SNEAK PEEK: Introduction to “Motivation for Regular People”
My full-length book, “Motivation for Regular People: Reframing Your Drive to Pursue Your Goals and Achieve Your Potential,” is set to release later this year. I’ve been working on this project all year, and I can’t wait to share it with you.
Although the full book won’t come out until later this fall, I’m excited to release the introduction today. If you want to be the first to know when the full book is available for purchase, make sure you sign up for my email list.
Can I tell you what I love most about inventions like the wheel, the printing press, electricity, airplanes, the internet, and artificial intelligence?
The potential for each one to exist was always there. It just needed to be uncovered.
I believe the same is true for you. And my hope is that this book acts as a stepping stone between where you are now and reaching your full potential.
Without knowing you personally, I can’t say with full certainty what it will take for you to get there. What I do know is there’s one thing you’ll need regardless of who you are, where you’re from, or what you want to do.
The Power of Motivation
Motivation is one of the most powerful – and misunderstood – forces in the entire world.
It’s powerful because everything we do requires motivation. Think about that for a moment. Every action, every decision, every initiative, and every step forward was born from motivation.
If it wasn’t for motivation, the Declaration of Independence wouldn’t exist. We wouldn’t have seen a person step foot on the moon. Without motivation, Michael Jordan may have quit basketball forever after getting cut from his varsity team in high school. Thomas Edison could have given up on creating the lightbulb if he wasn’t motivated to keep trying after multiple failed attempts. The world as we know it exists because of past motivations, and the future will be shaped through motivations that aren’t yet developed or created.
At the same time, motivation is misinterpreted, misconstrued, and wildly underutilized. If you have a Ferrari in the garage but don’t know how to start the engine or put it in gear, it doesn’t benefit you much (although you could still stare longingly and dream about what it would feel like to take it out on the road).
When it comes to motivation, the number-one problem most people face is that they think motivation is random or accidental. For most of my life, I thought this way. However, I’m so thankful to have learned a better approach.
My Story
If you know me personally or if you read my first book, “Seven Steps to Dominate Your Day and Crush Your Goals,” you’ve heard me talk about the first eighteen years of my life and how I thought everything was coincidental. I assumed that people who made better grades than me were simply smarter, and anyone who was more athletically talented or in better shape than me was dealt a more favorable genetic hand.
The underlying problem - which I realize now but couldn’t grasp back then - was that I didn’t want to take responsibility for my actions. I imagined that played a role in my path toward academic probation during my freshmen year of college, a time during which I was pushing 300 pounds and consuming between 4,000 and 5,000 calories daily.
There’s nothing magical about my transformation. Truth be told, there was no “rock bottom” or “come to Jesus” moment where I realized I needed to change. In a way, the real story might be better.
When I started college, I had a few friends who decided to start going to the gym. I didn’t have anyone to play video games with if they weren’t around, so I decided to go with them. At first, it was nothing crazy. I would lift weights two or three times a week for about 30 minutes each time. I didn’t think I was doing anything out of the ordinary.
Then, something amazing happened. After four or five months of consistently lifting weights, I stepped on the scale and learned I had dropped twenty pounds. I thought the scale was broken. I wasn’t intentionally trying to lose weight, and I didn’t think I had a problem.
However, I received one of the best gifts I’ve ever received - a new outlook on life. I spent the first eighteen years of my life thinking that my trajectory, my situation, and my destiny were all out of my control. This unexpected drop in weight disproved my prior hypothesis and taught me that I did, in fact, have control over my life. I could do anything I set my mind to accomplish.
Fast forward eleven years. I’ve dropped close to 100 pounds and kept the weight off for seven years. I’ve completed three half marathons and three multi-sport races. I got off academic probation in the first semester of my sophomore year and earned my first 4.0 for a full semester since elementary school. I went on to make the President’s Honor Roll and complete two master’s degrees, making A’s in all but two classes along the way.
More importantly, I’ve learned that I have full control over my life. I’m not a victim of a situation or circumstance. If I don’t like something, I have the power to make a change. If I want to accomplish a goal, I can set myself on a path to get where I want to go. Obviously, this all requires motivation, but as you’re about to learn, finding and maintaining motivation is actually much easier than you might assume.
The Problem with Motivation
I hear people say things all the time like, “I’m just not very motivated” or “I struggle with motivation.” To a degree, I can empathize with these people. Maintaining motivation is not easy - especially when you’re doing something that requires intense focus and energy.
The problem with this perspective of motivation scarcity is that it’s inaccurate. Each person has the same level of intrinsic motivation. Everything you choose to do - whether you’re reading this book, going for a run, calling a friend, or picking up your phone to scroll through social media - requires motivation.
The problem isn’t a lack of motivation. The problem is the direction of your motivation. Most of the difficult decisions that we make are challenging because of conflicting motivations:
“I want to be in better shape, but I also want to eat this cheeseburger and fries.”
“I want to learn, but I also want to watch this TV show on Netflix.”
“I want to get up early, but I also want to sleep in and wake up on my own schedule.”
“I want to engage with my family, but I’m tired from the day, and I want to rest.”
“I want to be more disciplined, but I also value comfort.”
As you can see in each example, there’s an obvious distinction. Do I want to do the hard thing right now that requires more effort, or do I want to make the easy choice and maintain comfort? There are a number of factors in each situation that will impact the direction of your motivation. Regardless, a lack of motivation isn’t your issue because choosing the easy option still requires some level of impulse.
This seems like a good time to point out that many people (myself included) suffer from a specific problem. When faced with an example of competing motivations, we often choose what we want now over what we want most. I want to increase my stamina, improve my physical condition, and feel the positive effects of endorphins, so I consider going for a run. However, I also value the comfort of my couch and the entertainment provided by the TV show that I’m watching, so I choose to stay put and postpone the run.
Our brains are hardwired to prioritize instant gratification, and today’s digital world has fanned this flame to the point where it is nearly uncontrollable. I can order a product on Amazon today and expect to receive it before the end of the day tomorrow. I can place a meal order for a restaurant on my phone and expect my food to be ready by the time I arrive at a restaurant. We live in a world where patience is becoming increasingly unnecessary - and I would argue that it’s killing our motivation. At the same time, it makes me think a book on motivation is more necessary than ever before.
At this point, you come to a fork in the road. Will you let your motivation control you as you fall victim to easy and comfortable choices, only to look back one day and regret that you wasted your potential? Or will you commit to digging deep into this book, working hard to understand how motivation actually works so that you can harness its tremendous power to create the life you’ve always wanted?
A Better Approach
You’re probably familiar with Ted Lasso, even if you haven’t watched the Apple TV hit series yourself. In the show’s pilot, we learn that Ted was hired as the head coach for a professional team at the highest level of the sport despite never having any experience coaching soccer himself. Before AFC Richmond’s first game of the season, a local news reporter named Trent Crimm approaches Ted and asks if Ted can explain soccer’s offsides rule.
Ted was seemingly unfazed by the question, despite the fact that he clearly didn’t know how to explain the offsides rule. He doesn’t hesitate at all when offering his answer, responding with a quote from the US Supreme Court and explaining that while it’s not easy to define, you know it when you see it.
In some ways, Ted’s perspective on offsides resembles the approach many people take to motivation. While we understand how motivation works, it can feel overly abstract or inconceivable at times. We don’t fully understand what it is or how it works, but we can sense when it’s present.
There’s nothing wrong with engaging with motivation in this way. It’s a great entry point. However, if we aren’t careful, we can become susceptible to confusing motivation for something that it’s not.
Motivation is a hard word for most people to define. Cheesy images of motivational speakers and posters with vague captions and stock images cloud our perception of what motivation actually is. As we get ready to begin our study of motivation, let’s strip our definition down to the foundation and prepare to rebuild it from scratch - starting with this definition of motivation from Oxford Languages:
Motivation (n) - The reason (or reasons) one has for acting or behaving in a particular way.
In short, all activity begins with motivation. The value of the task is irrelevant - you still need to have motivation to act.
To me, this means that if we can figure out what impacts our motivation, we can stack the deck in our favor. We can train ourselves to do hard things even when it doesn’t feel natural. We can lock in good habits by shifting our perspective. We can accomplish any goal by tapping into the power of motivation to help us get to the place where we want to be.
With this in mind, let’s pause for a moment and consider the implications. If you could learn how to control your motivation and focus it on your most important goals, what would you do? Would you start your own business? Would you sign up for a 5K or a half marathon? Would you go back to school? Would you write your own book?
Regardless of what you decide to do with your newfound motivation, my hope is that nobody reads this book and still feels like motivation eludes them. You don’t need to find more motivation. You simply need to learn how to best use the motivation that you already have inside of you. If you have the power to choose to read this book, you have the power to do anything you set your mind on. And you’re about ready to tap into this power in a greater way than ever before.
How This Book Works
This book is divided into three parts. In Part One, we’ll further break down what motivation actually is. We’ll briefly cover the science behind motivation so that we can understand (at a basic level) what’s happening in our brains when we feel motivated. We’ll dig into words like discipline and willpower that are similar (but not identical) to motivation. Despite their differences, they still play a critical role in our understanding and application of the power of motivation. You’ll also learn about how various concepts such as values, desires, and beliefs impact your motivation.
Part Two is where the rubber meets the road. I’ll walk you through a three-step plan that will help you find (and keep) motivation to complete any task. We’ll answer questions like, “How can I motivate myself to do things I don’t enjoy” and “How can I maintain motivation over a long period of time?” We’ll also consider how we can overcome demotivation and how you can share motivation with your team, family, and community.
The last section will be especially fun. We’re going to take the concepts we’ve covered and determine how to best apply them to accomplish goals in specific categories. You’ll see how the perspective on motivation in this book can help you take steps toward personal, professional, health, financial, and relationship goals. Because I don’t want you to think this book is overly theoretical without being practical in everyday life, I’ll share true stories from former guests on my podcast, “Motivation for Regular People,” and we’ll see how they were able to leverage their motivation to accomplish amazing things.
Before we wrap up, I’ll offer 52 additional tips or tricks for finding and maintaining motivation. I remember hearing one of my favorite speakers and authors, Jon Acuff, speak at a family ministry conference in Austin in October 2018. One thing Jon said that day that I’ll never forget is that we must carry a motivation portfolio with us at all times. Jon said, “We must pack 40 motivations with us each day because we need to prepare for 38 of them not to show up.” Hopefully, some of the ideas in this final section will help you further build your own motivational portfolio. I’ll give you enough to have one per week for every week of the year, and I imagine you’ll have your own ideas as you read through my list.
Many of the sections in this book will have questions and thought prompts for further discovery and application. As a professional coach certified by the International Coaching Federation, I’m not interested in simply having thought-provoking conversations. You’ll receive the most value from this book if you focus on applying the concepts and principles you’re reading about, and these questions should help you consider how these ideas intersect with your everyday life. Feel free to have a notebook and pen nearby to write your answers down as you work through the book (you can use your phone as well. No judgment here).
I’m excited to go on this journey with you. I know how discouraging (and demoralizing) it feels to know that you’re not tapping into your full potential. Let me encourage you by reminding you that, like motivation, your potential already exists inside of you. You already have everything it takes. It’s time to draw it out.
