فصل 7

PART III

LIMITLESS MOTIVATION

THE WHY

motivation (noun)

The purpose one has for taking action. The energy required for someone to behave in a particular way.

In the movie Limitless, writer Eddie Morra was completely unmotivated, unfocused, and had no energy. When he popped the pill that made him suddenly take action, his life drastically changed for the better because he was able to make things happen.

Let’s unlimit a few LIEs commonly held around motivation. Contrary to popular belief, like your mindset, motivation is not fixed. No one has a set level of motivation. And when people say they are unmotivated, it’s not completely true. They could have a high level of motivation to stay in bed and watch television.

Motivation also doesn’t mean you must enjoy something that you need to do. My friend, entrepreneur Tom Bilyeu, hates working out, but he has a clear and compelling reason to do so, so he does it every morning. I really don’t like taking cold showers, but I do it daily (I’ll explain why in Chapter 8).

Finally, motivation is not something you wake up with or not. We put ourselves in a trance when we say, “I don’t have any motivation.”

Motivation is not something you have; it’s something you do. And it’s entirely sustainable. Unlike a warm bath, it’s not something that you experience for a moment and then lose unless you heat it up again.

Motivation isn’t derived from a seminar that temporarily pumps you up. It’s a process. And since it’s a strategy, you have control over it and can create it consistently by following the right recipe.

Here’s the formula: Motivation = Purpose × Energy × S3

When you combine purpose, energy, and small simple steps (S3), you get sustainable motivation. And the ultimate form of motivation is the state of flow. Think about it as energy management. Creating it, investing it, and not wasting it. A clear purpose or reason gives you energy. Practices you employ will cultivate energy for your brain and the rest of your body, and small simple steps require little energy.

In this section, we’ll talk about how to cultivate powerful sustainable motivation around learning and life that lasts. We’ll achieve this by getting clear on your purpose, fostering the mental and physical energy that will sustain you, and establishing small simple steps. And tapping flow states.

Purpose drives us to act, and our purpose must be clear enough that we know why we’re acting and what we’re hoping to gain. Generating sufficient energy is vital—if you’re tired or sleepy, or if your brain is foggy, then you won’t have the fuel to take action. Small simple steps take minimal effort and keep you from being paralyzed with overwhelm. And finally, finding flow is the ultimate boon to motivation.

Chapter 7

PURPOSE

How do certain defining phrases determine who you are?

How do your values define you?

What does your sense of purpose say about who you are?

For the longest time, my kryptonite was lack of sleep. Sleep has never been easy for me. As a kid for years I was pulling regular all-nighters, studying long hours trying to compensate for my learning challenges. I developed bad sleeping problems. I was always tired at school, but I would plow through the fatigue anyway because I had a strong desire to work hard and make my family proud. My purpose and reasons were super-clear, so I was plenty motivated. Even after I learned accelerated learning skills at age 18 and I no longer had to put in crazy hours, my sleeplessness continued into adulthood and has grown steadily worse—two to four hours total of very interrupted sleep for about 20 years.

The longer you go without sleep, the harder it becomes to maintain a sense of reality—or motivation, for that matter. Lack of sleep compromises all of your cognitive skills, your focus, your memory, and your overall brain health. A common contributing factor for depression and many mood disorders is lack of sleep. I can attest to the dark places I’ve found myself in as a result of lack of sleep. My intense speaking and global travel schedule certainly did not help; one year I was on the road for 235 days. Time zones, jet lag, unfamiliar stale hotel rooms, you get the picture. And my brain was feeling it; just imagine a memory expert forgetting what city he is waking up in.

This puzzled me, because as a long-time meditation student, my mind was not ruminating or racing at night; it was as calm as could be. It was only a handful of years ago, when I ended up hospitalized from multiple nights without rest, that I participated in an overnight sleep study and was diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea, a physical disorder where evidently I stopped breathing more than 200 times each and every night.

Today, after multiple treatments, I’m happy to say my sleep is worlds better. Once I was able to fix the physical obstruction with surgery, I was then able to optimize my sleep with a number of tools I will cover in Chapter 8.

During my most difficult moments, I’ve asked myself why I continue to do what I do. Why struggle when I could easily tell myself I don’t have the energy for this? As a child, my purpose and motivation (motive for taking action) was to compensate for my lack of talent with hard work, to prove to myself I was capable. But once I’d leveled up my learning, why did I continue to work so hard—despite being exhausted, sleep-deprived, and an extreme introvert—to make speech after speech, video after video, podcast after podcast? It’s the same thing that drove me as a child: I have clear and definite purpose. I don’t want anyone to struggle and suffer the way I did.

The mission that drives me is to unlock better, brighter brains.

Often our greatest struggles lead to our greatest strengths. My two biggest challenges as a child were learning and public speaking. Life has a sense of humor because I spend most of my life public speaking on learning. I couldn’t read, and now I teach people from all over the world how to read better. I struggled to understand my brain, and now I speak in front of audiences of thousands to help them understand the amazing tool they possess. I’ve learned there is a gift in most challenges. In the same way, decades of lack of sleep has given me two very important lessons.

First, it’s forced me to live everything in this book. I wouldn’t be able to perform at the level I do without the tools I’ve learned, so I’ve doubled down on everything I teach. I rarely have to prepare for a speech, because I use these skills every single day. I live them. It’s who I am.

Second, I’ve had to become really clear on my purpose, my identity, my values, and my reasons for doing what I do every day. When you don’t sleep, and you have a very limited amount of energy and focus, you don’t waste it. You prioritize and get crystal clear about your commitments and why you are making them. All of those choices have led to inexhaustible motivation. That’s what we’ll talk about in this chapter.

START WITH WHY

Among my favorite books is Start with Why by Simon Sinek, who I’ve interviewed multiple times on my show. He often stresses the importance of being able to convey to others why you do what you do. If, Sinek explains, you can articulate the belief that is driving you (your why), people will want what you are offering. Or, as he so often says: “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it, so it follows that if you don’t know why you do what you do, how will anyone else?”

There’s a reason why the second of the magic questions is, “Why must I use this?” (Do you recall the other two questions?) For most children, their favorite word is why, which they’re asking all the time. Do you know why it was important to memorize the periodic table or historic dates? If you don’t, you probably don’t remember them. We hear the words purpose and goals used frequently in business, but do we really know what they mean and how they are the same or different? A goal is the point one wishes to achieve. A purpose is the reason one aims at to achieve a goal.

Whether your goal is to read a book a week, learn another language, get in shape, or just leave the office on time to see your family, these are all things that you need to achieve. But how do you do this? One of the popular ways is setting SMART goals. Yes, this is an acronym:

S is for Specific: Your goal should be well defined. Don’t say you want to be rich; say you want to make a certain amount of money.

M is for Measurable: If you can’t measure your goal, you can’t manage it. Getting fit isn’t measurable—running a six-minute mile is.

A is for Actionable: You wouldn’t drive to a new town without asking for directions. Develop the action steps to achieve your goal.

R is for Realistic: If you’re living in your parents’ basement, it’s hard to become a millionaire. Your goals should challenge and stretch you, but not so much that you give up on them.

T is for Time-based: The phrase, “A goal is a dream with a deadline” comes to mind. Setting a time to complete your goal makes you that much more likely to reach it.

The challenge for many people is that this process, while logical, is very heady. To get your goals out of your head and into your hands, make sure they fit with your emotions—with your HEART:

H is for Healthy: How can you make sure your goals support your greater well-being? Your goals should contribute to your mental, physical, and emotional health.

E is for Enduring: Your goals should inspire and sustain you during the difficult times when you want to quit.

A is for Alluring: You shouldn’t always have to push yourself to work on your goals. They should be so exciting, enticing, and engaging that you’re pulled toward them.

R is for Relevant: Don’t set a goal without knowing why you’re setting it. Ideally, your goals should relate to a challenge you’re having, your life’s purpose, or your core values.

T is for Truth: Don’t set a goal just because your neighbor is doing it or your parents expect it of you. Make sure your goal is something you want, something that remains true to you. If your goal isn’t true to you, you’re far more likely to procrastinate and sabotage yourself.

ON PURPOSE AND PASSION

Knowing your purpose in life helps you live with integrity. People who know their purpose in life know who they are, what they are, and why they are. And when you know yourself, it becomes easier to live a life that’s true to your core values.

Your life purpose consists of the central motivating aims of your life— the reasons you get up in the morning. Purpose can guide life decisions, influence behavior, shape goals, offer a sense of direction, and create meaning. For me, my life purpose is to create a world of better, brighter brains.

The English language is rife with words that get used interchangeably, as if they mean the same thing. Let’s take the words nice and kind, for example. These two words are often used in the same way, but their roots reveal a different story. The origin of nice comes from the Latin word nescius, which means “ignorant.” Kind, on the other hand, is of Germanic origin and is related to the word kin. The original sense of the word was “nature, the natural order,” and “innate character, form, or condition.” It morphed from the sense of “feeling of relatives with one another,” and became a word that meant “friendly, deliberately doing good to others.”1 Passion and purpose are in the same camp—they’re often confused with one another. Both concepts are discussed all over the Internet, in motivational books, in TED talks. It’s easy to feel as if you must be lacking if you don’t feel a burning passion or purpose in your life. In my experience, however, passion and purpose are not the same thing; instead, one leads to the other.

Finding your passion is not about choosing the right path or finding the perfect professional destiny. It’s about experimenting to see what ignites your joy. Passion comes when we rediscover our authentic, alive self, the one who has been muted and buried beneath a pile of other people’s expectations. There is not a single right path to be discovered or revealed.

Instead, I believe that when we exchange a fixed mindset for a growth mindset, as we discussed in Chapter 6 in the section on myths, we learn that interests can be developed through experience, investment, and struggle.

Furthermore, different passions can be cultivated simultaneously. You don’t have to choose one over the other when you’re exploring. Finding your passion is like finding true love, in that you have to go out on many dates to get to the perfect match. Once you find that special person, it doesn’t just magically “work,” because it takes effort to build a relationship.

Finding your passion is no different—it takes experimentation to see what clicks for you, and it takes effort.

To sum it up, passion is what lights you up inside. My passion to learn was born out of such a struggle that it became a major part of my life’s identity.

KWIK START

What are your current passions? List three.

Purpose, however, is about how you relate to other people. Purpose is what you’re here to share with the world. It’s how you use your passion.

When you get down to it, we all have the same purpose: to help other people through our passion. The greatest task we have in life is to share the knowledge and skills we accumulate. It doesn’t have to be more complex than that.

Your passion might be underwater basket weaving, but your purpose is to share underwater basket weaving with other people. My passion is learning, and my purpose is to teach other people to learn. This is so deeply ingrained that I don’t have to force myself to do it—it comes naturally. I wake up ready, motivated, and excited to help people learn.

Podcast guest Jonathan Fields, founder of the Good Life Project, believes that we will naturally have many passions over the course of our lives.

Because you will change, the medium through which you express your passions will change, too. He believes that if you define yourself by one very specific passion and your life changes in a way that doesn’t allow you to pursue that passion any longer, you might feel lost. The key is finding the underlying meaning in your passions to find a new way of channeling your expression.

KWIK START

Do you know your life’s purpose? Even if you don’t yet, write down a little bit about what it could be.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

What often isn’t discussed in the quest for motivation is identity —who you are . . . and who you think you are at your core. They say the two most powerful words in the English language are the shortest: “I am.” Whatever you put after those two words determines your destiny.

Let’s say you want to stop smoking. Maybe you’ve had a few warnings from your doctor, and you’re finally coming around to the idea that you should quit. If you identify as a smoker and regularly say, “I am a smoker,” it’s going to be difficult to quit until you dismantle that identity. When you say you are defined by a particular action, you are essentially priming yourself to identify with and justify a certain behavior.

This is so integral to behavior change that it can’t be overstated. A fascinating study out of Stanford University showed the effects of priming on participants. Researcher Christopher Bryan separated participants into two groups. The first group responded to a questionnaire that included phrases like “to vote” and questions like “How important is it to you to vote?” The second group’s questionnaire had slightly altered questions, like “How important is it to you to be a voter [emphasis added]?”2 The participants were also asked whether they planned to vote in the upcoming elections. Later, researchers used public voting records to confirm whether the participants had voted or not. Bryan and his team found that the participants whose survey included personally identifying statements like “voter” were 13 percent more likely to vote than those who were simply asked about the likelihood that they would vote.3

When you consciously decide to identify with the habit or goal you want to create or achieve, or consciously un-identify with a habit you no longer want, you will experience enormous power. If you’ve been telling yourself all of your life that you are a slow learner, or that you can’t learn, you might start telling yourself “I am a fast and efficient learner” instead. The highest drive we have is to act consistently with how we perceive ourselves—it is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. Use it to your benefit.

KWIK START

Take 60 seconds and, stream of consciousness, write down some “I am” statements.

A HIERARCHY OF VALUES

Next, we need to consider our values. You can set up the most well-thoughtout habits, but if your values are not in alignment with the ultimate goal, you’re not going to do it. For example, someone who wants to remember people’s names should value relationships and their connection to other people. Your behavior has to support your values in some way, or there is no drive for it.

Our values have a hierarchy to them. If I asked you what’s most important to you in life, you might tell me family is one of your core values.

I would then ask what family does for you. For me, it provides love. For you, it might provide belonging. The important distinction here is that family is a means value—a means to an end. The end value is actually love or belonging. When we look at our values, we can determine whether the value we’ve stated is an end or whether it evokes something else.

Values need to be prioritized. My values are love, growth, contribution, and adventure, in that order. Each value builds on and contributes to the next. One’s values tend to not change from year to year unless you experience life conditions that change them—such as having a kid, losing a loved one, or ending a relationship, to name just a few.

When we’re unaware of our values and the values of the people closest to us, it creates a space for conflict to arise; discord usually results from values conflicting. Let’s say your values include adventure and freedom. If your partner values safety and security, it’s no surprise that you’ll often be at odds. It’s not that one set of values is right and the other is wrong—it’s that they aren’t in alignment. Or let’s say both of you highly value respect, but what you consider to be respectful or disrespectful differs. There’s still room for disagreement unless you’ve talked about what constitutes respect.

FINDING YOUR REASONS

When it comes to doing anything in life, reasons reap rewards. My story is evidence that feeling good is not required to feel motivated. If I waited until that day, I would have stopped teaching others to learn better when my sleeping problems escalated. And besides, how many times have we felt good on a given day and still not done what we said we would do? You could feel amazing and still get nothing done if your reasons for doing so are not strong enough.

Reasons that are tied to your purpose, identity, and values will sufficiently motivate you to act, even in the face of all of the daily obstacles that life puts in your way. The healthy 70-year-old doesn’t go to the gym at 4:35 A.M. because he likes it—he goes because maintaining his health so he can continue to be with his family is motivation enough to him, even though he would much rather sleep in. The good student doesn’t pick up her textbook because she’s in a good mood. She does it because she wants to ace that test so she has the best chances of landing the internship that will lead to her dream job.

It’s likely that there’s a good reason behind every task you need to accomplish, even the unpleasant ones. You don’t love making dinner, but you want your family to eat well and you understand the dangers of overreliance on take-out and fast food. You’re uncomfortable giving speeches, but you know that your team is relying on you to rally the whole organization behind your project at the conference. You find economics daunting and a little boring, but you need the class to get your marketing degree, and you can’t wait to put your marketing skills to work in the real world.

If you’re struggling to find motivation to learn, or to accomplish anything else in your life, there is a good chance you haven’t uncovered the why of the task. Consider your passion, your desired identity, and your values: How can they create the basis for your reasons? You already know that you’re much more likely to remember something when you’re motivated to remember it. Conversely, if you don’t find any motivation in knowing someone’s name, you’re going to forget it as soon as you move on to your next conversation. Let’s say your passion is to help people forge better relationships, you identify as a connector, and one of your values is love.

Your reasons for learning to remember names could be simple to find: “I want to learn to remember names so that I can better connect with people in my community and help foster a stronger network of people I care about.” Right now, stop and consider three reasons that you want to learn better.

Your reasons should be concrete, like: “I want to learn Spanish so that I can finally speak to my father-in-law,” or “I want to learn American history so I can help my kid learn better in school,” or “I want to learn how to research better so I can finish my business plan and find an investor for my company.” Write them down.

Having reasons has helped me become crystal clear when it comes to commitments. A big part of self-love is being protective of your time and energy. Setting boundaries around your time, emotions, mental health, and space is incredibly vital at any time, but especially when you don’t sleep.

When you lack any necessary fuel, such as sleep or food, your resources aren’t as abundant as they are at other times, so protecting what you have becomes very important. When I make decisions, everything is either a heaven yes or heaven no (just trying to keep it clean here). If I don’t feel completely aligned with something, I don’t do it, because I don’t have the energy to spare. And I can honestly say that I don’t suffer from FOMO (fear of missing out). In the last few weeks I’ve been invited to a handful of social and work gatherings but declined because I’m clear about my purpose and motivation in spending time writing this book. I’d love for you to join me in celebrating JOMO—the joy of missing out.

Most of us feel tired and fatigued these days. I believe that’s because we feel like we need to say “yes” to every opportunity, invite, or request that comes our way. While it’s great to be open-minded and consider options, when you say yes to something, you need to be careful that you’re not inadvertently saying no to yourself and your own needs.

WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO LOSE?

What is motivation? Motivation is a set of emotions (painful and pleasurable) that act as the fuel for our actions. Where does it come from?

Motivation comes from purpose, fully feeling and associating with the consequences of our actions (or inactions).

Let’s do an exercise. Write down all the disadvantages you have to face if you do not learn to use the material in this book. What will it cost you right now and in the future? For example, you could write, “I will have to keep studying hard and settle for the same mediocre grades or job.” Or, “I won’t be able to spend time with my loved ones,” or “I won’t get that raise.” The key is to make sure you feel the emotions. Don’t make this an intellectual thing. We make decisions based on how we feel. Really feel the pain that you will have if you don’t do something about it. This is the only way for you to make a change last and to get you to follow through.

Pain can be your teacher, if you use it and not let it use you. Use pain to drive you to make things happen. If you are honest, you may write something like: “I will have to settle for a job I hate, make very little money, have no free time for myself or anyone else, and I will have to put up with it for the rest of my life, bored and frustrated.” This will get you to do something about it! Do this now.

Now, here is the more exciting part. Write down all of the benefits and advantages you will receive from learning the skills and techniques in this book. Make a list of things that will really get you excited and motivated.

For instance: “I’ll be able to ace my tests, have more time to be with family, start that business, and learn new languages to travel the world.” Or, “I will have more free time to exercise and get healthy, to go away for spring break, and to spend more time with my boy/girlfriend!” Or maybe something simple like, “I will finally have some free time to just get caught up and relax!”

Again, make sure your reasons are compelling enough to be backed with real emotion. You must really get yourself to see and feel the benefits of learning this material. Do this now.

TYING IT ALL TOGETHER

Now, let’s apply all of this to learning. As you move through this “Motivation” section of the book, I want you to consider where learning fits into your passion, identity, values, and reasons.

It was not until I was an adult that I found my passion and purpose.

Through my struggle to learn, I developed a love of learning because it helped me become unlimited, and my purpose is teaching other people to learn so they can unlimit themselves.

As a kid, I forced myself to study, trying to rise to the level of average. I had a lot of identity issues to resolve; I was the boy with the broken brain, and I believed that I was stupid. I had to change the way I saw myself and give up the identity that kept me locked into being unable to learn. Instead of saying “I am broken,” I had to say, “I am a learner.”

As for values, as I mentioned earlier I value growth and adventure. For me, learning falls under both of these, because it contributes directly to my growth and it gives me a sense of adventure, especially when I learn something novel and challenging. There’s no ambiguity here; learning directly contributes to the fulfillment of my values.

Every single one of my reasons keeps me motivated so that I can help more people learn. As any author knows, writing a book is a challenge. But my reason for writing this book—to teach my methods to a wider audience around the world that may not have access to my online courses—has kept me going.

If you’re trying to force motivation, but you haven’t addressed these invisible, limiting identities, you won’t get very far. When you feel stuck, come back to the way your goal fits into your values, and then ask yourself what needs to be brought back into alignment.

Going back to the previous chapter’s list of the seven lies that hold you back, perhaps the eighth lie is that you have motivation —that you wake up and feel motivated every day. The reality is that you do motivation.

Ultimately, motivation is a set of habits and routines, guided by your values and your identity, that you carry out every day.

BEFORE WE MOVE ON

Finding your passion is about giving yourself novelty and putting yourself in a new environment to see what lights you up. It’s difficult to do that if you feel limited or if you’re self-conscious about looking bad, so let that go and enjoy the experience. Those initial moments of discomfort just might lead you to an entirely new passion and purpose in life. Here are a few things to try before moving on to the next chapter:

Write down a list of your most common “I am” statements. How do you feel about the ways in which these statements define you?

Create a list of the things you value the most. Now prioritize that list and think about how this aligns with your definition of yourself.

Get into the habit of asking the question “why” before you do anything.