Transcription
The average person loses 80% of their motivation in the first three weeks of venturing toward a new goal. That's depressing. But what if I told you it's not willpower that's the problem? And that it's actually one of these five silent motivation killers.
In this video, I'm breaking down five mistakes that are secretly sabotaging your progress. And we're going to talk about how to combat each one with systems I've used to help successfully build multiple businesses.
Mistake number one, a foggy finish line. I often hear people say things like, "I want to grow my business," or, "I want to get in better shape." Instead of, "I want 10 new qualified clients by the end of the month," or, "I want to train to complete a half marathon in less than two hours." Do you hear the difference? One is vague and the other is extremely specific.
Whenever things are vague, you give yourself a lot of freedom to make changes, and that can feel like something that you want. You want to be able to have flexibility, but you're telling yourself a story about where you want flexibility, when in all actuality, what you want is usually quite clear. If you would just take the time to get clear around it, the journey is what you need to be more flexible on. So rather than trying to make this idea work of not being too rigid with your goals, do something different, be really specific and then start to proceed with an action plan and have that same level of openness that you have now that the demands, the milestones, the steps, the resources, the connections that you're going to need along the way will change and evolve.
Here's the best part. I'm asking you to get really specific about what your goals are, what your milestones are, what success looks like, so that you can find out how smart you are. We actually have a milestone for the quarter in my company right now, Amy Landino International, that we laugh at every time. Every time we do a team sync, we review this metric and we're like, we blew it out of the water in the first three weeks. Like, it wasn't even a question. And now we have far surpassed the goal that we sit in reflection and go, "Okay, good." Now we know how to set the bar way higher next quarter. That's actually going to be a stretch goal. We needed to try it out. We needed a specific number. We needed to see what success looked like so we could feel it. So we could understand what it meant to conversion and marketing and the way the team works. We needed to see it. And now we know we're capable of more. You're going to measure success. You're going to get real data. and you're going to change your mind. And when you do that, you get to do that. You get to make the rules and you get to follow them. If you can't clearly visualize what done looks like, you never have something strong like that to measure so that you can make a smart pivot and change the bar when it comes time. We continue to stay on the straight and narrow on our quarterly goal. Even though we hit it, we've got other ones we need to hit, too. So, we don't need to worry about changing it right now. We will adjust when the time is right.
Here's why this is absolutely going to kill your motivation. The phrase everybody loves to say, "Well, that's just not reality." You know how people talk about what they want for themselves and then somebody goes, "Yeah, okay. What a dream world you're living in." That's basically what we're talking about when you create a foggy finish line when it is not clear. When it is not specific, you may have kind of hit some version of success with it and not even know it. And therefore, you can't even articulate if it is reality or not. In a world where we're trying to create lofty visions and crazy goals that are meant to be so big that they don't ever feel like reality until they are. You don't want to be caught up in the mess of not being able to measure. Find out what you're really capable of. You will be so motivated by having real information on this, you'll keep moving even on the hard days.
My fix for this is a three-step vision clarity framework. I talked about it in a recent video. First, come up with your five to thrive. What are five things you want to be true about you in 30 years? And then next, you're going to connect each of those thriving characteristics to real milestones that you want to hit in the next 12 months. Those will be your 10 to win. Two milestones per each visionary quality. with your 10 milestones to hit in a year. Being very specific and dialed in, you will know every day, every month, every quarter if you are making progress. By the way, you can get that worksheet quickly by heading over to my Instagram. Make sure you're following me and message me the phrase five to thrive. You'll get it right away. No email opt-in necessary.
Mistake number two, dopamine dependency. Do you ever find yourself saying or thinking, "I just like to work when I feel like it." Or that you're not inspired unless the moment strikes you. Maybe you're one of those people that gets really excited at the start and then when you start to execute, it all fizzles out. And I'm sure many people can identify with abandoning a task as soon as it gets challenging or boring. This means you have a high dependency on a dopamine rush. Whether it's the notification on your phone, a caffeine fix, tuning into your favorite TV, entertainment, Tik Tok, Instagram, YouTube, bam. Am I your dopamine rush for the day?
Here's why this is killing your motivation. Dopamine peaks at the start of a project. So, you're going to get that instant rush at the beginning of literally everything. But this teaches you that you need to then wait for that feeling of motivation to come back for you to make progress. like you felt when you had high energy at the start of the task. By teaching yourself that you never find ways to endure to push through when you need to when you need to actually be in deep work focus mode to see something through. Where most people think that it goes motivation and then action, really your motivation comes in reverse. It starts with action and motivation follows. Every time you go further, every time you hit a milestone, every time you hit a mark, every time you measure success, every time you measure failure, you get new information, you are pulled forward. And that is what keeps the motivation cycle going. If you don't like what just happened, but you took action, you can still get motivation by continuing to take the next step. Because you know, every time you move forward, you will get energy back.
Here's my fix for this. It's all about power standards. Successful people don't assume they're going to feel motivated enough to do the things they're supposed to do today. They set up the environment, the culture, the system so that it will be inevitable they will be successful. that comes from standards. There are non-negotiable things that I do every single day that even if I don't feel like doing it, I know when I do, I'm on my agame. I'm more likely to get the right things done, the most important things done, show up at the greatest degree of my talent. As a matter of fact, I didn't even have to film this video today. I am filming this video today. I did all the things I was supposed to do. I had the video written and ready to go and I got my other ones done early and I get to push through and do one more and I'm more motivated now because I'm even further ahead of schedule than I would have been if I would have stopped when I could have stopped. That action is fueling me. It's motivating me into the next phase of my day. That next phase is going to be time with my kids. So you can see how doing the right steps whether you feel like it or not on a regular basis can be a positive for you if the order is action and then motivation.
So ask yourself based on what your vision is your five to thrive and your milestones what are the standards you're putting in place so that you show up as the version of yourself who does these things inevitably and is already very successful at it regardless of what that success metric looks like. I would not have been prepared for today if my non-negotiable was not hit. And that was for me to sit down and make time to write content. And I do it every single day. It doesn't always work out that the content I wrote on the same day is going to be something I'm executing in that moment. But it did work out that way today. And so I rode that wave all the way through. If I would not have set the standard of writing content every day, no matter what, no matter how I feel, I wouldn't be able to tell this story. I wouldn't be able to show you the YouTube channel that I have today after almost 15 years. Motivation isn't something you wait for. It's something you engineer through consistent action. The feeling follows behavior, not the other way around.
Mistake number three, decision overload. You might be thinking, "This girl is crazy. Like, I get to decide how many decisions I have to make in a day. They just happen. They just come at me. I just have to handle them accordingly. Babe, I'm the CEO of a company. If there's anybody that gets that, it's me. I get all kinds of decisions I have to make I wasn't anticipating that people that work with me are telling me they want me to help them make or people in my household that want to help make decisions about either dinner or lifestyle design. That doesn't mean you are not opting into decision overload. When you know there are always the same decisions every single day, every single week, every single month, every single year that you have to make, you are putting more pressure on yourself by ignoring that fact. And you are choosing the chance that is very likely that you will hit decision fatigue. And you do it every day. It compounds from the moment you wake up. Am I going to get out of bed? The alarm just went off. Am I going to hit the gym? What am I going to wear today? What's for breakfast? Are my kids clothes washed? You get the same decisions about your normal life and they frontload into your brain. Then you have the audacity to do something with your life. It could be your career. It could be something else. It could be your art and you have to make decisions that actually matter to who you are individually as the person you are and who you're becoming. And instead of reserving that critical decision-making room in your brain for those big moves, you've wasted all that humming and hawing on the small stuff that you probably opted for the exact same choice as yesterday. And the worst part is if you're not getting better at making decisions, especially the small ones. If you can't make firm, decisive moves on the things that are not the biggest factor in your world, how good are you going to be at making decisions that make big moves that matter in your life that determine your success level? Not to mention the fact that you're not going to be motivated to make any decisions at all because you haven't seen anything positive come from your decisions in the past because you took so long to get to them and they were probably not even the decision you wanted to make. That's how we end up in meetings that should have been an email. That's how we end up at parties we never wanted to go to. That's how we end up in debt, buying presents for people and trying to impress the world with what our house looks like, even though we didn't put as much thought into where we're going in the next 20 to 30 years for ourselves. Yeah, you think motivation's going to fall away. This is something people aren't even talking about. You're hitting decision fatigue and it's ruining everything.
Here's a little fix that I recommend. What are those easy ones? What's the low-hanging fruit? What did you do for the holidays last year? Make it a checklist so that when they come up again, you don't have to ask yourself if you go and you look at the standard. Well, we always take a family photo around this time. And then we order cards and then we go on the family trip to go visit grandma and grandpa. They all happen because it's the standard. because you already made the decision and now it's just the process. I like to have a little decision handbook. Hey Amy, just a reminder. This is how you typically do things. This is what people know you for. This is what they'd like to see. This is what you need to do if you forget that you've done this before in the past. Have yourself a little decision handbook. It comes from just really well-written notes. The fact that they exist, well-written. I have literally every single thing I did for my kids birthday parties in a notion note so that next year when I'm trying to plan a birthday party again, I go back and see what I did and I do all the things that worked great and I try to pick a different location if I can so that it's more interesting this year. Decision made. It doesn't have to be a starting from scratch moment. Stop starting from scratch. Take the things that always happen and make yourself a little handbook on it.
Mistake number four, solo hero syndrome. You may not have heard me talk about this before because for a long time I wanted to fight that it was a problem. I have dealt with solo hero syndrome forever. You'll know you have it if you're the type of person who likes to keep their goals private, tells no one, reports nothing, barely a blip on the radar. You do this to avoid pressure from the outside. And you might dress it up a little bit by saying, "Oh, I just like to show people what I am capable of, and I'd rather wait until it's done until I talk about it." If you've basically given yourself the opportunity to let yourself off the hook because you have no external accountability, this one is for you.
I am actually a very big believer in keeping your goals close to the best. I still think that's very important. I don't think you make a decision today about your five to thrive or your 10 to win and your big annual milestones and go to Facebook or Instagram or wherever and tell the entire world. I'm not telling you to do that. If that's the right move for you, you do you, babe. But I'm not doing that. Like, it's just not my thing. I keep my goals close. But close is not closed off. There are still critical people, resources, connections, accountability that I need to check myself to make sure we're measuring success, not measuring the exits.
The reason this kills motivation when you literally cut off the world from what you hope to do, is that you are closing a massive energy source of being more motivated by getting other people involved. something as simple as going to the gym with a trainer, right? You may not have gone to the gym if it's out of your wheelhouse, but because someone's waiting for you at a specific time, you'll show up. That level of accountability is empowering. Certainly, when you've hired somebody to be that person for you, you know you're not getting a lot of judgment. You know, you're not getting the wrong kind of attention. You're getting the kind that's meant to make you better.
When you're in isolation, you also kill your motivation because you lose the opportunity for positive pressure. You know what's really cool? Getting 100 views on a video. If you would have asked me that 15 years ago, I would have been like, "Okay, yeah, 100red people." What do you know what else is really cool? A,000 views on a video. When you go from somebody who was getting a 100red views on a video to a,000 views on a video, you continue to want more, right? Well, there's a reason for that. Because the temperature went up a little bit. We warmed up the room. It feels really good. And now a thousand that is today the new high is actually also the new low. When you have other people paying attention, the right people, that positive pressure is a good thing. You want to keep your thermostat up because then a 100 went to a,000. A,000 went to a 100,000. 100,000 feels really good on my videos. And now that's literally what me and my team talk about. 100,000 views on a video. Cool. What did we do? That's so exciting. That's the new low because now the standard for getting 100 is how we're going to get to a million. So, you have to have some positive pressure or you lose the motivation that can move you so fast.
The fix for this is exactly as it sounds. Choose the energy you want to surround yourself with when it comes to I need accountability on this. Who is going to be my partner? It doesn't have to be someone you actually talk to. One of my greatest accountability moves has been having a coach. Sometimes I get to talk to my coach, sometimes I don't. I have some coaches I have a very onetoone relationship with and I have other coaches that I am one of many. But there is a standard of being a part of their world that makes me better. And so I am still rising up from an accountability standpoint. Whatever the goal is, you find what a good accountability arrangement looks like and make it work for you.
I'll never forget the first time I really did this. I knew if I wanted to run my first half marathon, this was a long time ago. You guys probably read about it in one of my books. I had to tell someone because I knew that exercise, training, I just I would find the nearest exit. I will find it. I will find it. So, I told my boss cuz I knew she was into that kind of thing. I said, "Listen, I'm training for a half marathon. I'm just telling you because I'm going to cross the finish line. I'm probably going to walk 15-minute miles. No big deal. But I probably won't do it. I won't do all the training for the next 12 weeks unless I tell you because I think I'll be much more proud of myself if I tell you cuz you see me every day. And she was like obviously very excited for me. And I didn't have to tell a whole lot of other people. I told my significant other and I told her and after that it was just put the miles in. I didn't need to tell the whole world. I didn't need to post the selfies that I was doing it. I don't even know that we did selfies back then. God, it was so long ago. I'm aging myself. You just need the right energy. You don't need all energy. Holding yourself accountable means choosing energy carefully. So keep your goals close and that means only letting people behind the curtain who have earned it.
Mistake number five, no momentum metrics. It's really important to know what success looks like, but you can't just measure end results. You've got to measure the inputs. One of my favorite quotes in the history of the world is from 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferrris and he said, "Massive action is measured in outputs." That's a big one if you caught it. Increased outputs means decreased inputs. Isn't that interesting that when I say you need to take massive action that that does not mean you need to do all the things a million million times? No. Furthest from the truth. The goal is to do the things that move the biggest needle. So by getting a little bit of leverage in one area, you can get a lot of results. So we need to look at not just how did we do, but what did we do and how do those work together.
When you only measure big wins and major milestones and none of the journey, it kills your motivation. You're always living for that next high. the dopamine hit, the public recognition, the new milestone views on your videos. By the way, we are trying to get to 500,000 YouTube subscribers if you'd like to help with that. But I love the journey all the way there. Without these small victories, without the wow, I had a great productive day. I got this many weeks of videos done in a single setting. Without that recognition, you're not going to want to do the daily standard. And your daily standard is where you're getting your motivation.
So, here's a little fix for this. It's not going to be good for everything, but it's really fun when it works for something, and that is the streak score. How long can you go on a streak? Regardless of how long you want the chain to be, imagine a regular calendar that hangs on the wall that has one month in front of it, 30 days, and every day you get to mark an X. Every time you connect the next day to it, it starts to look like a chain link. Don't break the chain. Keep your streak. Set the streak for what you want to do. Make part of your motivation the fact that you get to cross that X on the calendar.
Something I'm doing right now for my fitness goal is I write on a whiteboard every day that's in my bathroom. There is a white board in my bathroom and it says how many days are left and where I am in the process and I get to write on my whiteboard every night before I go to bed to update it for the next day. That's enjoying the journey. That's keeping the streak. That's making sure my head's in the game. That's keeping me motivated. Don't be one of those people that just wants to hit home runs when you could be somebody that appreciates keeping the streak.
Bonus tip on this. If you want to do this in a digital way, I did find an app that I like for it. It's called days since. And it's really great for things like how many days has it been since I had my last sip of alcohol or how many days in a row have I gotten 10,000 steps in? If you want a digital way of doing it, that's really fun. I always emphasize the importance of doing something in front of your face, writing it down specifically cuz it feels really good. But that's another option.
Those are five mistakes that kill your motivation and how to fix them. If you want to learn the three daily habits that I eliminated that added more than 12 hours to every week, click here and I'll see you.