Yo, what's up guys? Sean Cobra here of the live transform podcast. Over the next two weeks while I launched this podcast, I'm going to be dropping one episode per day, then I'm gonna drop back to one episode per week. The first episode is an introductory episode explaining who I am, my background, my knowledge, my experience. The second episode is all about goal setting, that's going to be followed up by progress tracking, then building habits, doing the things that you enjoy doing consistency, restricting, temptation, meal preparation, accountability, crap foods, getting started and building momentum along with hierarchy of value, motivation, direction and your environment. Now, if you go back and listen to each one of those topics again, they are all relevant Or optimizing your performance and your everyday life. It's not just to do with health and fitness. Yes, I am a strength conditioning coach that is my background, that is my specialization. However, I'm a coach first and foremost and I need to optimize the other 23 hours of the day so that I can get the most out of my clients for that one hour that I'm with them.

I'll also be answering some of my followers questions that have posted questions on my Q and A memes and I'm going to incorporate those answers into the pertinent episodes. Mm Yeah. Mhm Hi guys and welcome to today's episode, which is all about motivation direction. We're going to start the session with the two different types of motivation being towards and away from then we'll go through and I'll give you some examples of the difference between towards and away from motivation. One is moving towards pleasure, one is moving away from pain, uh then we'll discuss why it's important to understand the difference between these and when we can implement the two different styles into our lives, depending on what's going on. And then we'll also have a look at some different examples of how you can figure out what type of motivation that you typically fall back on and how you can use that to gain the upper hand and move towards your goals.

So as I stated, there's two types of motivation. One is towards which is moving towards something that you do want and the other is away from which is moving away from something that you don't want. Now they both have their uses, but which one is better for helping you achieve your goals long term, that's the whole idea of this session, Let's get started. So, anger, irritation, fear or frustration with your current situation can be a great motivator to get you going and provide a kick up the ass to motivate you to get over your current situation. However, it's not sufficient motivation in my opinion for long term sustainable change for that. You need an element of towards motivation as well, a vision of where you want to go and how you're going to get there. If your wife is strong enough, you'll always figure out the how let's now have a look at how both of these different types of motivation work, let's begin with the away from motivation direction. Now, imagine that you're standing talking to a friend and all of a sudden you smell something and it stinks, you can smell shit somewhere, okay, You look around and you see that there's some dog shit two m away from you, right?

So what do you do? You simply move far enough away to move away from the shit so you can't see it and you can't smell it and once you're far enough away then it's not affecting you anymore. So you don't need to make any more adjustments, so which way you're going to move? The answer is, it doesn't really matter, any direction will do as long as you get away from the dog shit, you know, as long as you can't see it, and as long as you can't smell it anymore, then you're far enough away from it. Now, away is not a direction, So that's the first thing about away from motivation, it is essentially undirected. If you do have a goal, but you're away from motivation is stronger than you're towards. It may be taking you further away from where you want to end up at the end of the day, when we're working towards something being gold, then we should be looking at the process and the path on how we need to get there because the goal is the end state, but your structure and your purpose is the road map that's going to get you there and when you're working towards something, you have that road map, okay, When you're working away from something, it doesn't fucking matter what direction you go.

Any road will lead you there if you don't know where you're going now, once you get far enough away from the dog shit or your current weight or financial issues or whatever it is, okay, once you're far enough away from that, then, you know, it's not providing any further motivation. So if away from motivation is all you have, it runs out. Once you get far enough away from the thing that you want to get away from. So an exclusively away from motivated person will stay where they are until the next thing that they dislike comes along and makes them want to move again. So all of my profilers that I work with are working towards something, they want to build strength, they want to build speed, they want to build power, explosiveness, conditioning, etcetera. But for the most part, my general population clients are looking for weight loss. So when I start diving into questioning them on why they want to lose weight before we can figure out a plan on how we're going to do it. I get a gauge of where their mindset is, I get a good understanding of what their, what's motivating them.

Are they saying, uh, I just want to lose weight, I want to get away from this point now, I'm unhappy with where I'm at, I've got low self esteem etcetera, or are they saying, you know, I want to um focus on my health, I want to focus on getting to a healthy body weight, a fighting fit body weight that I can maintain or year round um without too much effort or restriction. So that gives me a really good understanding of what their baseline is and what's motivating them. So then we can either, you know, look at maybe changing their mindset and reframing their goals and the direction that they, you know, should be pushing towards. Or we have a look at some potential roadblocks that may be coming up and you know, I always say this, you know, whenever it comes to change, it's all about the psychological and behavioral factors that come into play behind the scenes that are going to contribute for the most part on whether or not you're going to achieve your goals. So this is one of my jobs as a coach is to assess someone's mindset and you know, what makes them tick and how they think about things, what their perspective is.

And this is one of the, one of the beauties of the NLP master practitioner course that I did NLP is neuro linguistic programming, which is essentially how you talked yourself in the different states of mind that you find yourself in um throughout life and uh you know, how to make adjustments to your, the way that you speak to yourself, your daily habits, your routines, your behaviors that contribute to your self esteem and your perspective of the outside world. So going back to what I was saying before and how that relates is that the person who's motivated from moving away from a particular weight or where they're at right now, once they get far enough away, then, you know, they kind of go, oh well I'm I'm not so bad right now, I'm much happier than where I was before, which can be a good thing, don't get me wrong, but that attitude of that's good enough, I don't need to go any further. You know, that bleeds into other areas of your life as well. So the second thing that I want to discuss about away from motivation is that it's inconsistent, It's not going to get you all the way to your goal.

And finally, the worst thing about this away from motivation is that it's stressful. I've seriously had clients who were outwardly very successful. But because all the drive came from away from motivation, they were constantly stressed whether their main motivation was fear of not living up to other people's expectations or anxiety about failure or resentment of their competitors, whatever it was, they were always fucking stressed out about something, which then also had an impact on their ability to perform their ability to train and their ability to recover if your primary motivation is away from based motivation then to keep yourself motivated, you have to keep thinking of shit, that's fucking that you don't enjoy, that you don't like about unpleasant stuff, which is absolutely no way to live a better way of thinking about motivation. Direction is to contrast that with towards motivation, where, you know where you're aiming at and you really want to get there, if you get knocked off course, which inevitably happens, then you just correct your course, you're pointing at the goal again and keep going.

So towards motivation is directional. Now, this is the thing, a lot of people uh they won't start something until they have all the answers. That's not a good way of doing it right, Like, I'm fucking figuring this podcast out as I go, I don't know anything about podcasting, but I just thought I'd buy the equipment and um I actually paid for a course to uh basically do the course and learn everything I need to know before I got started, but obviously lockdown happened and you had all this spare time on my hands, and I was like, well now's a good time to just fucking crack on and start recording episodes and figure it out as I go, so I'm actually recording episodes whilst I'm simultaneously going through the course. Um so, you know, I'm just putting one ft in front of the other, it's not about having all the answers and making a beeline for the end goal, it's just about going, well, this is the direction that I need to be moving in. I'm walking towards something now, I'm just going to figure it out as I go and you know, I might need to make some detours along the way, or I might need to adjust my route to my path slightly, but at least I'm moving in the right direction and that is towards something.

So as you get closer to your goal, your motivation, if anything gets stronger, so you get closer and closer that finish line becomes closer and closer, it's it's in sight and that, you know, that bumps up your motivation levels, that makes it a lot easier to continue moving in the direction that you're going, So it's nearly within your grasp, like, are you going to stop now? Of course not. So towards motivation is consistent as you get closer and closer to the angle, then that finish line gets bigger and bigger and bigger in your site. So it's an excellent way of looking at how you're going to achieve your goals. And finally, it's not stressful, even if your current surroundings are unpleasant, your underlying mood is still positive because you're focused on this vision that you're working towards this inspiration that you're driving towards, so your motivation to make it happen will get you through any challenges or obstacles that you encounter. Now, I have spoken about this in the past, that motivation doesn't last structure does? So once you have that motivation, you have the direction that you're heading in, then it's important to build those structures, those habits, those routines, into your daily routine, because at the end of the day is there's 1% that you do fucking day after day, week, after week, month after month that add up over time to, you know, you get you closer and closer towards your destination.

So if is there any place then for away from motivation in successful goal achievement? Yes, as I said before, some away from can be useful to get you started, especially if you don't yet have a fully realized and compelling vision of where you want to get to. Additionally, a little bit of away from can be useful for quality control. So as you progress towards your goal, it's worth doing the occasional mind sweep to look for any potential obstacles or problems and eliminate or rude around them before they happen overall though, to get sustained progress and actually achieve your goal, you'd want to, you want your motivation ratio to at least 70 30 towards then away from. So this should make sure that you actually keep going until you get there and you don't stress yourself out along the way. So the first step in looking at your motivation direction is bringing awareness around it and seeing what you fall back on for the most part, do you, are you focused on towards motivation or are you primarily focused on away from motivation now?

What do you do if you have too much away from motivation and too little towards? Well, I'll go through some steps here to help you guys start implementing some changes that can start switching things up and pushing you towards a more towards motivated mindset. So as you think about what you want to get away from, imagine that you're moving away from it until it's small and distant. Usually this is going to reduce any unpleasant feelings and again, this is an NLP technique that I use on my NLP Master practitioner course it's dissociating. So moving away from something so that it's not super clear in your mind and you're taking a more object objective view on things and you're visualizing yourself distancing yourself from these unpleasant feelings now, think about what you want instead of what you want to get away from. Get very clear about what this will look like, sound like and feel like then adjust your image until you're strongly motivated to get there. Usually imagining a big bright three D. Picture of it will give you the strongest motivation, especially if you add sound as well and anchor it to a feeling that you have once you get there.

So this is where the visualization comes into play. All right, I'm sure you guys have heard this before, but this is a very good motivational technique is act as if act as if you're already that fucking person you want to be, you're already at the weight that you want to be at your actions. Your behaviors are aligned with that fucking person that you're pushing towards. Okay, very excellent um technique, very, very motivational and a great way of implementing positive behaviors that are going to serve you best. Would that person that I'm trying to be cheat their diet, Would that person that I'm trying to be skip out on three training sessions this week, would that person that I'm trying to be calm? Act in a way that would sabotage all of the hard work and processes that they've put into place to get to this point right now, the lessons are always in the journey. If you could just snap your fingers and get to your goals, does that actually teach you anything? No, it doesn't. The lessons are in the journey, you figure out what works and you figure out what doesn't work. You test and adjust and you make some adjustments on the way you make that on the fly.

Now, you've got the knowledge now you've got the experience to understand what's working best for you. Now, going back to the different models of the two different types of motivation direction, they can both be used at multiple times throughout your life. Now, how I like to explain this is using away from motivation is excellent for short term um results, you know, if you're unhappy with where you're at right now make a fucking change, make a big change, move away from that area, okay? But then once you're far enough away from that area where you're unhappy, then change your mindset, change your goals, change your motivation, direction, choose a goal, choose a route, choose a path, set the direction, then start moving towards now what I found and through experience coaching hundreds of clients is that setting that towards direction? It's a lot more sustainable for long term, realistic. Um wholesale changes in psychology, motivation refers to the initiation direction, intensity and persistence of behavior.

It is a temporal and dynamic state that should not be confused with personality or emotion in psychology circles, there's a famous case referred to as the burning platform And this was in the late 80s, there was a oil drilling rig in the North sea off the coast of Scotland and one morning there was a massive explosion and the record on fire and killed 160 odd people. Um there was like 60 odd survivors and one of the survivors was a dude that fucking jumped 15 stories into the ocean freezing cold waters because he essentially didn't want to fucking burn to death. So he was like, well I need to jump, I need to risk this um and possibly survive rather than getting fried alive. So anyway, he ended up surviving and this is now referred to as the burning platform metaphor and this is essentially, you know, you're in fucking danger, you need to make a massive decision and this is where moving away from motivation is very handy, if you're in a dangerous situation, absolutely move away, but let's also go back to what I said before in psychology, motivation refers to the initiation direction, intensity and persistence of behavior.

So initiation, the fucking rigs on fire, right direction. I need to get the fuck away from here, otherwise I'm going to burn to death intensity, Man, I'm gonna have to jump 15 fucking stories to potentially survive and persistence. Would I do that again? Probably fucking not unless I absolutely have to. Now, let's contrast that mindset with someone like an olympic athlete, let's say you're saying bolt, right? So he's got four years to get ready for the next olympics to make sure that he's putting those processes in place. He's focusing on his training, he's focusing on his recovery, um injury prevention, building explosiveness, building his speed, building his strength, uh focusing on nutrition, et cetera. So, you know, that's a four year process. That whole mindset is I want to be the best in the world. It's not driven by, I don't want to come last, it's driven by, I want to fucking smash everybody, right? So that's that towards motivation and this is a long term process, this is a long term protocol, I'm sure if someone like you saying bolt was motivated by away from motivation where they just didn't want to come last at the olympics, then they would not be as successful as they were.

Same as someone like Bill Gates, you know, if he was had away from motivation and he was just trying to get out of poverty, then he wouldn't have been successful as he has been with this towards motivation. I'm building something, I'm fucking creating an empire, You know, this is going to set me up for the rest of my life, this is going to set my family up for the rest of my life. This is going to change people's lives all across the world. That's that working towards motivation which is essential in my opinion, for long term success. And let's draw that back to the psychology of motivation. Again, initiation direction, intensity and persistence of behavior, initiation, I want to change the world direction. I need to be moving in this direction towards this goal. Intensity Yeah, it's not going to be massively intense, but it's going to be up and down in waves of intensity and persistence of behavior. It's something you need to do long term consistently over time. That's the difference, in my opinion between away from motivation and towards motivation.

Both absolutely useful tools. However, as I always say, it's all about applying the right tool at the appropriate time. The last thing that I want to discuss before I round out this episode is the difference between intrinsic motivation, an extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation is driven by you. It is an internal force, this is all about acting in line with your values. It's doing the things that are important to you. Uh extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is being pressured by external factors, other people, the environment and peer pressure is an example of this. And just like the two different types of motivation direction. The intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. You know, it's to be applied at the appropriate time. Sometimes your hands going to be forced, Sometimes you uh there's a fucking pandemic on right now, and, you know, the government has passed these laws to force people to close down businesses and quarantine at home, etcetera, etcetera.

So, sometimes the external circumstances force your hand. But for the most part, you want your motivation to be intrinsic. Think about the difference between someone giving you rules versus you giving yourself rules and regulations. Okay, you're going to be much more likely for the most part to follow your own rules and regulations, because they're in line with what your values are. If someone comes up to you and says, you can't do this and you need to do that, like who the fuck are you? And this is one of the reasons why organized religion is dying out in the developed world. We have an abundance of information available at our fingertips. Our freedom of choice is at an all time high. So you know, we've got this information to now be able to make our own decisions now, be able to make our own choices. But the funny thing that's come along with that is, you know, the media also um influences people's mindset and if you're not a fucking critical thinker, then it's very easy to become a sheep. It's very easy to follow the herd.

So yes, we have all this information available to us, but we should be intrinsically motivated, We should be looking within to see what's important to us, which then should determine our actions, our behaviors which fucking guide our life. That is the path that we should be forging for ourselves. Think about social conformity by the time this episode drops, I'm going to be 35 years old now, I get asked all the time. Like if I've been married, if I've had kids, do I have a house, et cetera. Now, for me that stuff is not super important to me. You know, if I'm in the right place in my life and I've met the right person and the timing is right, then I'll look at that stuff, but it's never a goal, it's not a goal for me to fucking get married and buy a house and put myself into debt and have all this shit. And it used to blow people's minds all the time because my ex partner and I were together five years and we would go traveling for three or four months every year and we open our business for only eight or nine months every year, and we pretty much work as much as we could, make as much money as we could, and then we'd fucking just basically go and travel and spend that money and experience the world and experience, you know, different cultures and different traditions in different parts of the world, and you know, people didn't really understand it and they would always ask us questions, they'd always be putting pressure on its like, where are you guys getting married when you having kids and shit like that?

And I was like, well just because that's your fucking social norm, that doesn't mean that's mine, you know, and this is the thing, so many people don't really take a hard look at themselves, they don't ask themselves these questions, They don't understand what their values really are when you don't understand what your values are, then it's very easy to be persuaded, it's very easy to be influenced by external circumstances, you know? So I'm one of those people, I I really understand what my values are and you know, sometimes I come across as an asshole because people want to hang out or invite me out for um parties and drinks and dinners and things like that, and I'm like no, I just prefer to be on my own, like I don't need to be around all these people, I don't need um other people external factors to bring me happiness. Like, you know, you need to be happy within yourself. The old saying, happiness comes from within is it's true, you know, if you're happy being on your own, you're happy in your own space, you're happy, How many people do you know that can't sit with their own thoughts that can't do meditation because they can't fucking stand the silence.

Everyone so bored these days, they can't just sit by themselves, They can't be with their own thoughts, They're always looking to distract themselves. If you go to any restaurant, have a look around, if one, let's say there's a couple there, if one person gets up and walks to the bathroom, what's the first thing the other person does, grabs the fucking phone? Now I understand there's a difference between introverts and extroverts and I'm definitely an introvert, but there's gonna be times where I'm going to put on my extrovert cap. Now, I understand that some people are extroverted and uncomfortable in, you know, the flipside situation, um but there's a lesson in that you need to be able to be with your own thoughts, you need to not be distracted, you need to be able to, you know, create happiness from within, rather than putting or hanging your coat on the happiness of others that rounds out this episode during the next episode. We are going to be discussing everything. Environment, how the environment and the people around you have an impact on your mindset, your attitude, your decisions, your experience, your perspective and how your life unfolds.

See you guys there. If you enjoy the content that I'm bringing to you guys, please help me spread the message and life safe, share and subscribe and pass this off to your friends, your family, anyone that's relevant in your life that It could potentially help and please make sure you leave a five star rating and review much love guys, please