I fail to be Motivated

[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to the "I Feel Don't Know" podcast, where we think of failing is the best way to learn. We explore various topics using stories, interviews, and learnings in hopes that you, too, can rethink how you feel about failing. Together, we can learn to be better failures. I'm your host, Ezra Vega, and I fail to learn. With me today, in person is actually my guest, co-host, Mr. Shaft Phillips, in Shaft. Hey, Ezra, how's it going? We do indeed think that failing is the best way to learn. We're glad you've joined us to explore different thoughts around different topics, as we debate ideas, talk to different people across a multitude of industries to better understand how we can become better failures together. Been a while. Been a long time. So what's interesting about this particular podcast, the name of this episode, is I fail to be motivated. And this episode took over six months to plan a record. And it has nothing to do with how complex the topic is. It just has everything to do with motivation. That's true. We were unmotivated for whatever reason. We had followers. We were doing good. We were editing our podcast. And I think life eventually got in the way. We had a few things happen. We moved platforms for managing our notes. We moved from one platform to another. That's always fun. We had some-- Migrations are fun. Migrations are awesome. We had some work stuff. We had some personal stuff that went on as well. And a little by little, we just couldn't get schedules matched up. But we have that fixed this weekend. Yes. So I convinced Shaft to come visit me in Tampa. So we're actually in person in the same room. We're hoping it's going to sound good. We wanted to force ourselves to get motivated. So that's right. Let's talk real quick about what is motivation. So what is it? What do you think of this, Shaft? That's an interesting question. I mean, I was actually listening to some other podcasts this week about this. And one person described it as it's the fuel. You've got to get started with something. And you may not be very motivated. But you've got to go do something. And so then motivation becomes that fuel that keeps you to doing it, right? You might do it for a couple of weeks. You might do it for six weeks, whatever. But then you kind of stop. And so motivation is that fuel that just keeps you going. But it's that internal drive and desire to, I think get to a better state of something, whether that's your physique, spiritually, mentally, whatever it may be, it's that drive to improve yourself. Yeah, definitely. So what does it come from? I mean, there's different types of motivation. There's internal motivation, which is the fuel, like you mentioned. It's something inside you. But there's also external motivation. So today, we were about to record and it feels like the world's against us. Like dog wants to get walk. Your dog is very motivated. He is very motivated. I don't know where that motivation comes from. It feels like that's internal motivation, but that dog wants to walk. And then the battery died on my wife's car. And she has really good a change in batteries. So as we know from a previous podcast, that's right. So we went to go do that, because we didn't want to run out of daylight. So that jumped in the way. And what was interesting was, in order to record, we've been delaying this, like I said, six months. But when my wife asked me to change the battery, it was like, we dropped everything to go do it. Where does that come from? Do you really want me to comment on that? Yeah, well, obviously the motivation is, you know, you want to take care of your wife, right? You don't want to be stranded on the side of the road. You don't want to have pretty good stuck somewhere. It could be a potentially dangerous situation. So I think that motivation comes from, you know, being responsible member of the family and the caretaker of your family, right? That's where that, I think that motivation comes from. So I think that's internal. That's internal, all right? But there's also external, right? So if I don't do it, what happens? There's always the motivation where it's not the act itself, it's the outcome, right? If I didn't change the battery, like you said, she might get stranded, or I'm going to get yelled at. So there's also that. There's that motivation, yes. You don't want to get yelled at. That's always a strong motivator. It is, it is. There's another type of motivation, which is influence, right? The one thing that's been happening is I've been, like my schedule has been completely off. I've been working a lot and spending lots of time, but when you came decided to come and visit, that was a motivator for me, but it was more influential. Like you influenced me to actually go get ready and go do stuff and actually get out of the house. So there's, there's influence, which is the influence that you have over somebody. Yeah, I think, you know, being in proximity, right? Being in your orbit physically here. We were like, okay, we've been, we've been putting this off long enough, right? So there is that influence of, okay, sometimes people can motivate themselves by being in proximity, right? You're kind of in their orbit and getting things going that way, right? I feel motivated when I'm around certain people. They bring energy, they bring excitement and they're just like, come on, let's go get it done. And you're like, okay, I'll go do it. So that, absolutely, there is influence from, but would that be, I don't know, what's the difference there between external or influence? I think external or environmental is, you know, there's times where I'm not influenced by the people of Rami, but because everyone else is doing it, I kind of feel this internal guilt, right? Okay, well, fine. Like for example, if you're exiting a party and no one's cleaning up, but then all of a sudden, there's a few people cleaning up. You kind of like, okay, well, fine. I'll pick up this can and I'll move it from here to here just to make it look like I'm doing, is that guilt? That's going to be guilt. Okay, that might be guilt. Or what's the term, formal fear missing out? Yes, right. So fear of kind of missing on what's going on and not being part of it could be a motivator. Yeah, it's kind of the environmental stuff. So let's flip it a little bit. How do you lose motivation? Oh, let me count the ways. Let me count one of the biggest things I struggle with with motivation is maybe it's not something I'm particularly interested in. And it could be something I've done a ton of, like repeatedly and I'm bored. Ooh, boredom is a huge motivator. Yeah, I'm just like, yeah, I've done this, especially for me in the field that I'm in, solving technical problems. Like when I first get into a technical problem, I'm pretty excited. I'm pretty motivated to figure it out. But once I've done that maybe 10, 15, 20 times, I'm like, eh, yeah, not very motivated to work on that. Even though I can. Yeah, another demotivator for me is when it becomes an obligation. So it's one thing to have a little bit of fire to go get something done. But as soon as you make it my job, I'm demotivated. Like I'm like, okay, forget it. I would have done it and I would have just been just fine. But now you're expecting me to get it done? No, I'm done. I've gotten this way in the past with certain activities that I've started that I'll kind of really get into, whether it was mountain biking, jujitsu, you pick one, right? I'll really get into it for a while. And then you sort of set goals for yourself. And once you get there and then after a while, it just feels like, I'm making this a job. Well, you started learning the drums. That's something that we couldn't make time because you were doing drums. How's that going? Well, I haven't made that my job yet. So I'm still keeping it fun. I'm being pretty conscious not to do that. I'm being very careful to try to just keep it fun and light and not think I need to go actually being a band. Which no band would take me right now, I promise you. Promise you, but yeah, so I just kind of took it on as a hobby to give me something to do that was kind of fun and also very challenging. I think that was the motivator for me was just to kind of learn something that was challenging. Yeah, so I think what it did, it gave you purpose, right? I think sometimes you need purpose to actually go drive yourself to actually go do the thing, whatever it is, whatever it is. You mentioned that the motivation is the fuel. The action is a thing to just get started. I was listening to something where they were saying that motivation is not the thing you need to start the thing. Motivation is the thing that keeps you going. That's right, that's the fuel of it. That's the fuel, but in order to get moving purpose, I think is a good one where if you lose your purpose or you lose your, I guess your reason for doing it, that might demotivate you. Absolutely, I mean, we've probably all had these things, right? We start things, we're super excited about it. We just lose motivation for one reason or other. Maybe it wasn't what we thought it was going to be or not as good at it as we thought we were going to be and we realize what was the episode we did on, you know, when you limit your losses, right? Yeah, some cost, right? And you're fine, I've sunk enough into this. Okay, I'm losing motivation and maybe it's losing motivation, maybe it's making a smart decision of hey, I've sunk too much into this yet. Well, we'll make you stop, right? So as you're kind of going through, you're motivated to do something, you start to become a little demotivated, but what drives you, I guess that's a form of motivation, like the motivation to stop. Is that, can we say that? Is that motivation to stop or is that just I'm quitting? But sometimes quitting is a motivation, right? When you start, we actually had an episode where we talked about failing and kind of giving yourself some time and there's times where your feedback loop is telling you to stop. Like for example, my trading, right? You've heard me talk about this a lot of times, my friends are actually tired of listening to me 'cause I am awful, but I continue to trade. And I don't know what's gonna make me stop outside of just going completely broke, 'cause it's fun. That could happen, but that's something where I have no purpose that there's no reason for me to do it. It's just fun. And I don't know if I'm gonna stop doing that, but on the other side of work, for example, there's times where you're in it and you lose a motivation and regardless of the internal external, like nothing can make me get motivated, right? Yeah, working out, does another one, I gotta just stop. Yeah, I mean, it is definitely a mindset shift and I think it kind of depends on what it is you're doing, right? Is it something that's for personal enjoyment in your life, right? 'Cause those have different, I think, motivation factors and what would make you keep going versus stopping. Is it work, right? So like paychecks are real good motivators. - Paychecks are good. - Yeah, I would consider that an external motivator. Like if I don't do this, I might stop getting a paycheck. - Yeah, and that's bad in this economy. - Yeah, right now in this economy, you wanna keep getting paychecks 'cause paychecks are good. - Yeah. So, I would almost break it down into, yeah, okay, is this something you personally enjoy doing? Are you getting some sort of pleasure enjoyment out of it? Are you getting some sense of accomplishment, right? Those can be motivators. And I think on some of those, for me anyway, especially if it's a personal activity, once I've gotten to where I think I've reached my goals, what I set out to accomplish, sometimes that demotivates me, I'm just like, okay, I'm done, I got where I wanted to go. We've talked about kind of this intermotivated motivation. What if we flip it? Are you good at motivating others? - That would probably open to debate on people around me. I think at times, definitely good at motivating people. At work, I think I do a pretty decent job of that, right? Hey, we got to do this because this matches to this, a goal or objective and we got to get it done. And here's how we can go about it and try to help them through the process. I think sometimes in my personal life, it kind of depends on who I'm talking to. Am I talking to my kids? Am I talking to family member? Am I talking to a friend? You know, you kind of approach that motivation differently. And it kind of depends on what state of mind they're in a little bit. - Yeah, so you can't my tell my kids like, I can't want it more than you do. And I think it has to do with the way I think about motivation. Like for me, I think if you have it, you're gonna go. And if you don't have it, I'm not gonna force it out of you. - I've tried guilt. Like I've tried gilting people into it. Like if you don't do it, everyone's gonna be upset. I found that doesn't work. You can leverage your friendship. Sometimes that works. Like, hey, we're good friends. Let's go figure this out. Sometimes fear is a good motivator, right? - Yeah, and I've tried that before. I think that's a good point you bring up. I mean, if somebody doesn't have the drive to do that thing, you can coerce them. I guess that's motivation, right? You can force them to do it. But to genuinely get them motivated to want to do it. Like I think there's gotta be some drive internally, right? And you can, like you said, you can use guilt. You can use, try to convince them of the value of doing this thing, right? Nostalgia, all sorts of ways to try to motivate people, but at the end of the day, they gotta wanna do it. - Yeah, you mentioned earlier, there's people that regardless of who they are, what the task is, they can get you motivated. Like I think of David Goggins as an example, right? He's a motivational speaker, namely Seal. I think if that guy showed up, you mentioned that you wanna, you wanna kinda get him to be your alarm clock, right? - Yeah, if that guy wouldn't to follow me around all day, I'd probably accomplish so much. It'd be amazing. (laughing) There are people-- - But it may get old, right? Like the routine may wear down. Like you hear this in your followers of the NFL, right? Like coaches, doesn't matter, probably what support. They got a lifespan, like they can motivate their team, but after a while, it falls on deaf ears, right? So they have to switch out the coach, get a different message in there, and I think it'd probably be that way with even Mr. David Goggins, who's fantastic, by the way. - Yes, yes, I'm not, please don't show up at my house and let me-- - Yes, yes. The guy can do a lot of push ups. What was the other guy who's the tall guy that has the kind of the raspy voice? - Tony Robbins. - Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins is like, I think that guy can motivate me to jump off a cliff. - That guy-- - That guy. - Yeah, that guy can get you going. - Yeah, so he's a great motivator, man. He knows how to bring out, but even with him, right, you listen to him all the time. I mean, you may fall on deaf ears, right? - Yeah. - So we talked a little bit about kind of getting started and just the action, just go do it, right? There's the Nike slogan, just do it. And there's a reason that that Nike slogan is a, you know, it's so, what do they call it, viral, is that you have to get up and do the thing because doing the thing is the thing. Like getting to the outcome is great, but just getting up every day and just grinding, like that's where success comes in. - I agree, it's in, I do love that slogan, by the way. I used to say that all the time in my 20s and 30s, I just go do it, just do it, you know. And I know, I couldn't come up with that, but they certainly have made great use of it, but it's a great way, like sometimes you just don't feel like it. - Yeah. - Sometimes you don't really have the motivation, you just have to go do it, whether that's go to the gym, pay your bills, clean up the house, you know, do your work, whatever it is, sometimes you just have to go do it. And sometimes when you just go do it, actually in the middle of it, for whatever reason, you'll find a little motivation and you feel pretty good afterwards. - Yeah, you'll get that little dopamine hit. - Yes, you definitely feel better afterwards, don't you? - Yes, yes, but I can't, like for a long time, I used to dread walking the dog. And I know it sounds crazy, but I was always like such an inconvenience 'cause he would always come scratch my leg. - At the worst time. - At the worst time, so we just sat down to watch television, he wants to go outside. I'm in the middle of a conference call, he wants to go outside, right? - And of course. - I had to change my perspective because, you know, the dog doesn't have opposing thumbs, they can't open the door, they don't know the code to the front door, so they can't let themselves out or let themselves back in. - So if you gave him the code, I tried, I tried giving him the code, I'm like, dude, let you just go and motivate that dog to hit all the buttons. So, and then what I learned was, if I change my perspective to, I get to walk the dog. As opposed to, I have to walk the dog, I get to walk the dog. Now I've changed my perspective so we're now I'm looking forward to it. Now it's a break in my day. You know, we get towards the end of the day and I know that five, six o'clock, this guy's gonna start going crazy, by the time it gets to about seven, he's like, I gotta go. So, I kind of look forward to it now. - That's interesting because it's something you didn't want to do, you had to do it. You sort of built a routine with it. Some might call that discipline, right? You do it every day, you just do it, you keep doing it, and now it's something you kind of like doing. - It's not bad. - So how do you have to get motivated to go do it now? - Well, he kind of motivates me because the dog's your external motivation. - He is, he is. Plus I know what happens if I don't let him out. So then I'm stuck kind of cleaning up after him. - Because that's the real motivator. - But I mean, it sounds like it's something you're kind of mind doing this now. - Yeah, I'm mind doing it. - One thing that I read, you know, these people quote you watch all these folks on YouTube and Instagram and you know, they're constantly, when you get your feed, I guess tuned into what you're looking for, you're kind of gonna get fed. - Yes. - All this information. - That's right. - What's really interesting that I've learned is the things that show up on my feed are all about motivation and I'm only motivated to watch people tell me how to get motivated. - Do you feel like that's having a positive impact watching these or you're like, I should be feeling like these folks I'm watching all these videos, but I don't really feel motivated. I mean, how is it, how is it impacting you? - But so I do feel motivated, but the motivation is to watch more ways to be motivated. - Interesting, interesting. So it's not actually motivating you. - Well, I mean, I swipe. - Okay. - All right. - It's motivating you to watch more videos. - I'll watch another one. And one thing I saw was quote, where success is the ability to move from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. And okay, I really like that quote, because I mean, our podcast about failure, we talk about getting up from failure. And when you're successful, you people think that you just are successful. - You're lucky, you're lucky, and that's not true. Now, I mean, does it happen, sure, but I think in the vast majority of the cases, it's not, it's not luck, it's hard work. Sure, there's some luck, but I don't think people just fall backwards into it. - Yeah, so you have to get yourself in a position where you're willing to fail. And the failure is what gives you the motivation, the, and the enthusiasm to keep going. And then when you're done, whenever that is, I don't know what that is, but I guess when you're done, that's what success looks like, is that what the saying is? - I mean, it varies, right? Maybe you do get to a point where I got, okay, I did everything I wanted to do. I've accomplished everything. I'm done. - I won this life thing. - I won life. - I got my blue ribbon, I'm good to go. But I don't think, I think it's dangerous when you lose motivation. And I think you pointed to it earlier, if you don't have a purpose, that's a very dangerous, I think, place to be. - I think so, 'cause then you have what's got, almost I got misdirected motivation? - Absolutely, right? 'Cause then you are, whatever the higher calling is for you could be God, could be spiritual, could be a business, it could be relationships. I think if you lose that purpose, you will be demotivated and you'll, unfortunately, what a lot of people seem to do is they go to vices, right? And that could be any number of things, I won't get into them all, but, and that, and when you get into vices, that's purely seeking pleasure, which will be short-lived. And we'll demotivate you after a while. - Agreed. - Agreed. So I think as you're looking for motivation, saw this one and one of my endless feeds, clarity creates speed, speed creates progress, creates momentum, and momentum makes success inevitable. So basically, if you have clarity on what it is you need to do, the act of doing something will eventually get you to progress, and then you start moving, and the progress, I guess that builds momentum equals motivation, is that kind of what we're saying here? Success, bring success, and that's motivation. - Yeah. - Maybe it's a dopamine hit, maybe, right? I'm feeling good about this, this motivates me, that's internal, right? This is exciting, I feel accomplishment, that's gonna motivate me to do more. - Awesome, yeah. - So it's been a long time, really appreciated when listening apologies for not keeping up, for not being motivated, but this episode, like I said, it took about six months to plan and get recorded 'cause we just couldn't get off the ground. - We couldn't get moving. - We were in our own way. - Yeah, so we're gonna start to fail again, and we're hoping that you fail with us. - All right, thanks everybody. Appreciate your time.