The Mindset Mentor - Stop Trying to be Motivated

Episode Date: January 27, 2022

Motivation sucks! Today I’m gonna talk to you about what you should do instead of searching for motivation. Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you live in the United States or Canada and you want to receive motivational text messages from me directly to your cell phone, text me right now, 512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305. Today, I'm going to be talking to you about why you should stop trying to be motivated, why you should stop trying to think about motivation as the thing that you need in this world, and why motivation, if I'm being honest with you,

actually kind of sucks. One of the things, and I talked about this a couple episodes ago, is one of the things I hear all the time is like, how do I become motivated? And the way that I like to think about motivated is this. I like to think about motivation like a match, right? Like if you take a match, you can take a match, and with that match, you can light a match,

and you can start other things on fire. You can take a piece of paper, you can start the piece of paper on fire. But eventually, that match is you can light a match and you can start other things on fire. You can take a piece of paper. You can start the piece of paper on fire. But eventually, that match is going to go out. And it's going to go out very quickly. And so if you're waking up in the morning and you're thinking to yourself, oh, I just don't feel motivated. I'm not motivated today.

I wish I was more motivated. If that's what you're basing your life off of, you're basing your life off of a whim, which is like, oh, I hope that this works. I hope that I get motivated. If that's what you're basing your life off of, you're basing your life off of a whim, which is like, oh, I hope that this works. I hope that I get motivated. I hope that I wake up and I feel like I want to do something. I don't know about you. I don't want to base my entire life off of, I hope I get motivated. Now, let me say this before I go deeper into it. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with wanting to go get motivated. There's times when I don't feel like I'm the most motivated

person and I'll go ahead and I will turn on a YouTube video of someone that I look up to and I'll see, you know, what are some of the Michael Jordan mindset techniques and what are these people doing? And maybe I'll put on some Tony Robbins or maybe I'll put on somebody else and I'll see what they're saying and see if that'll be a spark for me. Because sometimes the spark will get me going and that's great. But what I'm really searching for in life has nothing to do with motivation. And motivation is like that spark. And Jim Rohn says that motivation is like a shower. We recommend that you do it every single day. That's good. And I do recommend that you listen to motivational stuff. And this is also why I don't like being called a motivational speaker is because I do

think that motivation is fleeting. It's just something that's here and then it's gone. It's like the match is lit and now the match is out. But what I'm really looking for is not motivation. I'm looking for drive. I'm looking to be driven towards what it is that I want to do. And here's the reason why is because if I wake up without any motivation one day and I'm not driven, it's going to be hard to get myself going. But if I wake up with no motivation, but I have drive towards what it is that I'm working towards, if I have vision towards what it is I'm working towards and I'm driven towards that vision, it doesn't matter if there's any motivation or not. And so the way I like to think of it is like motivation is like the match

where, yeah, of course it can spark and it can light other things on fire. Drive is like that big, huge log that's in the center of a fire pit that after you put the fire pit out, that log won't stop burning. It's, you guys know what I'm talking about, right? Where it's like, you have that log and you're like,

dang, this thing's still going. And you wake up the next morning, you thought you put the entire fire out, you wake up the next morning and that damn log is still burning from last night. That is the difference between drive versus motivation. I'm looking to be as driven as I possibly can, right? And the thing about the difference between a motivated person and a driven person is this. A motivated person can get inspired for a little while. They can be motivated. They can be like, yeah, let's go. This is fun. And then an hour later, they cannot be motivated. But a driven person is almost like an

obsession. It's like you can see it in their eyes and it looks almost sometimes a little bit scary, a little bit psychotic where it's like you can see it in their eyes. You can see it in their body. You can hear it in the way that they speak. And every ounce of energy that they have has a little bit extra behind it. You get the feeling of if there was a wall that was built in the middle of this person's road to their success or whatever it is they're trying to work towards, that goal, they would break that fucker down. That's what you're really searching for is no matter what, I'm going to be so freaking driven. If something comes in my way, I'm going to put my head down and I'm going to knock that thing over. It doesn't matter. And what it comes down to is a feeling of nothing will stop this individual. Nothing. Not a lack of motivation, not a lack

of energy, not a lack of anything. This person is going to accomplish the thing that they want to accomplish no matter what. Either get out of their way or see how you can go on the path with them. That is what you're actually searching for. So when I say I don't want you to be motivated, that's what I'm saying. I want you to be driven. So how do you find what you can be driven towards? Well, it comes back to your why.

It comes back to your purpose. It comes back to why you're doing whatever it is. And one of my very first mentors used to always say this to me. He would always say, if your why is strong enough, the how will reveal itself. If your why as to whatever it is that you're trying to do is strong enough, how you're going to do it will eventually reveal itself. So what matters the most is actually the why behind what it is. A driven person will figure it out. They'll fall and it doesn't matter. They'll get up again and keep going. And then they'll fall and they'll get up again and keep going. They'll fall and they'll get up again and they keep going.

Nothing will stop them. So how do you find your why is probably the next question that you're wondering inside your head, right? Well, okay, I want to be driven. I want to not have to worry about motivation. I want to be driven towards my goal. Okay, well, how do I find my why? You have to go deeper into your goal and actually find out why you're doing what you're doing. Stop being so surface level with your goals. Stop being afraid

to put emotion into your goals and into your life and what it is you're trying to do. Because emotion will actually bring that drive into your life. So, you know, one of the things that I find that people do is I recommend journaling a lot. I recommend you sit down in your journal and say, why do I want to accomplish this goal? One of the problems with journaling that I find, because I hear this all the time when I coach people,

is that people don't go as deep into their journaling as they could simply because they're afraid that someone's going to find their journal and they're going to get their deepest, darkest secrets and they're going to be found out. And so they don't go as deep as they can. They don't find their deepest why. They don't get emotional towards their why because they're afraid that someday someone might find that journal and make fun of them, whatever it might be. And the best way I can think of it, I'll give you a couple of examples of how to find your why

and people that I've worked with before too. You may have heard me use this example before, but this is just the perfect example. Every time I think of finding your why, this is what I think of. You know, I had a client just like seven years ago as a one-on-one coaching client and we were working together and his goal was he wanted to make $100,000 for the year because he had never made $100,000. I was like, cool. Why do you want to make $100,000? He's like, I want to make $100,000 because I think it would be great. I've never done it before. It'd be a great accomplishment. Okay. Why do you want to make $100,000 though? Well, I want to make $100,000 because it'd be cool to buy a nicer place and live in it and maybe buy some nicer furniture. I said, okay, cool. Why do you want to make $100,000 though? Well you know, it'd be nice. And we went deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper.

This is like a 20 minute conversation. Then about 20 minutes later, I said, why do you want to, because we like brushed off all the service level stuff. I said, why do you truthfully deep down your soul actually want to make a hundred thousand dollars? And it came down to the point where he lived in New York and he had just gotten a divorce. His daughter and his son lived with his ex-wife and his ex-wife moved into a bad part of town in New York. And his biggest fear in the entire world was that his son would be murdered in a drive-by because it wasn't a good part of town.

And then his daughter would get pregnant and that she would then become a mother earlier than possibly she was, you know, she wouldn't be married. She wouldn't be able to take care of her kid. And then she'd have to be on welfare. And so what happened was his why went from, I want to make $100,000 this year

because it'd be nice and I've never done it to I want to make $100,000 this year because I feel like my children's life depends on it. And when I can make $100,000, I can then buy a house. I can put a down payment on a house and I can move my children back into the house with me and they'll be in a safer part of town. Now, do you think he became more driven towards his goal

when it became not about just making money, but it became about making money because he wanted to make sure his children would be safe and get into a better part of town and get into a better school and then get a better education and how that would change their life completely? Yeah, absolutely.

Hey, car shopping is already a confusing and stressful process. And in 2022, finding the right car can be even trickier due to inventory shortages. Edmunds goes the extra mile to make car buying easier by providing shoppers with honest car reviews, video test drives, online shopping tools, and the latest consumer advice. And the current car shortage means

some of the models are harder to find or more expensive than usual. And this is where Edmunds comes in, where you can be flexible with considering other brands, models, and vehicle types. Edmunds has over 50 years of trusted car shopping advice and price guidance all in one place. Edmunds has unbiased research, reviews, and industry expertise to help empower car shoppers to make the best decisions for themselves. And Edmunds has free online tools to help empower car shoppers to make the best decisions for themselves. And Edmunds has free online tools to help you compare vehicles and dealer quotes to figure out your budget and financing and get an appraisal for your trade-in. Car shopping can be overwhelming, but Edmunds is here to help. Visit edmunds.com and click the Edmunds Best Car Ranking to research

and compare vehicles. That's edmunds.com. Edmunds, we drive it like it is. Thanks to Edmunds for sponsoring the show. Another example of how this happens as well. I was interviewing years ago, Jeff Hoffman. And Jeff Hoffman started Priceline.com. And I asked him, how do you help your employees stay motivated or driven towards their goals? And he gave me an example of, he said, I like to find their why. I said, okay, well, give me an example of what you mean by that. He said, well, there was one guy and he's, I don't remember his name. Let's say his name was, you know, Fred, right? Fred came into his office. He's like, hey, you know, this is what I want to do this year. These are my goals for this year. And he was a salesperson. And he said, okay. He said, why do you want to do that? He said, well, I want to do this

because he went deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and found out the reason why he wanted to succeed this year was because he grew up in Florida. His mom was an immigrant and she had always wanted a house. She always lives in apartments and not good apartments. And he just wanted to buy his mom a house in South Florida so she could finally have a house. And he said, okay, what do I want you to do?

I want you to go onto realtor.com. I want you to find the house that you feel would be perfect for your mom. And I want you to print a picture of it out and come into my office. And he said, okay, cool. So he went and he found that perfect house. He printed a picture of it. He went into Jeff's office and Jeff said, okay, come on, let's go to your cubicle. He walks into his cubicle and he takes a safety pin or a thumbtack and he puts it on his cubicle and says, I put right above where his phone was. And he said, every single phone call that you make, every single cold call, I want you to think about how that's going to get you closer to buying your mom this house. And so what happened was then every single time he would walk by his cubicle,

he wouldn't say, hey, how are phone calls going? Hey, how are sales going? He would say, hey, Fred, how much closer are you to buying your mom that house this year? And he used that to drive this guy to succeed because then it wasn't just about making phone calls. It wasn't just about making money. It was about this deep, strong drive inside of him to buy his mom a house because she had never had a house and he thought that she deserved it. She sacrificed so much for him. He thought to himself, you know what? I'm going to sacrifice and I'm going to get this for my mom. And so sometimes it's better to attach our goals. If you want to find a why and you want to find a goal to something that is outside of

you. As humans, we are driven to help other people. We are driven to want to be in community and to help other people in some sort of way. And sometimes it's better to attach your goals to something outside of you. Like if you have kids, if you have a goal, how is your goal going to change your kid's life? There's sometimes that I hear from people, they're like, you know what? Like I, they use their kids as like a scapegoat

as to why they're not succeeding. Oh, I'm not succeeding because I don't have time. I've got four kids though. And so I don't have time to work on my business. I don't have time to work on my goals and work on myself. And that's great to be an amazing parent. But then I then turn around and say, instead of making them your scapegoat

and the reason why you're not succeeding, how can you make your success in the achievement of that success, how can you make your children the reason behind that success? And so if you think about, you know, in America, if you think about in America, if you move into a nicer part of town, sadly, this way it works, but your children are going to go to better schools. And when your children go to better schools, they're going to get better education. And when they get better education, it's more likely to

set them up for the rest of their life. And so you can think to yourself, yeah, I do want to make more money. But if you think to yourself about how you're, you know, like that guy that was making cold calls for his mom's house, how you making those calls, how you getting up and working your ass off is going to actually benefit your children versus using your children as an excuse

as to why you're not succeeding, that is going to drive you towards the success and whatever it is that you're trying to achieve in your goals that you have. So instead of using your children as the scapegoat as to why you are not succeeding, how can you succeed for your children and think about how every action that you're going to take on a daily basis is going to be for them. If you think about your children's survival and what their life is going to become and how every action that you take is going to change

their life for the better or worse, you will be very driven towards the goals that you're working towards when you realize that you're doing it for them, not just for yourself. So when we break it down and you really start to look at it, you start to realize that motivation is great. It's fine. It's good enough for moments. But as far as what I say, I'm going to base the next year of my life and my New Year's resolutions on my motivation. Hell no, absolutely not. What do I want to base my New Year's resolutions off the next year of my life, the next five years of my life? Off of something that is such a deep desire for me, such a strong why that I get up every fucking morning and I'm working towards that thing because I want to achieve that thing so bad

because of how it's going to change my life, how it's going to change my family's life, how it's going to change my children's life, how it's going to change the world and people around me or people in my community. And I focus on that deep, strong why versus focusing on myself because that is the main difference

between motivation and drive. Motivation is great. It's cool. It's grand. It's awesome. It's all of that stuff, but it won't last forever. It will eventually run out. What you want is instead of that little tiny spark, that little tiny match, you want a big freaking log that is just so hard to put out because you want people to look in your eyes and be like, oh, I'm going to get out of her way.

I'm going to get out of his way because he is going to achieve that thing no matter what. When you have that sort of feeling, that sort of deep, strong why, and you're driven so much towards that goal, motivation doesn't matter. What matters? The drive that you have. And so, when I say motivation is not what you're searching for in this world, what I'm telling you, what you're searching for in this world that will make your goals so much easier to achieve is what you are driven towards and the your goals so much easier to achieve is what you are driven towards and the why behind why you want to achieve that. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me at

RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And if you're out there and you want more inspiration, more motivation, I usually post at least three times a day on Instagram. Try to fill your newsfeed with as much positivity as possible. So follow me on there, Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And I'm gonna leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you. And I hope that you have an amazing day.