this week, you can do this.

Number one is to do the hard thing, even though you don’t feel like doing it, in fact, do the hard thing, especially if you don’t feel like doing it. This is like my number one rule when I’m working with clients is like you have to do this thing, even though you don’t want to do it like you have to do it.

Now, of course, we’re all adults, and I cannot make anybody do anything. But I strongly encourage people to do things they do not want to do. Because I know that when they do it, they just feel so much better. So here’s an example. I decided this is crazy. I don’t even know why I’m doing this, but I decided that I’m going to do the David Goggins 4 by 4 by 48 Challenge this coming weekend.

So what is that? Well, you have to run four miles, every four hours, for a total of 48 hours. So this thing starts at 8 pm, Friday, March 5, 2021. And that’s 8 pm Pacific time. So everybody in the world is going to do this at the same time. So I’m going to start my first four-mile run at 11 pm Friday night, Eastern Time.

And then the next run for me would be 3 am. All right, that’s four hours from 11. And then the next run would start at 7 am. And then 11 am, and then 3 pm, and then 7 pm, and then 11 pm, and just keeps going until Sunday evening.

So every four hours, you’ve got to complete four miles of running. And you got to start it at the top of that fourth hour each time. Okay. Sounds like, you know, I don’t know what it sounds like to you. But it sounds to me like, Oh, it’s just four miles, right? No big deal. But it’s four miles, with only like three hours-ish of rest in between. And you got to do it 12 times. So like 48 miles in 48 hours.

And I have to tell you, I don’t feel like doing this. The main concern of mine is like, I love my sleep, and it’s so important to me to get enough sleep if I don’t get enough sleep, I get a little cranky. I’ll feel good, you know, and I don’t know how I’m going to do this without enough sleep without getting a good solid, you know, seven, eight hours of sleep straight.

I’ll only be sleeping for maybe two hours at a time. This is going to be really interesting, and I just don’t feel like doing it. The first few times getting out there I think are going to be a challenge for me, I think, you know, going out at 3 am is going to be hard and then doing it again at 7 am, I think this is going to be hard during the day may not be as bad, but those early, you know, am runs I think are gonna be awful.

But um, here’s the thing, I’m doing this to prove something to myself, that I can do hard things, even when I don’t feel like it. This is probably the biggest key, if you want to create self-motivation, you’ve got to do hard things when you don’t feel like it. Because when you do some little thing that’s hard, and you didn’t feel like doing it, you know, it’s going to move you a little closer to your goal, you know, it’s going to, it’s good for you, you know, it’s like helping you, you know, it’s going to keep you heading in the right direction.

And that little bit of doing that hard thing, that little feeling that you get after you do that little bit of satisfaction you get after doing that is going to give you a little bit of motivation to do it again. And do it again, and do it again. And you can just keep going. In order to create self-motivation, you have to do the things you don’t feel like doing.

And then you have to just keep repeating those things, you have to get your reps in. Again, this is something I talked about in last week’s podcast. Repetition causes motivation because you begin to make the hard stuff easier, and the hard stuff becomes easier. Okay. So the first thing I want you to focus on is like doing the hard thing, even though you don’t feel like it.

So I’m going to be sharing my experience of the Goggins 4 by 4 by 48 challenge this weekend in the Running Lean community on Facebook. So join us over there. And I’ll be like, kind of documenting that my experience as I go, do some lives and stuff like that, and share kind of what it’s like to try to get out there at like 3 am and getting motivated to run. So I’m doing this because it’s hard. And this is like my number one tip for creating self-motivation is like, do the hard thing, especially if you don’t feel like it.

The second tip I have for you is this always focus on making slow and steady progress, or fast and steady progress, it doesn’t matter. But always focus on making incremental progress. Just making a little bit of progress will help you to get a little bit more motivation to keep you going.

Because when you make a little bit of progress, you tell yourself a story about what that means. You have a thought about it. And that thought is, hey, this is working. Right? So many people don’t see any progress. Or maybe they’re not tracking their progress. Or they’re not seeing progress fast enough. And they just quit, they give up.

They’re like, hey, this, this way of eating isn’t, I’m not losing weight fast enough. I’m just gonna quit and go back to doing what I was doing before, which doesn’t work either. But that’s a whole nother story. But little by little, you want to be making incremental progress, because when you do you get this little hidden motivation every single time you see the, you know, the pound, one pound a week drop off or something like that.

You’re like, oh my gosh, that’s awesome. Or an inch off your waist. Oh my gosh, that feels so good. Or, hey, you know what, I ran a longer mile this week, longer than my longest run. And these little things just start to stack up. And you begin to feel more and more motivated.

It’s like you keep your motivation tank topped off each time you do something like this and you keep increasing the amount of motivation that you create, you keep stacking these little, little bits of motivation, one on top of the other. So you know, like for me lately, I’ve been lifting more weights. I’m tracking my weightlifting and I’m able to do more reps or lift more weights.

So maybe you’re like, oh, I was able to do five more pounds this week. You know, or one more rep than last week. Or one more, I ran that one more mile, whatever it is. All these little signs point to progress and that it’s working and they will help to keep you motivated to keep showing up and continue doing the hard thing that you don’t want to do. I have this mantra this is like my mantra for life.

It’s relentless forward progress, no matter what. always moving forward no matter what. Always moving forward, no matter how slow. No matter how, you know, zig-zaggy, the courses or whatever, we’re always moving in the direction of our goals. This is my motto for life. This is like this got me through ultramarathons has gotten me through, you know, tough things that happened in my life, like divorce and loss of jobs.

This is how I built my business. Relentless forward progress, little by little, we make progress. And it feels good to just look back and say like, oh, I’m actually I’m making progress here. It doesn’t feel like it sometimes. But I can see these little hits of progress. And that gets me motivated. Right.

So focus on the slow and steady progress. The third tip for you to create self-motivation is that if it’s broken, you have to fix it. If you’re not seeing any progress, you have to change something, you know, what the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Right.

So if it’s not working, change it, you can’t expect to get stronger by lifting the exact same amount of weight every week, every time. Like, if you’re lifting 20-pound dumbbells, and you never go up from there, your body will adapt, and then you’ll just stop getting stronger, you’ll stop, you know, getting bigger muscles, you’re just gonna like stagnate. You can’t expect to run the fastest marathon, if you just run the same pace all the time, you’ll never get faster, you got to change something, right?

You can’t eat the same junk you’ve been eating for the last 20 years. You know, the stuff that causes you to gain the 40 or 60 or 80 pounds, you can’t eat that same stuff every day expect to lose weight, it’s not going to work. And so many people they try for a few weeks, maybe two, like they change their diet and they and they and they do it for a few weeks, and they don’t see many results.

Or maybe they’re the results aren’t happening fast enough. And so they quit, right? I’ve done this, you’ve probably done this too, right? But no, you don’t quit. You just you got to mix it up, you got to try something else, you got to change up the recipe, you know what I mean? Like you got to change up the nutrition plan. Because if what you’re doing isn’t working, you just got to try something else.

And I get it, it’s hard to know what to do. It’s hard to know, what am I supposed to change. And that’s where having an experienced coach there to help you, you know, make these changes. This is critical because I’m always tweaking things for my clients, I’m always helping them develop different macro percentages.

Different types of foods are always moving them in the direction of their health and fitness goals. Everything we do is about trial and error. You know, one of my favorite sayings is like it’s all a fun experiment, everything we do when it comes to health and fitness is a fun experiment because no two people are alike.

You cannot expect to eat what somebody else is eating and get the exact same results. It doesn’t work that way. You got to figure out what works for you. And this is like one of the things I love doing with my, with my clients, it’s super fun to do this, you know, I, I love the challenge of figuring out the right formula for each person. It’s actually fun to do.

But we’re always like trying things and then we’ll ratchet their weight down a couple of pounds were like, okay, that worked. Let’s do more of that. Oh, now it’s not working. So at least Okay, let’s try something else. And it’s fun to do that for me. Okay, so if it’s broken, you have to fix it.

If it’s not working, you have to change something, okay, just don’t keep doing the same things over and over and over again, that’s not going to keep you motivated, right. So you got to keep tweaking things. And this will help to keep you motivated because you’re going to be making more progress and moving towards those goals.

And then the fourth thing I want to talk about here, and this is like I think this is so fun, this is how to create instant motivation. So one of the keys to creating your own self-motivation. Remember, this is like, motivation is a feeling and we have to kind of create thoughts around that so we can create that feeling of motivation within us.

Everything I’m talking about here today is like how to like do some things take some actions to change our thoughts so that we create more motivation inside. More of a feeling of motivation inside the feeling of motivation inside your body, in your, in your thoughts about motivation, we call this an emotional state.

It’s like a physiological state that your mind and your body are in, that creates an emotional state of motivation. And this emotional state you can get into any time you want. In fact, you can get into any emotional state you want to get into at any time. Yes, it’s true. And I’m going to prove it to you right now.

So I want you to think about something that really makes you happy. Like, think about a time in your life when you are really, really happy. In fact, think about one very specific time when you were super happy. Do you have it? Now, close your eyes. Unless you’re driving or running, obviously, do not close your eyes, right?

But if you’re just sitting around, close your eyes, you don’t have to close your eyes students, by the way, but it does help to visualize. So you got that one specific moment in time where you were super happy, right? What were you doing? Go back to that exact moment in time where you were super happy, you’re just filled with happiness.

And see what you saw with your eyes and hear what you heard in that moment. And really start to feel the feeling of happiness welling up within you. Do you feel that? Now turn it up, turn up that feeling of happiness, increase the feeling of happiness. It’s almost like turning the dial on a television and turning up the intensity, the vibrancy of that happiness within you.

Until you begin to like radiate happiness, and you feel so intensely happy that you could just burst with happiness right now. I’m feeling that right now. And for me, it was a time when I was at Disneyland with my kids. And it was just like, so fun. It’s the happiest place on earth. Right? How could you not be happy riding Space Mountain with your kids?

You know, this is like so intensely happy for me. And I just burst with happiness thinking about that. So boom, you just got into this emotional state of being happy. And it took you like, what, 45 seconds? And you probably feel pretty amazing right now. I do. I feel really good right now. Isn’t that fun? That is fun to do, right?

Well, we can do this anytime we want. You can get into any emotional state you want at any time. And we do this all the time without even thinking about it. We get into an emotional state of frustration, or stress, or anger, or sadness, or boredom. All of these are emotional states that we choose. And they all make us feel terrible.

Why would we choose these terrible emotional states? Well, number one is because they’re easy because we’ve just been practicing them over and over and over again, our whole lives. And it’s easy to get into this emotional state of feeling frustrated, stressed out, or angry because we just we’ve been doing it and practicing it over and over again, right. And number two, it’s just kind of our default state. It’s become our default state. That’s terrible. I think that’s terrible.

I’m working on changing my default state to happy and full of joy. And I gotta tell you, it’s a much better place to be. It’s a much better state to be in. You can change your emotional state at any time, you can practice creating a feeling of motivation inside you anytime you want.

So let’s do this experiment again. Think about a time when you felt really motivated. Think about a specific moment in time in your life, when you were so overcome with motivation, and you just felt so motivated. Right now, again, close your eyes unless you’re driving or running. And then go back to that exact moment. That exact moment when you were super motivated, and see what you saw. Hear what you heard, and start to feel that feeling of motivation welling up within you. Hope you’re feeling that right now. I know I am.

I’m feeling super motivated right now. And again, turn it up, turn that dial, increase the intensity of that, of that feeling of motivation within you until you’re just bursting with motivation. You feel that? Yeah, feels good, right? I want you to practice doing this. I promise you. I promise you you’ll never be lacking motivation again, if you can just conjure up this feeling in a heartbeat, why not do it?

There’s no like magic dust involved. But I will tell you, this is like magic. This is like, it feels like magic. I feel so motivated when I think about, you know, a time when I was super motivated to do something. And it goes back for me anyway, it goes back to when I was training for my 100 miler, I was so motivated to finish that race.

I would get up early and go run 30 miles by myself on a Saturday morning, and then turn around and run like 20 miles on a Sunday morning by myself. That’s motivation right there. I think about the feeling I had, like putting my backpack together and putting my gear on, and getting ready to head out the door. That motivation that I felt was like I was a driven man, I was like, determined to like, crank that thing out and like, go out, go out there and get after it, you know?

So this little concept right here of like, going back to a specific time, we can like conjure up that feeling of motivation anytime we want. Okay, cool. I hope this has been helpful for you guys. I hope you’re feeling happy right now. I hope you’re feeling super motivated right now. And again, if you like the podcast and you get something out of it, share it with a friend, that will be awesome.

And if you want to join me in the Goggins challenge the 4 by 4 by 48, beginning this Friday, March 5 at 8 pm Pacific Time, do it. Let’s do it. It’s going to be fun. I hope. I don’t know what to expect. Never quite done anything like this. So it should be interesting. Okay, I hope you all have an amazing day. Lots of love, keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

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