The Identity Advantage
Most people don’t have a motivation problem.
They just don’t understand how they’re motivated.
The Identity Advantage is a podcast about what actually drives human behavior — and why so many people struggle to follow through on what they say they want.
Hosted by Kindyl Keeton, this show explores the connection between identity, motivation, emotional awareness, and performance — and how those forces shape your decisions, actions, and results.
This isn’t about waiting to feel motivated.
It’s about understanding how motivation already works — and learning how to use it to become more self-accountable, consistent, and aligned in your actions.
Each episode breaks down the patterns behind:
– why we hesitate, overthink, or avoid action
– how identity and belief systems influence behavior
– the emotional drivers behind decision-making
– and what it actually takes to close the gap between knowing and doing
Through solo episodes and conversations with experts across psychology, performance, and human behavior, you’ll learn how to:
→ build self-trust through action
→ develop real self-motivation
→ make decisions with clarity and confidence
→ and follow through on what matters most
Because real change doesn’t come from more information.
It comes from becoming the version of you who takes action.
The Identity Advantage
EP #20 How to Hack Your Motivation and Stop Self-Sabotage
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Most people think motivation is something that either shows up or it doesn't. It's not. You can learn to use it on purpose — and when you do, everything changes.
In this episode, we're talking about what is actually driving your daily decisions and why, no matter how hard you try, you keep ending up in the same place. The answer isn't discipline. It isn't willpower. It's the emotion behind the action you're taking.
Your emotion plus your action will always equal your result. Always. And if you don't know what emotion is motivating you, you don't actually have control over what you get.
We get into why acting from negative emotions keeps you chasing certainty, why "logical" decisions aren't as logical as you think, and one low-risk place you can start using this today.
If this hits home and you're ready to actually work through it, I have a limited number of free 45-minute coaching consults open right now. When the spots are gone, they're gone.
Click the link below to grab your spot.
https://calendly.com/kindyl-kindylkeeton/meeting
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Visit to Submit a question, Suggest a Topic, or just let me know how this episode landed for you.
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This is having full control over your motivation. And this is how you can put yourself in a spot to where you don't have to do the thing you don't want to do because you know how to make yourself want to do it. Change doesn't start with what you do. Change starts with who you are. I'm your host, Kendall Keaton, and this is the identity advantage. Okay, so I have found myself really caught up in this idea about motivation and really wanting people to understand what it really actually is. It's kind of becoming a theme, and I'm actually going to be doing some interviews coming up. So there's going to be some other people on the podcast talking about this from different perspectives because motivation is something we have. It's something that we need, it's something that exists, but it's something that very few of us know how to use, know how to use purposely. No, you can literally hack your own motivation if you know how it works. But motivation is very, very misunderstood, and there's not enough emphasis put on it, quite frankly. And I want to kind of flip that script. So even though I've talked about this before, we're going to talk about it again. Specifically, I want to talk about the things that are motivating you to do or not to do the things that you're doing every single day. These daily habits, these daily choices, and what is motivating those daily habits and those daily choices. Because you've heard me say this before, you'll definitely hear me say it again. The only thing motivating your choices is your emotions. The emotion behind the action that you choose to take will determine your result every single time. We have got to become emotionally aware human beings. And if we make the choice to do that, we become motivationally aware, and we no longer have to do things that we don't want to do because we know how to make ourselves want to do them. That is a powerful, powerful skill to have. Let me tell you, I have lived the life without it and I have lived the life with it, and I will never go back to being somebody who thinks that motivation just comes and go goes and I don't have any control over it. I do have control over it. Now, sometimes I'm human, I don't always do it. Sometimes I I fail to enforce my control over it. Like there are negative emotions that attack me or that grab a hold of me or that sort of mask me, just like they do anyone else. But I don't stay there very long anymore because I know how to come at it and say out of it and say, this is the thing that I really actually want to do. So why is it that I feel in this moment that I don't want to do it? What is that emotion and thought behind that? And then what do I actually know that will make me want to do this? Because that's like a motivational trigger. And I have a playlist of them, right, in my arsenal that I can pull out at any time because I know what things make me feel what ways, and I know what way I need to feel to be able to do the thing that I want to do. This is having full control over your motivation, and this is how you can put yourself in a spot to where you don't have to do the thing you don't want to do because you know how to make yourself want to do it. Your emotions are a map to where you're headed. That just means that any negative emotion, and I have had people kind of fire back at me like there's no such thing as a negative emotion. I know that all no all emotions essentially are kind of neutral, right? They all serve a purpose in some way, shape, or form. Like there's a there's a very large audience out there that does not like to call emotions negative. But quite honestly, there's emotions we like feeling and emotions that we don't like feeling. I don't enjoy feeling scared, I don't enjoy feeling sad. So when I say negative emotion, I just mean a feeling that I don't aspire to feel any more than I have to. And sorry, not sorry, but I call those negative emotions. And also, let me just insert this here, okay? Just follow this train of thought for a minute. If you've been around the block with me a time or two, you've heard me talk about the emotional scale that our emotions live on a scale. And I think if any negative emotion is just like on the, like if it were a number line, you get to a certain point of the number line and it turns negative. Like I'm not being judgmental about it. I'm just saying these emotions live on a different area of the scale than the positive ones. Just like negative numbers are on one side of the scale, positive numbers on the other side. I'm not saying positive or negative, either one is bad or good. I'm just saying this is where they reside. And there are results that reside on that end of the scale. And then there's positive emotions and positive numbers, and there are results that reside on that part of the scale. So we're just talking about that lower half of the scale or the left side of the scale. However, your scale looks in your head, pure joy is on one side and massive depression, guilt, sadness, shame is on the other. And there is no negative emotion that, if you act from it, will ever lead to a positive result. You cannot add two negative numbers together and get a positive number. And you're not gonna add two positive numbers together and ever get a negative number. That's the way if you will look at your emotions that way through that filter, this will make a lot more sense. And I use that scale, we can look at it as a number line now if you want to, to decide when I find myself between two decisions, especially if I'm like, I don't know what to do and I'm really stressing over this decision because it feels like it's big, like the results of this are going to be impactful. I have to look at this scale and say, okay, your emotion added to your action will equal your result. So if your emotion is on the negative side of that number line and you are adding an action to it, okay, that action is motivated by that negative emotion. So it's a negative action. You're adding a negative emotion and a negative action, you will always get a negative result. You are moving yourself further on that side of the number line. Vice versa, if I look and I feel like this is a positive emotion, the action coming out of it's going to be a positive action. I'm moving myself in the direction that I want to go. We want to be over here on the positive end of this number line, but we're acting from motivations that are coming from negative emotions and wondering why nothing ever changes and we can't ever get the result that we want. And it's because you are taking actions out of emotions that don't feel good. So therefore, it's leading to more things that don't feel good. That's all anything ever comes down to. And you can apply this to any decision you make in any part of your life. Whether it's relationships, whether it's jobs, whether it's your career, your health, nutrition, food choices, this is why you will hear a good fitness and nutrition coach tell you that you will never be able to hate yourself into a good body. When you make a weight loss goal or a nutrition goal or a health goal, and you're making it because you hate the way you are now, that's why you fall off the wagon every other Wednesday and starting every other Monday. Because you're trying to act out of negative emotions, but you want a positive result. There is a misalignment. You could be somebody who takes action on things. You're like, man, I take action. I do the damn thing, but nothing's happening. It's because of what your action is aligned with. I used to use the term aligned action that you have to take aligned action, but every action is aligned. It's just what is it aligned with? So yeah, you have to take aligned action, but every action you're taking is aligned. It's just, is your action aligned with the result you want or the result that you don't want? And the answer to that question lies in the emotion that is causing you to want to take that action. This is why emotional intelligence, emotional awareness is so freaking important. We're out here making thousands of decisions a day, completely unaware of the emotion behind the decisions we're making. This is what I do, this is what I teach, this is what I coach on. And I can see, I see it in myself every day. I'm not saying that I am perfect by any means. By any means. I fall victim to negative emotions every single day, multiple times a day. This is not about perfection. This is about just trying to be aware more often than you are unaware. If you can just, if you just imagine the time you spend aware of why you're doing something and the time you spend unaware of why you're doing something. And those are balanced on either side of a scale. If we could just get them even, because right now we don't realize how unbalanced that scale actually is. Not only is it unbalanced in the lack of awareness, it's unbalanced in our motivational charge. I'm gonna call it a motivational charge because that implies positive and negativity. We are motivated by negative emotions more often, like way more often than we are positive. Because we have a negativity bias. We're wired for that. If we act out of negative emotions, we stay safe. Negative emotions are meant to keep you where you are because where you are is known, where you are is certain, and our body, our biology craves certainty. When you are scared, you will always, always, always, unless you build awareness with your emotions, you will always err, you will always choose, you will always act on the side of certainty. And you know what? The only things you can be certain of? The only thing you can be certain of are the things you've already done, the experiences you've already had, the life you are already living. That is the only place certainty lies. And so when we are constantly acting out of fear, out of scarcity, out of lack, we are chasing certainty and we get it every single time, and it's right where we are. And we wonder why we feel stuck, and we say, I feel so stuck, and I don't know why. This is why. And I'm not saying that it's super easy to change, it is a process, but I am saying, and I will just straight up say this I will help you with this. This is what I do, this is what I'm passionate about. This is what I want people to come to me for. I work on this every day, even with myself. Again, I just I can't impress, like I can't say this enough that I am, I think there's a fear inside of me that people will think because I talk about this that I never make a bad decision, that I'm always acting on the side of positive emotions. I'm not, because acting on the side of positive emotions is scary. There is fear involved in acting from a positive emotion. And I will tell you why. It's because when you are not used to acting from a positive emotion, when you're used to, when you're not used to acting on that, you're also not used to that result. That result is unknown. It is very unknown and it is very scary to do something that you don't know what the result is. And so there is this pull to go back and make this safer choice. And sometimes I end up doing that. I'm actually like just straight up, honest, transparent moment. I'm at a place in my life right now where I'm making a choice that I have been avoiding for a while. I had to make a decision that was very, very scary for me to make. It's coming from a place of hope. It's coming from a place of excitement. The emotions that I feel when I think about taking this action make me extremely happy. But I've never taken this action before. Therefore, the result is unknown. And that fear is the fear that I've been acting on. I've been feeling the fear of the unknown. And some of you are following this right now and you know exactly what I'm talking about. I have been following the fear of the unknown, acting from that fear. Fear is a negative emotion. So when I act on that fear, it gives me a negative result, which is the same thing I've I've continued to get, which is right where I am. And I've been in the same place for several months now because I've been avoiding the emotion coming from the happy, hopeful, excited place because I don't know the result that's coming from that. But I've just recently decided to take that action and to do that thing. And I'm moving into that now. But it took me a solid two to three months to get to the place where I could actually take that action and trust it and believe that it's gonna work. This is not an overnight success story here. No one who does this work has done it once, woken up, and had a completely different life. It is a lifestyle that you choose to live and you've got to know how to live it, and you've got to know the work that you do on a daily basis. And I make it sound like it's hard. It's really not. I either journal in the morning or sometimes I just pick up my phone and I just voice note my thoughts and my emotions and I talk through it. And I get really, really curious about, well, why do you feel that? If that's the emotion that you're feeling, what do you feel like you would do from that emotion? How does that make you feel to take that action? Well, if you feel scared about it, what is that fear telling you to do? Where do you think that's gonna lead you? Like these are the conversations you have to have with yourself. You got to talk to yourself like a damn therapist. How does that make you feel? Like those questions are valid and they have a place. Now, what I do is not therapy. I'm not saying, but I am not a therapist, I am not a licensed therapist. Okay, that is my disclaimer. But helping people make decisions is one of the main things that I do. And you cannot make a good decision if you are not somebody who is willing to feel your emotions and get curious about them. You will think you are making logical decisions, but you are not making logical decisions. You are just unaware of the emotion causing that decision. Logic is what we use to justify our decisions. You are justifying every single decision you make by logic. I know because I've done it and I've seen it done. This might make some people angry, but there is no such thing as a logical decision. There just isn't. We are emotional creatures. We are biologically wired to act from emotion. Our body wants us to act from emotion because it's what keeps us safe, because our body has a negativity bias. And if we are emotionally unaware and we act from emotion, we will always act in favor of avoiding risk. It will feel safe and we will tell ourselves that we're being smart about our decisions, that we're being responsible about our decisions. It might be the right decision. I'm not saying that it's not sometimes a good idea to go look at the numbers, to do a spreadsheet, to do some pros and cons. I'm not saying don't do that. And I'm not saying that sometimes it's not good to make a safe decision, to err on the side of safety. But just be aware that that is not logic, that you are you are making that decision from an emotion that makes you feel safe and certain. You can still take that action. I'm not saying don't take that action. Sometimes that's that's the choice for you and that's what's right for you in the moment. It might be. But don't tell yourself it's logical. It's not. It's safe and it's certain and it calms you down, it lessens your anxiety. You didn't feel good and then make the decision. You felt bad, you made the decisions, and then you felt better. That is the sign that you have made a decision out of fear, out of scarcity, out of lack, out of anxiety, out of any negative emotion. If you don't feel good, you feel a negative emotion, you make an action, and then you feel better, you feel relief, and we say, Oh, I'm so glad I did that. That was a good decision. You actually probably just get honest with yourself, probably just ran from something. More often than not, that's because you decided not to do something. And I do this every day. Remember, we make thousands of decisions a day. You're not going to be perfect on every single one of them. In fact, I'm just saying maybe try this on one decision a day. If I can get like two to three, maybe even like four to five decisions a day that I can actually use this on, I'm like, that is a win. I am not using this a hundred percent of the time effectively. Again, it's that scale. If we can just even it out a little bit, because right now we are erring in favor of the negative. Research would tell us 95% of the time. Because ironically, acting from a positive emotion feels scary. Right. And I know that's kind of like, well, wait, that doesn't make any sense. That's why you need somebody who's done this work to help you and to lead you through it. It's why I hired a coach. It's why I still have a coach. It's why sometimes my best friend is my coach, even when I don't want her to be. That I need somebody else calling me out on these things. Because I'm human and I make mistakes. I make a shit ton of them. But I know without a shadow of a doubt, like I literally have zero doubt that this is the way we operate, that this is the way we are motivated, that I can control my motivation, and that if I will try as often as I can to act out of a positive emotion, my life will get better and better and better. And my relationships will get better and better and better. My career will get better and better and better. Everything in my life will improve if I will commit to acting from the good filling emotions as often as I possibly can. And I will tell you, one of my favorite things about this whole process is that it is so empowering. So empowering to know that I actually have control over my result. The results that you get in your life, everything that you have is a direct effect from the action that you took. And the action that you took is a direct result of the emotion that motivated you to take it. So all I have to do to have control over what I get and the results in my life is to have control over my emotions and choose to act from the ones that feel good and choose not to act from the ones that don't feel good. And I will tell you, one low-risk way for you to try this and for you to really get, start to try to build awareness over this, because this is scary. When you go and you start taking this and you apply, like I'm not gonna lie, acting from good feeling emotions, from hope and excitement in your business when the result is a financial result and a financial risk, that is scary. Like fear plays a part. I'm not over here trying to paint this really pretty easy picture, like it's super easy, just do the freaking thing. But a really great way, and the way I started when I very first did this and way I really built the trust, because you have to build the trust factor with this. Not just with the fact that, okay, this is gonna work, but also the trust you have in yourself to be consistent and use it all the time or to use it more often. But a low-risk way to use this is to use it in your relationships, use it in your conversations. When you start getting ready to say something, take a moment and ask yourself the words that are getting ready to come out of your mouth, are they motivated by positive emotions or negative emotions? Just try it one time. If you are getting ready to say something and you realize, whoop, this is coming from anger or this is coming from jealousy, this is coming from lack, this is coming from anxiety. Whatever it is, if you realize there's an emotion, if you do not feel good and you're getting ready to say something that you think is going to give you relief on the other side of it, stop yourself, take a breath, take three or four, maybe even excuse yourself from the situation for a while, become aware of what that emotion was, and choose if you can't access a different emotion. Eventually, if you do this work, you'll be able to get yourself to be, you will be able to know what emotion it is that you would like to feel in the midst of this relationship, and you will be able to act from that. You might not be able to do that the first time. So if you can't access a good emotion, make the choice to not have that conversation, to stay quiet. Just try it. And even if you still say the thing, just be aware. Just look back and be like, oh, I said that out of this emotion. I did get relief at the end. Felt really good. But look at what happened to that relationship. My guess is that that is the situation, that relationship with that person might not be in the best standing right now. Unless at some point there was a mutual apology that took place. But just try this out in your relationships. Again, this is what I do. This process can be applied to any area of your life to improve it, to make it better, to make it fantastic in the long run. If you will do this diligently enough, believe in it, believe in your ability to use it, this can change your life. I don't say that as a ploy to sell anything. I just say it because it's true, because it has changed mine. Just try it. If you want help with this, that is why I am here. Okay, and you know what? I am actually, I did not plan on doing doing this, but I'm gonna do this. My when I have a consult for a client who wants to work with me, I do like a 15 to 20 minute consult and I do them free. But here's what I'm gonna do: I'm gonna offer consults, and I don't know how many of these spots I'm gonna have. So when they are full, they are full. If you want this, I want you to jump on it. But I am going because it's hard for me to get through this entire thing in 15 to 20 minutes with someone and go through a whole loop. And I wanna be able to go. If you are listening to this and this is hitting home for you, and you think this could be the thing that you need that could change everything for you, that could at least make your life a hell of a lot better than it is right now. I'm gonna take my free consults and I'm gonna make them 45 minutes. So I am offering a free of charge, 45-minute, full coaching consult on this right here. And I will have the link in the show notes. You can click on it, it will take you directly to my calendar and you can find if there's find an open slot, it will tell you the times and the days that I will have open for this. Again, I will not have very many openings, so when they're full, they're gonna be full. But if you're the person listening right now that has tried this or wants to try this and you are serious about it, and you're ready to put in the work and you're ready to start seeing a change in your life, and this feels like yes, this can do it, then I want to talk to you. I want to meet you, and I don't want to do it for 15 minutes. We're gonna do a full 45 minutes. So if that's you and you feel like I'm speaking to you right now, then I probably am. I want you to go right now to the show notes and I want you to scroll down to my calendar link. And I want you to click on it. I want you to pick a time, and I want to see you, and let's talk about this. Let's do the damn thing. I am excited for you, whoever you are that is listening, because I know someone just heard that. I am excited. I will see you soon, face to face, and I'm gonna show you how to change your life. One little emotion at a time. All right, we're gonna end it there. And thank you guys for listening. Thank you for staying with me. I hope you followed through the whole thing. I hope to meet some of you soon face to face. This is it for now, and I will see you all next time. Thank you so much for listening. And if something you heard today made an impact or changed the way you think somehow, then share it with somebody you care about. Because sometimes it's that one moment, that one idea that changes everything. And until next time, remember if you want to do something you've never done, you have to become someone you've never been. That is the identity advantage.