158 | Fuel Your Goals with Discipline and Motivation (Part 2)

Discover the elusive elements that transform a fleeting desire into a concrete reality as we embark on a deep dive into the heart of health and wellness plans. We begin by differentiating the ephemeral nature of inspiration from the steadfast drive of motivation, then introduce intention as the master key that unlocks the door to our health goals. It's not just about the 'why' but also the 'what' and 'how' that turns dreams into actionable steps. Listen in as I lay out the blueprint for a detailed plan that ensures your wellness journey stays on track, preventing your efforts from drifting off into the abyss of good intentions.

Sticking to a health regimen is no walk in the park, but it's the ironclad ally of discipline that keeps us marching forward, even on those dreary days when motivation is a mere whisper in the wind. I open up about my personal experiences and the undeniable importance of a robust support system, sharing how discipline isn't just born but built, one small victory at a time. Remember, though, that discipline is a resource that can deplete, and in this episode, we dive into how to recharge its reserves and harness inspiration to ensure that our daily actions mirror our deepest intentions.

As we round off this journey, we tackle the art of establishing steadfast diet and exercise routines, and how the role of passion cannot be overstated in this intricate tango of intention, motivation, and habit formation. Adversity is an unwelcome guest on this path, yet I guide you through the thorny process of adjusting your wellness blueprint when faced with obstacles. Tailoring your approach to diet and lifestyle is my commitment to you, ensuring that your roadmap to health is not just a plan but a reflection of your personal aspirations. Join me, and let's make your wellness odyssey not just a possibility, but a reality etched in the annals of your life's greatest achievements.

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:01

One of the greatest obstacles to crafting health and wellness is identifying and controlling inflammation. It's at the core of all complex and chronic diseases and is the driving mechanism that underlies the most common symptoms that people like you struggle to overcome. Join us as we explore cutting-edge science and research to give you the information and tools you need to create the quality of life you want and deserve. And now here is the host of Inflammation Nation, dr Steven Noseworthy.

Speaker 2 0:27

Hey guys, we're back to finishing off our discussion on discipline and motivation. Really, what we're talking about is adherence, and just a super quick reminder A lot of times when people say I need to get motivated to do XYZ, what they're really doing is. What they're saying is I need to find a way to stick to my plan, and so adherence is really the key word, and what I shared with you last time is that, in general, adherence has several different subcategories, and so in the last episode, we talked about inspiration and motivation, and we drew the distinction so very quickly, as a brief review before we move on to the next category. Inspiration is the want to. It's a very short-lived but very powerful spark that makes you want to do something or be something better, but it fades very quickly, and so if you expect inspiration to do a lot for you, you have to be doing things to be inspired all the time. There's nothing wrong with constantly looking for inspiration, but if you don't go beyond that, you're not going to carry through, You're not going to stick to things.

Speaker 2 1:39

The next category is motivation. In my analogy from last episode where I said hey, imagine you're trying to light a fire and you lay down some kindling and then some firewood. Motivation is the match that you light to light the kindling. The kindling is the stuff that burns easily but short, and then it catches everything else on fire. So motivation is not that it's not emotional, but it's less emotional than inspiration. But it is much more concrete and sustainable, because, whereas inspiration is about the want to, motivation is about why whatever it is you want is important to you. Why is it important for you to lose weight, to gain muscle, to be able to bend over and pick up something or someone, or to engage in recreation, or to protect yourself from aging, or whatever the case might be? Why is something important to you?

Speaker 2 2:37

But the caveat is that motivation is as important as it is. It waxes and wanes, and so the danger with focusing only on motivation is that your adherence is high when you're motivated and your adherence is low when you're not, and sometimes the gap between the two is really wide, especially if you're not used to doing things that are difficult or new. So motivation itself is not enough, and I think I ended the last episode by saying beyond inspiration and motivation, we need something else, and what we need is intention. So if inspiration is want to, motivation is why Intention is what or how. Intention is your commitment to follow a plan Right.

Speaker 2 3:27

Inspiration provides the spark to get started. Intention provides the specific goal and end result and why something's important. Intention is the roadmap of how we get there. It is the want, the want and the how behind the want and the why. Hopefully I didn't lose you in all of those W words. You might say I want to go visit my cousin in California, but unless you know how to get to California and you have a means to get there, you're not going to see your cousin unless you jump on a Zoom call or something like that or FaceTime.

Speaker 2 4:08

You get my point. There has to be a plan. You know, back before we had maps of the world available on our smartphones. If you planned a cross-country trip, most of us either had a Rand McNally road atlas of the United States, for example, or we would contact AAA and have them create what we call a trip tick. They would send you this great little package that basically laid out your entire journey go from this city on this highway to that city and then turn south, turn north, and it just laid it out on a map. That's intention how do you intend to do something, or what do you intend to do and how do you intend to do it to accomplish your goal? So the utility of intention and having a plan is that it clarifies for you what to do and what not to do. If I leave my place and I want to go to the grocery store and normally I would turn left to go to the grocery store if I get out and turn right, I'm not going to go to the grocery store. You have to have the specifics of what do you do. What do you not do?

Speaker 2 5:20

For example, when I take on new clients for my one-on-one coaching, we often start with modifying their diet. It's one of the easiest things to do in the beginning. It's also one of the most important things to get right. Once we decide what kind of diet we're going to follow because I don't give everyone the same diet I send them a set of rules to follow and a list of foods that I want them to eat and a list of foods that I want them to avoid and the reason why certain foods are on certain lists. It's one thing to say that we're going to put them on a needing plan. Like you know, I want you to follow a diet. Well, what does that mean? What kind of diet? It's another thing to plan out the content of their diet. How many calories do they need to eat? How do we divvy those calories up between protein, fat and carbohydrates every day? These are the details. This is the what and the how. That's going to get you where you want to go.

Speaker 2 6:21

So again, if all I said to you is I want you to eat healthy, you might have a fuzzy picture of what that looks like, but eating healthy is not a plan. That's not a plan, not even close Right. Likewise, if all I said to you is that I want you to start exercising. You know, hopefully you would ask well, what kind of exercise? How often do I do it? How hard do I push? When do I rest? If I said to you I want you to take some nutritional supplements, wouldn't you wonder which ones and what the dosage is, and how long do I take them for that's intention? That's a plan with specifics. To say it another way a goal, the what and the why. I'm not the what, the want and the why. Having a picture of where you want to be without having a plan to get there is just wishful thinking. A why without a how is a dream, that's all it is. It's not going to materialize.

Speaker 2 7:29

So you want to lose weight, but how are you going to do that? Are you going to cut calories? How many calories? Well, I'm just going to eat less and I'm going to move more. Oh, great. How much less are you going to eat? And is that calorie deficit going to come from fats or carbohydrates or both? And how much more are you going to move?

Speaker 2 7:50

Are you going to run a marathon every month? Are you going to work out four days per week, or six days per week, or twice per week when you go to the gym, if that's where you work out, what are you going to do? Are you going to lift weights? What exercises? What order? How many sets, how many repetitions? What's your rest period look like? Fill in those details and now you have a plan, now you have an intention.

Speaker 2 8:18

The intention is where you put feet to what's in your heart and your mind. Sure, you're inspired and you're motivated, but what do you intend to do about it? How are you going to make that happen? You have to have a plan, and I hate to break out one of the most trite and overused cliches of old times, but here it is Like when you fail to plan, you plan to fail. As these things are cliches for a reason, it's because they're true. The downside of intention, unlike motivation, is it's not. Remember how I said, motivation was self-reinforcing, and that's a good thing. The more you do things to get small victories, the more motivated you become.

Speaker 2 9:07

The downside of intention is that it is not self-inforcing. You can't just set your plan and expect things to happen, because once you have your plan, once you know the what and the how of the why and the want, you are the one who has to do the work. You have to follow the plan. I tell people I work with all the time I can give you the most perfectly crafted functional medicine, diet, lifestyle and supplementation plan that anyone has ever seen. But if you don't follow through and do the work, nothing is going to happen. And I tell people I'm not going to fix you, I'm going to show you how you fix yourself. That's a huge dissension. There's another cliche the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Speaker 2 10:01

What intention does for you, then, is not just give you a map to show you how to get where you want to go it. It defines the baseline adherence that you need to meet on a routine basis, no matter what your motivation is on any given day. I have had people say to me yes, I work out. When I ask them how? How often? All about once every two weeks, that's a guy's come on. That's not working out. You might have done, you might have done a workout somewhere in the remote past, but that doesn't mean you're working out Like we use those terms. We're like okay, are you working out, yes or no? Yes means you're doing something consistently.

Speaker 2 10:46

So intention gives you the baseline adherence that you need to meet on a routine basis, no matter what your motivation is on any given day. Remember, motivation is great but it waxes and wanes and some days you feel like doing it, some days you don't. If all you did was let your motivation drive adherence, then half the time you're following your plan, half the time you're not, and again they cancel each other out so that the end of the month, the end of the year, nothing has nothing's different. And you look back and you're like well, I did all this work. You're like, well, you'd have to work. You executed half of your plan based on how you felt. You can't do that if you want to be successful.

Speaker 2 11:30

So intention says here's how we do this. Here is the bare minimum that we need to meet our goals. And on the days when your motivation is high, doing what you intended is easy. But what about the days where you just don't feel like it? That's where discipline comes in, because discipline fills in the gap. On those days when motivation is lacking, discipline is the willpower that lets you execute your plan, even when your motivation is low and you don't feel like doing it. It closes the gap between low motivation and that baseline requirement defined by your intention.

Speaker 2 12:17

If you say I'm going to work out four days a week and it looks like this, this and this, when it comes time, you're going to be able to do it, and it looks like this, this and this when it comes time for you to work out on any given day. If your motivation is low, how do you get yourself to the gym anyways, because that's your intention to work out that day and that's one of the four days you're going. That is where discipline comes in. Remember that when motivation is high, execution is easy, but when motivation is low, that's when you have to be disciplined enough to make yourself do it anyways, and it doesn't matter if that means sticking to your diet when you're out with your friends or going to the gym. When it's cold and rainy outside and it's Saturday morning and you're snuggled in bed and it's just warm and cozy.

Speaker 2 13:11

When you're super motivated to do something, you don't need willpower, because motivation is enough in that circumstances. You only need discipline and willpower when your motivation is low, which it will be from time to time. You need to embrace the fact that your motivation will not always match your intention. What you want to do or don't want to do is not always the same as what you have intended to do to accomplish your goal, and there will be times when you need to rely on share, grit and determination, the discipline and the willpower to succeed. When motivation fails you In the beginning, you may not need to rely a lot on discipline and willpower, especially if your intent is something foreign to you or if you have a lot of distractions or lack of support and accountability, which means that, when it comes to discipline, this is where having a coach or a guide, having supportive friends and family, can make a huge difference.

Speaker 2 14:30

I have many clients who actually continue seeing me every few months after they've completed their initial programs, because they know that I'm going to be there to cheer them on, to hold them accountable to the things that they said they were going to do, and that's also a service that I provide to my clients that are going through their personalized lifestyle programs. It's the accountability and support, and sometimes unfortunately, sometimes I'm the only place they're getting it. But the more you have around you, the more support you have around you, the easier it is to be self-disciplined. Now, the cool thing about discipline is that it can be trained If you are undisciplined or not used to making yourself do something, despite knowing you know you want the end result, but you don't feel like doing it.

Speaker 2 15:19

If you've committed to something in the past and your motivation is low, the only way to become disciplined is to practice discipline. It kind of sounds self-evident, but there it is. Now you can practice discipline in small ways that might not have anything to do with your own end goal. Simple things like making your bed in the morning every morning, cleaning the dishes before you go to bed, doing your laundry, whatever it is like menial tasks that, in the grand scheme of things, don't mean much. Maybe they're more of an annoyance than anything else, but making yourself do something that's that simple can have great carryover into things that really matter. Just know that small successes, even in unrelated domains, feed over into your primary goals. Do hard things, do things that you don't want to do, and if you're not used to being disciplined, pick things that are easy. Know that you might fail at times, but be resolved to do it again and do it again and do it again. Just make yourself and this is why you hear that saying that I think I mentioned in the first episode discipline trumps motivation, but while willpower or discipline is a powerful gap filler and it carries you farther, the motivation does.

Speaker 2 16:51

The problem with discipline is that it is often in short supply and it constantly needs to be recharged. It can be exhausting to always be making yourself do something. It can be exhausting to always be in that mode of self-discipline, to always be gritting your teeth and making yourself do it. If discipline fails anywhere, it's here, in that it is not sustainable over long periods of time and it takes time to recharge so that you can use it again. Now let me bring you back for a moment to inspiration and motivation. The more that you continue to expose yourself to things that inspire and motivate you, the more closely your motivation sits relative to your intent. Let me say it again the more that you expose yourself to things that inspire and motivate you, the more closely your motivation sits relative to that baseline adherence defined by your intent, which means on the low motivation days, it takes less willpower to bridge the gap in between. So this means that you should always expose yourself to whatever it is that inspired you. You should always expose yourself to what motivates you, and you should keep your plan and your intention front and center every single day.

Speaker 2 18:25

My wife has several Pinterest boards that she uses for this. She's got one Pinterest board for pictures of people like physiques that she admires and that she inspires to Another simple, inspirational quotes or memes. And she and I we have regular conversations about why we want to be fit and healthy, what it looks like and what it means to us in practical terms. We're also constantly talking to each other about our workouts. You know, hey, what did you do today? Oh, I did this. How do, how do we do that day? New things that we're doing? Or you know, hey, I set a personal record today and then we celebrate, we support and we celebrate each other, and I I know that.

Speaker 2 19:14

You know, perhaps I'm very fortunate in the sense that I have a great marriage, and I know some of you don't have a significant other, or maybe you're in a relationship that it's not so great. You just need to find the support somewhere else. The more that my wife shows me her Inspiration, motivation, intent and discipline, the more it makes me want to match that. So if you have to find it somewhere else, if you find yourself in a situation where, like for you, you've got to dig deeper on Occasion than other people do. That's okay, I mean, that's not uncommon. But the question I would pose to you, if you find yourself in a circumstance where you just simply don't have someone who's Supportive and on the same page with you, you have to ask yourself what is it really worth to you? Whatever your, your want is, whatever your why is, whatever your motivation and inspiration what is it really worth to you and how hard are you willing to fight for it?

Speaker 2 20:26

If your discipline is failing, you need to do a couple of things. Number one keep your inspiration and motivation in front of you all the time and practice, practice, practice small discipline, even in Unrelated areas to whatever your primary goal is. Practice. These small victories, again, even small victories where you do make yourself do something despite low motivation, not only recharges your discipline battery, but it gives you a bigger battery. You have more to draw on. Plus, the more that you practice using your willpower, the easier it becomes to do hard things in other areas. And Low and behold, what was once very hard and required a lot of grit and determination suddenly becomes habit.

Speaker 2 21:14

And this is the next in the final aspect of adherence is habit. Habit is when something becomes somewhat automated and doing it requires very little thought, very little energy. You don't have to make yourself, you don't have to push yourself. Most of us don't have to think hard about brushing our teeth or washing our hands. Now, when we were kids, brushing her teeth, washing our hands, I felt like a huge deal. But as adults, hopefully, having practiced this several times a day for decades, brushing your teeth and washing your hands is second nature. It's easy because it's our habit. It's just what we do.

Speaker 2 22:01

So what if you practice eating right? What if you practice exercise so much, even if you don't get it right all the time? What if you practice that that it too becomes just what you do? It's an interesting phenomena that when people are willing to engage in eating right and exercising, even when they don't really want to, they can't see themselves doing this forever. At some point they they not only Appreciate and love the results that they're getting, they start to enjoy the actual process, to the point where not eating right seems unnatural, not exercising feels like there's something missing. That's when you know you've developed your habit.

Speaker 2 22:52

Habit doesn't abolish things like low motivation. It doesn't mean you never have to be disciplined. But what habit does and what it means is that the variation between your high and low motivation is smaller. The gap between low motivation and high motivation is smaller and if you need willpower to overcome an obstacle, it doesn't take all that much. It doesn't deplete you like it used to In the early stages again of embracing healthy diet and lifestyle. There's a large space between your motivational highs and lows. The highs are really high and the lows are really low, which means you need more discipline and willpower to fill the gap between the baseline of intention and what your motivation tells you you can do that day. But as whatever new behavior you practice becomes progressively more automated, the gap between the motivational highs and lows narrows, which means your lows aren't so low anymore and they sit much closer to that baseline of your intention the plan, the what and the how, which also means that it takes less sheer will and effort to make yourself do that which at the moment you don't really feel like doing so.

Speaker 2 24:15

With any new behavior, habit is the goal. As new things become more habitual, this is where we see success rate skyrocket and this is what drives long-term adherence, because sticking to your optimized diet and your exercise plan no longer takes so much effort. It reduces the need for constant inspiration, constant motivation and high degrees of self-discipline. That doesn't mean you no longer need them. It's that you are much less reliant on them to keep moving forward.

Speaker 2 24:52

How long does it take for a new diet and exercise plans to become your habit, and just what you do? Well, it's going to vary a lot based on the person, their individual circumstances, how many obstacles they need to overcome. There is this notion that new habits take something like 18 days to create. That might be true for some things, but not others. It's not an absolute. Some experts say that, on average, new habits take about 66 days to form. That's roughly two months, but it could be several months more, again varying based on the individual, how many things are changing at one time, and if they already have a track record of establishing habits in other areas. When you're successful in establishing one habit, the next one becomes easier to do. So let me summarize Changing behavior can be hard. I don't want to lie to you about that. I have struggled with this myself. But if the end goal is worth it, I believe you can do pretty much anything. It has to be important enough to you.

Speaker 2 26:01

People often mistake passion for inspiration and motivation for discipline. Fitness influencers, for example, will say I want to make you passionate about exercise. What they really mean is I'm trying to inspire you. Passion is much more. Passion is even beyond habit. To be honest, I don't even know how to talk about or explain passion, but it's beyond habit. But most people on the internet, social media they've got 30 seconds a minute to kind of grab your attention. They might use the word passion, they mean inspire, they might say motivate, but they mean discipline. So the catchphrase here is inspiration and motivation are necessary but not sufficient.

Speaker 2 26:54

Passion is important because it's the initial drive and desire for something better. It is the want to. But inspiration as a spark fades quickly. What keeps you moving forward when inspiration fades is motivation. It's the why to the want. Why do you want to improve your diet? Why do you want to start exercising? It's very helpful to keep whatever inspires you and motivates you in front of yourself every single day as a constant reminder that you are on a worthwhile journey. It's worth the hassle, it's worth the pain, it's worth the struggle. The end payoff is worth it.

Speaker 2 27:33

Remember that motivation is a fickle mistress. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not, and low motivation is more of a struggle early on in the process of change. It becomes easier as you go forward, but neither inspiration or motivation are enough to sustain adherence over time. This is where having a plan comes in. You need an intention, you need to define what you are going to do, how you're going to do it, so that you can accomplish. The want and the why. And what the intention of a specific plan does for you, again, is it sets the minimum requirements for adherence Eat X number of meals per day with this amount of calories from specific amounts of protein, fat and carbs. Exercise X number of days per week with this type of cardio at this level of intensity for this duration, this type of resistance training. Once you have that set now you have hard markers to guide you and to let you know what needs to be done. But what do you do on those low motivation days when you don't feel like it, even though you know you should and you know what to do, you just don't feel like doing it. You do it anyways Because you have a goal that's important and at some point you were inspired to be or do something better, and that's still there. But the low motivation is masking it, it's buried.

Speaker 2 29:02

Self-discipline and share willpower is necessary at times to overcome the drag of low motivation. The more you exercise willpower, the more you develop discipline and the easier it is to fill the gaps in and get it done. The more you practice discipline, the easier it becomes. Over time, what was once hard becomes easy and, before you know it, that new behavior is now a habit and it's sustainable for life with very little effort, just like brushing your teeth. So listen, it doesn't matter what you committed to in December 2023 or December of any year in the past or in the future.

Speaker 2 29:46

You're going to need a plan and you're going to need to stick to the plan. And if you did find for a few weeks, maybe even more, but now you find yourself off your plan, assuming you had a concrete plan to begin with. There's no reason to wait until next year. Don't fall into that trap. But you need to find out where the system failed you. Why were you not able to adhere? Did you lack inspiration, motivation? Did you live at the level of motivation but you never had a plan? Did you have a plan but it wasn't specific enough? Did you have a plan that was specific but you failed in self-discipline.

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Speaker 2 30:28

Find your inspiration and motivation. Reconnect with that eye of the tiger feeling and know why being or doing better is important to you. Better yet, construct a plan that will help you get there, and if you need help, reach out. Let's schedule a consultation. Maybe what you need is someone to coach you and guide you through a comprehensive and personalized diet and lifestyle program. I'd be honored to serve in that capacity for you. You can use the link in the episode description to connect with me, and we can get that scheduled as soon as possible. All right, guys, I'm going to leave you there. Thank you for listening and we'll see you again right here on the Inflammation Nation podcast.

Speaker 1 31:12

Thanks for listening to Inflammation Nation. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you subscribe to our podcast. Be the first to know when a new episode drops, so you can stay on top of your game. It also helps others like you find the answers they need. You can use the links in the episode description to check out Dr Nozworthy's self-learning programs for thyroid detox and gut health, or you can submit a question for the podcast and even reach out to Dr Nozworthy directly.