How to Motivate Yourself in 2026 (PART 2)

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In this episode, Dr. Jon Finn continues the Motivating Yourself for 2026 series by guiding you through the next step in building your Future Ambitious, Meaningful (FAM) Story.

Following on from Part 1, this episode focuses on creating the foundations of sustainable motivation by clarifying what truly matters to you — and how that connects to your brain states, habits, and daily focus.

Dr. Finn shares a brief real-world coaching insight before walking you through Chapter 15 of Train Your Brain for the AI Revolution: Creating Your FAM Story with the Task Director. You’ll be guided through a simple, reflective exercise designed to help you think more clearly about:

• who inspires you and why
• the qualities and strengths you want to cultivate
• what helps you feel at your best
• and how these connect to the future you want to create

This episode is designed to be practical, reflective, and non-overwhelming — helping you build clarity step by step so that working on your brain states today feels more meaningful and motivating.

Part 3 will focus on breaking your FAM Story down into a clear, step-by-step action plan.

Transcript

Welcome And Series Context

Coaching Email And Training Grants

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Hello, Habit Mechanics, Dr. John Finn here. I hope you're having a fantastic week and start to the new to the new year. I hope you got a chance to listen to the of the last podcast that I did, which was part one of the motivating yourself for 2026 series. This is part two. So I want to share with you the next step to building your future ambitious, meaningful story. Before I do that, I just want to share a really lovely email that I got actually just before Christmas. I was just looking back through some emails before Christmas was a little bit hectic, I think, for everybody. And it's just someone who's training to become a certified habit mechanic coach. And they say, This is I'm sharing this anonymously, but um they're saying, I'm looking forward to making coaching, becoming a habit mechanic coach my full-time role. Now that's not what every habit mechanic uh coach or the people that are trained to become certified habit mechanic coaches necessarily want to do, but this person's so compelled, they're saying, I want to make it my full-time role, or I'm making it my full-time role. And what I love here is that she says that she's been sharing the tools with a colleague, and let me tell you how it's helped their overall productivity. And that her colleague came in the other day and said how delighted she was that she'd been taught this tool, and she's like, Yes, I can do this, and that's why we want more people to become certified amateur mechanic coaches, and it's why we're offering the training grants because we want to spread these skills. Brain state intelligence is the most important intelligence that we can have in the AI era. So we know that people can not only learn these skills themselves, but they can learn them and teach them to others, and that's exactly why we're training people to become certified habit mechanic coaches. So if you're interested in doing this yourself, just let us know. And we have a free uh training course that we're making available periodically, so it's a foundation training course. If you do that, you like it, you can then get access to the 75% training grant. Anyway, so the next step on our journey, and this is um on our journey to motivating ourselves or setting up our the foundations of our motivation and the foundations of the first habit in the six habit loop, which is building a 30-day uh focus loop, is getting our fam story in order. So, what I'm gonna share next is in in the previous um podcast, I I shared chapter 14 of Train Your Brain for the Higher Evolution. What I'm gonna share next is chapter 15, which which is creating your fam story with the task director. And there's a really quick exercise that you're gonna hear, I'm gonna talk you through. And this is sort of doing the bigger, bigger picture thinking about what do I want to achieve, what's important in my life, etc. Um, so it kind of it's kind of a warm-up exercise before we start um mapping out those interconnected intelligent uh goals. So this is chapter 15, um, and creating your fam story with the task director. And then in the coming days, I'll be back and I'll be sharing chapter 16, which is breaking down your fam your fam journey, the step-by-step action plan. So we're gonna keep going, just giving you a little bite-sized chunks so it doesn't overwhelm you. The key is just to do something, just write something down and you'll build this up over the coming days and weeks, and you'll start to have that clearer vision of the future, and that will make working on your brain states today, this week more meaningful, and you're gonna be healthier, happier at your best more often. Here's chapter 15.

Why Brain State Intelligence Matters

Introducing The FAM Story Process

Chapter 15: Task Director Walkthrough

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Chapter 15 Creating Your Fam Story with the Task Director. Success Cycle Location Step 2 Progress 25% complete. Let's discover how to use the task director to create your fam story. The tool that will connect your brain state profile to your future vision. Just as Sarah used this process to transform her well-being and performance, you'll learn how to map out your journey from current brain states to you consistently being at your very best. To make it easier to create your fam story, I have created a PDF template to guide you through the exercises in this chapter and the next chapter. Go to tougherminds.co.uk forward slash train your brain to download your copy. First, the task director will help you think about who inspires you. This was eye-opening, Sarah shared. I started listing people I admired, from famous leaders to authors who have walked the path I want to follow. Looking at their patterns helped me see what brain states I needed to cultivate. Write down your answers to the following questions. First, think about who inspires you. Be specific and name names. Some ideas in no particular order to spark your thoughts. Parents, siblings, grandparents, family, colleagues, people who have changed society, scientists, Nobel Prize winners, entrepreneurs, mentors, writers, sporting champions, political leaders, high achievers, musicians, artists and other creative people. If you're not sure, start by thinking about the kind of people who don't inspire you. Next, think about why the people who inspire you actually inspire you. Be specific. Identify their shared and individual qualities. Some ideas in no particular order to spark your thoughts, dedication, persistence, self-sacrifice, determination, desire, work ethic, success, tolerance, progress, excellence, innovation, humility, dependability, resilience, attitude, guts, then think about what you do to feel at your best. Here are some examples. Have fun, help others, develop myself, relax, do meaningful work, show humility, give my best, have a good work-life balance, achieve results, be dedicated, be determined, persist with difficult challenges, be resilient, show the right attitude, make personal progress, be diligent, be dependable, be tolerant, eat well, sleep well, show self-control, then think about why is it important for you to do these things and what outcomes do they help you achieve. Next, think about your top strengths. Here are some ideas in no particular order to spark your thoughts, dedication, desire, persistence, self-sacrifice, positive attitude, calm, work ethic, reflective, success, humility, tolerance, diligence, dependability, excellence, attitude, innovative. Then think about the most important and difficult things you have achieved in your life so far, or in the past twelve months. Finally think about how you manage to be persistent to secure this achievement. Although I knew I didn't have perfect answers for all of these areas, just thinking about these things was crucial, Sarah explained. I started seeing the connection between my role models, strengths, best moments, and the type of person I wanted to be in the future. Congratulations. With these insights, you're ready to build your fam story iceberg.