Ever wondered what motivation is and how to increase it?
This episode looks at areas that are within your control to improve your own motivation and to motivate others.
Why you should be careful with incentives.
The art of reflection to work out when you’re at you’re best.
We are often so tough on ourselves that we don’t give ourselves a break - it is about recognising a setback and then making a course correction.
We are able to say to ourselves when thinking about other people’s behaviour, “tomorrow is another day.” We can extend that to ourselves and improve our self-care.
It is completely okay to allow yourself to regroup.
Hear John Cleese’s method of getting your subconscious to solve your problem.
Hear also about what Bob is learning from his training to become a Samaritan and how that’s got him really motivated.
Listen, comment, share, what is your method to motivate and self-motivate?
For more info, free resources, useful content, & our blog posts, please visit realitytraining.com.
Reality Training - Selling Certainty
Ever wondered what motivation is and how to increase it?
This episode looks at areas that are within your control to improve your own motivation and to motivate others.
Why you should be careful with incentives.
The art of reflection to work out when you’re at you’re best.
We are often so tough on ourselves that we don’t give ourselves a break - it is about recognising a setback and then making a course correction.
We are able to say to ourselves when thinking about other people’s behaviour, “tomorrow is another day.” We can extend that to ourselves and improve our self-care.
It is completely okay to allow yourself to regroup.
Hear John Cleese’s method of getting your subconscious to solve your problem.
Hear also about what Bob is learning from his training to become a Samaritan and how that’s got him really motivated.
Listen, comment, share, what is your method to motivate and self-motivate?
For more info, free resources, useful content, & our blog posts, please visit realitytraining.com.
Reality Training - Selling Certainty
Bob and Jeremy's Conflat the reality podcast.
Speaker 2:Hello.
Speaker 1:Bobby Morel. Good day to you, Mr Blake. How are we?
Speaker 2:All right, I'm quite excited We've picked a juicy topic for our listeners today.
Speaker 1:We have.
Speaker 2:And when we picked the topic, which is motivation, the first thing I remembered was you endlessly quoting Peter Cook to me. Which one was that Well, he played a character, oh my goodness. And he talked about the three Ms.
Speaker 1:Well, that was Alan Latchley, which was one of his characters, a football manager, and he appeared on a Clive Anderson show. He did a number of different characters that night and he came on as Alan Latchley and he was picked for the England job and he's a kind of northern football manager and he'd been with a number of different teams like Hartliple and Scumford and he hadn't done very well and he said so. Now I have this course. It's a residential course, three days. It's very, very organized. You're not allowed to eat, drink or smoke and basically it's called the three Ms, motivation, motivation, motivation. So there you go, that's all you need.
Speaker 1:Three Ms.
Speaker 2:It was a fairly radical course that, he was saying, would allow the English team to be fully motivated to be able to go on and win. Yeah that was great. So that's our topic. Yeah, folks, Thanks for tuning into an episode. Today we are looking at motivation. I prefer saying it three times now Motivation, motivation, motivation. There's other things that they say. Come in threes. The housing market goes location, location, location, doesn't it? So maybe there's something about the power of three. The three fold of motivation is the secret.
Speaker 1:But I mean, the power of three is quite a good one. Actually Do this, this and this and you kind of remember them all. Yeah, yeah, all if you forget first. So three things. In fact, that's a nice objective for our listeners, see, if there's three things we can give you in this podcast that will help you be motivated. Now we should also give some context that we are recording this in early Feb 2023. So January has flown by. I mean, I just don't know where that month's gone, and we're into February now and the weather is not amazing. It's OK. And I think in this difficult time you know we have a lot of issues facing the world and the country at the moment we all need a bit of motivation. So let's think a little bit about what we can do to motivate ourselves, motivate the people around us, motivate our families, motivate our businesses and our organisations, so that we can all be a little bit happier.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's funny you say it's flown by, because all I see on Facebook whenever I dip in it is how people talk about how January drags. So that just goes to show how occupied you are, because other people go all the days have 31, except January. That has 487. And there are various jokes like that. Also, if you listen to our New Year's Resolutions podcast, what I found funny yesterday I was driving home listening to Sarah Is it Sarah on the radio? Radio one.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, she said so many people are getting touch and they're opening wine and gin and you know, because they've done dry January, said well, why are they all undoing all the hard work? And so it's a bit like I've been on dry January and now I will completely forget what I've done because I've hit the glorious month that begins with F.
Speaker 1:There is some of that, isn't there where people Well, I remember in lockdown when we had a new lockdown, came in in January and just after Christmas a couple of years ago, and Adrian Edmondson, who you'll remember from the young ones, he tweeted a picture of his drinks cabinet and he said dry January began yesterday went into lockdown today.
Speaker 1:Hello, old friend, there's his drinks cabinet, because what else are you going to do? And yeah, I mean good, well done to people who've had done a dry January, I agree, why get? I can't it now. You may as well, just you know, sort of carry on, but anyway, yeah, yeah. So let's talk about motivation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, come on, jay, I need some motivation.
Speaker 1:So motivate me, come on, give me some ideas.
Speaker 2:Well, we I've sort of tried to hone it down due to my years of living on planet Earth soon to be 51 years the also the various ideas and most of the stuff I looked up confirmed some of my thoughts, with some definitely new things that I thought, oh yeah. So I think one that's good which also takes us into a business context, bobby is don't rely on incentives, because incentives are very short term and actually that again links back to New Year's resolutions, the fact that you said 30 days. Then the incentive is I can get back on the drink again. It's really just a sort of period of abstinence of 31 days and what's it achieved? So there's a lot of research that shows to remain motivated for longer, incentives need removal because they encourage short term behaviors.
Speaker 2:To the argument for longer sustained motivation is don't just rely on external extrinsic reward coming at you. You've got to have some fire inside of why you're bothering to do so, otherwise you go oh, this is absolutely torturous to not be drinking. I've only got six more days, only got. Yeah, now I can drink again. That's An extrinsic reward at the end of the tunnel. But your internal fire probably wasn't strong enough to go beyond thirty one day I have to to compliment you there.
Speaker 1:I've never heard you, in the nearly thirty years we know each other, ever use the word extrinsic before so is a really exciting one for you, and that's gonna be your new word, isn't it? I just know I've used.
Speaker 2:I actually did use it before Really used it. Yeah, I did. I think I used it in another thing that we are talking about well, I never heard goals I have to tell the listeners here that bob made me edit out the word exemplar last yeah, that's absolutely ridiculous. Yeah, I put exemplar into An embedding material program and you know what are you doing. Yes, exemplar.
Speaker 1:Now I like this idea of sort of taking a bit of charge of motivation. I agree about incentives, because I think you do need some will power. That's the whole point of new year's resolutions. That need to be, need to be an iron will to actually do some of these things. And I think if you are Demotivated or you lack motivation which I think is more the case, you might not realize you're demotivated but you might lack motivation to do certain things then there are things that you can take charge of that will Help you do that.
Speaker 1:So, for example, I would watch little clip the other day of a gentleman called jordan peterson, who is a quite interesting psychologist, slightly controversial, talking about Individuals and talking about when we're at our best. Now we're all distracted by lots of things all the time. And I saw another thing which said that the enemy of creativity, which ultimately is motivating, is distraction. We're all distracted by hundreds of things all day long stretch, by phone is checked, by computers, by people talking to us and phone ringing, all that sort of thing. When we're not distracted, we sit down, we do some work, we make a phone call, we do some training, we do some acting, we write something, we speak to someone, we go and help somebody, we we do something that's really really good, really positive, really productive, really Us at our best. It might be ten minutes, it might be an hour, it might be forty minutes, we don't know but we do something where it's just exactly what we should be doing and that's motivating, an enjoyable and fulfilling.
Speaker 1:And then other things happen and start to distract us again. And his thing is that we should Observe yourself for ten days and look back over that period and go when was I really good, that I did that really good? I remember that Because you will know when you were really really good and then think, okay, what happened to lead up to that period where I was fantastic, and then what happened to stop me being that way and just start to observe yourself and what distracts you more, gets in the way and what stops you remaining at your optimum level. I think that's a really interesting point. Do we know me really really good? We know we're not so good. Do we see what leads up to that and see what falls away? Because we're all creatures of happy if you and I Talk about many times, so I think, those two things there of observing yourself when you're good and understanding what's led you to that, yeah, and also realising what are those distractions that are stopping you remaining in that state.
Speaker 2:Yeah, repeating it's the classic thing. What did I do to get that very good result that was good for me and others? Why am I not realizing that's good behaviors to engage in?
Speaker 2:yeah which is why we have to take some reflection over the weeks, reflection over those periods of time when you were saying that. I started to think of the state of flow when you're at your optimum, which is often used by sports psychologists that, yeah, there's no one could tackle him at that time. He was just absolutely in a state of flow what is no. Back jockovic stage thirty five years old, wins the australian open. You only drop to set the entire time. Just extraordinary. They say that his age. You should be able to do this. But he works with his team on trying to get into a state of flow where he doesn't overthink, yeah. And then they debrief him and say, well, the reason you were doing this great must repeat that.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I think also on that thing about repeating behaviors quite interesting, because there's a little video that's been doing around an instagram and other things recently. I won't use the language it uses, but it basically says if you're having a bad day, screw it, go home, go to bed. Tomorrow's another day. Some days are completely screwed and can't be unscrewed and so just Go and sleep and get some rest and tomorrow will be another better day. Now there's something in that. I think sometimes a lot of individuals, something bad happens and they spend a day fighting against it and panicking and and trying to cope, and we put a lot of pressure on ourselves, which is demotivating. And I think sometimes we need like a bit of self-management to go right, this is bad, I need to just close down, sleep, eat something.
Speaker 2:Tomorrow I will tackle this and that self-management is Motivational because you go right, I'm ready for this now and I think that's another a nice way of thinking well, I'd like to go in there a bit more, actually, because in the little bit of time I've had working with Child psychology, if you like, or teen psychology as well, and helping a friend qualify she was telling me a really interesting thing about tomorrow is another day, because a psychologist called Adler Said that if you tell a child off and give them a punishment because they've not engaged in the right behavior, that punishment cannot last into another dawn. And the reason for you know. You go to bed and that's the end, but you can't wake the child up and go yesterday. You, because the child's brain Can't keep that containment of an extended punishment, and so there's a lot of work done it. You might know this is a father yourself. There's a lot of work done on that. That it's a punishment and that's the punishment it's done. Yeah, but when you add layering punishments like you can't have your phone again tomorrow.
Speaker 2:Yeah it doesn't work because you have to scratch it and go right, new day, let's get up new day. And I would say, if you don't give the child a chance the next day to repair and improve, then it's a form of imprisonment You're moving into. You like put a key in the Minnesota, yeah, and so it's very tricky now if the child had done something really, really serious. We know from watching American television. You then have these things like Grounded and all these kind of punishments. What I like about what you're saying, which I think is an important rule, is Is if you cannot win the battle today and actually you know a lot about military history you withdraw, you regroup and tomorrow's another day, you might, you might sleep better, you might eat better.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:I'm all for that. That well, you wipe the slate.
Speaker 1:You're listening to Bob and Jeremy's conflab, brought to you by reality training. Reality training are a leading sales and management training company specializing in helping big brands do much better through increasing their sales, their customer experiences and the way that their managers deal with their people. You can find out much more about us at our website, realitytrainingcom. Now, this is a really interesting principle that I've read about from John Cleese actually has written a book about creativity and he has this great idea that if you've got a problem, think about that problem before we go to bed and then go to sleep. We'll sleep all night, but your brain will continue to work on that problem. Yeah, very, very often you'll wake in the morning and options or suggestions or ideas will come to you, because the brain is a really, really interesting and creative organ. Now that leads into another thing which I saw, which I think is really important Most of us don't do enough thinking.
Speaker 1:Most of us are doing and reacting. I had a meeting today where someone said I've just been reacting for the last month to everything that's been going on. It's been absolutely hectic. Now that means you haven't got time to go right. Let's really think about this. If you're all in back to about meetings all day, as many people are. When do you get the chance to sit and think and prepare for meetings, prepare for the work you're going to do, prepare for what needs to happen from the outcomes of those meetings? So I think there has to be some time for planning and reflection. Plan that time, if you need to, into your diary so that you then are motivated to go right. I've really thought about this and I think there's some things we missed here and that might really make a difference to actually have that valuable time.
Speaker 2:Or you can't redress your strategy, your tactics, your method. The analogy I like is that if a sailboat and you don't have to understand how to sail to understand this analogy, but even if I talk about using the back of the boat and you have a rudder and you put it in a position, you'll be sailing at an angle and you'll reach the shoreline. Say, if you were going from England to the Isle of Wight, If you kept at an angle, you'd reach an angle, but you might be miles down the coast. If you just didn't adjust the rudder ever so slightly, it could even make a distance of five miles with a tiny rudder adjustment and that's what people forget is that small adjustments over a longer distance get you to a different destination.
Speaker 1:Well, Nick Moore told me about this when he went across the channel. He said if you see a tanker coming towards you, you might be in a fast speedboat, thinking, well, I can easily beat that in front of that, but the angle. If you haven't got the angle right, you could easily go into the dam.
Speaker 2:Anyway, there we are.
Speaker 1:Now let's move on to some other motivational things which I think are really important. When you and I were preparing this, you said something which I think is really important Positive people are motivational and if they're naturally positive, naturally optimistic which you are actually I have to give you that you are a natural optimist most of the time and I think that's incredibly motivational for people. And I think we do meet. You know, you and I coach a lot of people, a lot of individuals, and sometimes we will spend weeks coaching a single person about someone that they work with that they cannot bear, and you might call that person a mood hoover, a sort of attitude problem, a bully, a difficult person to work with.
Speaker 1:And you just think, why would you force yourself to spend time in the vicinity of someone who's a total mood hoover? You know an energy vampire, you know, who just completely sucks all the joy out of life like a dementor? And I just think sometimes we don't realise that. You know we all try and coach each other, we all try and get on. Sometimes you're just not meant to get on with certain people. You know, it's just one of those things and it's a bit like a bad day go home If it's a bad person? How can you extricate yourself from this person if you're just not meant to get on with it?
Speaker 2:Especially if they're not open to improvement and you can't improve their attitudes.
Speaker 2:I mean, that is a real, proven fact by scientists that if you're having healthy social interactions with people passing the time of day, greeting people, asking how they are, you know, if you have a social interaction even if it lasts two or three minutes, but it's healthy, it's optimistic it will shove a load of either dopamine or serotonin floating around your skull and that's happy chemicals.
Speaker 2:You feel good If you're around people that create stress and you're not feeling any better for the interaction, but that's all you have in your life. We would say to you, if you're listening to this and you're struggling with motivation, you've got to try to join a group. That could be an amateur group, it could be a hobby group, it could be a sporting group, a walking group, and there's so many things out there Men in sheds, which I saw advertised the other day, which is sweeping the nation, which is older men who are struggling to be social. You can go in a shed and chat to men and make stuff. You can join a group of people. That the social interaction will be healthy for you. And we all say this to our children, don't we? We say get some nicer people around you.
Speaker 1:Well, I've heard you mention that because it's probably worth me sharing. I'm currently being trained myself. At the moment, I'm going through a process where I'm learning to become a Samaritan and there's 18 of us every week who come together in this group and the whole snapshot of modern society is in that room. Ok, in terms of age type, gender. You know everything. Everything is their experience. There's so much in that room and there is something very motivational about sitting there and you all look at each other. On the first session you think at least 50% of these people here I have nothing in common with. I can't imagine ever getting on with these people Four sessions in. You know everyone's name, you're chatting to them, how you're doing, you are experiencing the same sort of thing and it is really motivational, even though it's you're dealing with tricky subjects. The fact you're going through that process together is really motivational and for somebody who is a trainer, who is completely sort of that's what I do for a living, to actually be trained with a group of people is Motivational.
Speaker 2:I know I knew it, but even more so now well, would you say it's the learning that's motivational, or just the fact your Learning is a collective? What if you were to try and you know you said earlier let's look at when I'm happy and when I'm flowing. Mmm, what is the actual thing? Is it the people? Is it the learning? What is it?
Speaker 1:It is because it's so specific, it's everyone Trying to work out what is the best course of action. Okay, and because you've got that combined Goal, everyone wants to help everybody else and so you work with different people and you hear people say different things and you think, right, that's good. And you you take it on because you want it, you want to be good and so, and everyone wants the same and they all come to it in different ways and some of them just go mm-hmm and nod and write things down. Other people just go and they just you can see their brain Wearing again. I hadn't thought about that. Now I've changed my perception on certain things Hugely in those sessions, which is great motivation for me. You know, I to be shown that my, my preconceived notions on certain things Weren't necessarily correct is no bad thing, it's a great thing.
Speaker 1:It's really good. I would recommend anyone that if you haven't been on a course or been learned how to do something or just try something new, you don't need to do eight weeks like I'm doing. There's plenty of courses you can do out there that will challenge you a To learn something new, but B to mix with a group of people that you have no choice who's in that room. So it's a complete mixture of people and it's amazing who you become really close with, who you connect with, because it's the brain. It's the brain all the time. There's a lady in that group who, if I saw her walk down the street, I've got to be honest I wouldn't look twice at her. Okay, she and I are now so good mates. It's just so great. We have a real laugh together, we have a similar sense of humor and I'm so glad that I've met her and it's just really motivational.
Speaker 2:So there we are. The brain is the most attractive part of the body totally, absolutely right.
Speaker 2:Just on from that, mmm, you're saying it's not bad to have an existing belief challenged. Checked Adam Grant and I know people may have heard of him he's done some lovely Ted talks. He said what fascinates him after he does a talk is he often gets two types of email. One goes you said this, you are so wrong. And the da da, da, da, da, da da, and I'm sorry to have to tell you. He replies back to those people going please don't be sorry, this is great, I didn't know this that they think they must begin with an argument. He says it's fascinating rather than right, adam, you said this, and but you might like to know, most people go on. And then he says the second email comes back and they go oh, you don't mind that, I think differently. He goes no, you're adding to my bank of understanding. And he said that's because most human beings don't like a belief challenged and so, as a result of that, most of them are resulting arguments. It's really deep, isn't it he's. He replies back to these people and they melt because he thinks they think he's gonna go back. Well, you're wrong, I have a doctorate and it's. But he comes back going no, that's great, mary, I had no idea that you and your son had a completely different experience. This adds and enriches my experience and thank you for sharing it. He then get oh, we thought you wouldn't like me saying that, but you're okay about, isn't it interesting?
Speaker 2:Because some people do have what to call a fixed mindset, which leads me on to another point. People with a very fixed mindset Struggled to be motivated because they live their life, whether by a set of guidelines. They also hinder their own ability to expand and grow because they have a fixed mindset and don't believe it's gonna get any better or can improve, whereas you know Carol Dweck and her book and everything about a growth mindset. If you think no, I could probably improve, I could learn more, you're generally likely to be a bit more motivated in life because you've already admitted there's more for me to get out of this. There's more for me to learn, definitely, definitely. I've got a couple more bits and one of them I just thought I'd definitely go back to you from Dale Carnegie which, when I read his book for the first time, I love, which is how to win friends, influence people.
Speaker 2:His thing about motivation and motivating others is give a dog a good name. If you say to to somebody yeah, yeah, I think it's unusual you said that because you're normally really bright Not to miss it they start to go no, I am okay, no, fair enough and also predict success for other people, saying you know, good luck with your test, I think you're gonna do really well, I think you're gonna make this, you're gonna, oh right, good, I Good. You know other people, so I think telling people success is possible is very motivating. That's good. And then the only other bit I've got is this sort of simple one.
Speaker 2:But I read it in this lovely Stanford paper that somebody had published on motivation, which was what they called all about moral motivation that if we do something good that technically could be a good moral judgment, we generally feel good about ourselves. And as we feel good about ourselves, we're more motivated to keep joining in with the human race. And in a sense, what you're doing with Samaritans is a form of altruism, it's a form of giving. It's not money, but it's time. Time is money, same thing and so you're probably going to feel good about yourself doing it. So you're probably quite motivated to learn and to get better at it. So you know, often it's a simple thing, but often, when people are bored, tired jaded, I say well, go and help someone, you'll probably feel better about yourself.
Speaker 1:Nice, nice. Well, I think there's a very nice thing to draw this to a close on. Go and help somebody, go and learn something new, go and meet new people, and all those things are motivational.
Speaker 2:Could we do motivation workshops? We don't have to be the gurus giving them the answers, we just kind of facilitate. How can we get more motivated as a group?
Speaker 1:Good, right, we'll do that. There are some new business idea right there and I don't hear first listeners, yeah focus for a motivation workshop.
Speaker 2:Thanks for tuning in. More episodes coming down the track soon. Please share this one. So we'll be back with more B&J soon. Take care, take care.
Speaker 1:Bob and Jeremy's Conflat the reality podcast.