There are two ways you can be motivated.
You can be motivated to move TOWARDS something.
And you can be motivated to move AWAY FROM something.
Both are discussed more in this video:
Hey, it’s Logan Christopher from Legendary Strength and today I want to talk about mental frames. What I mean by this is a frame of mind, how you perceive the world, and thus that dictates some of the results that you get. Mental frames can become so constricted that you really can’t see outside this world. So today we’re actually talking about motivation and gonna be going over two different aspects of this; two different aspects that are really important in NLP terminology would be known as the meta-programs. I like the term mental frames because really that is what they are.
So the first part of motivation you want to look at is motivation direction and there are really only two directions you can go. There’s “towards” and “away from” and this is a spectrum. You can be more of one or more of the other in different contexts. You may be more of one than the other, but it’s important to note that more people are “away from” motivated it’s estimated that 70% than “towards” which only 30% of people. I feel that I personally am a more towards oriented person.
So what is towards? Towards is looking at this in the gym context: I want to be able to deadlift 500 pounds, I want to have six-pack abs, I want to be able to snatch a kettlebell a hundred times. These are towards goals. It’s things that you are moving towards often in your future, right? We can’t really move towards the past or even towards in the present so much, so you’re moving towards it in the future.
Contrast this to “away from”: I don’t want to be fat, I don’t want to have this roll of blubber over my belly, I don’t want to go to the doctor and have him yell at me because I’m in such bad shape, “away from” motivation. Here now, this can be very tricky because you may be thinking oh I want six-pack abs but really underneath that the actual driver, the actual motivation is you don’t want to have this fat over your abs. So you have to be honest with yourself with this stuff and that’s not always the easiest thing in order to do. Now, most people get into fitness because of some away from motivation. Often, especially in the modern world here, so many people are overweight so they’re looking to lose that weight through fitness. Hundred years ago, we didn’t have as much food available there wasn’t the overweight problem. So you had stuff like Charles Atlas and his ads where you had the skinny scrawny kid who got sand kicked in his face. Away From motivation: he got strong he was able to beat up the bully. Now, most people start in this place for me that was it. I was that skinny scrawny unathletic guy and I started to gain the fitness but then really the “towards” takeover I saw what these strong men of the old time back in that era were able to do and I said I want to do that and that is what keeps me motivated.
While away from may be stronger in the beginning, and oftentimes it is right? If you’re about to die like something’s coming at you-you’re gonna be motivated to move “away from” that to do what you can do, right? That is a very much a stronger motivation source, however, it’s not as sustaining. Once you do reasonably well it’s going to peter out, it’s not going to continue to motivate you. You have to anchor into something towards that’s what’s kept me going for years and years, about two decades worth of training right now. Continually working to get stronger, more mobile, more fit, all these different qualities, because I have this towards motivation. Ultimately, in most cases, you’re actually going to want to have both of these going for you but I’d say yeah there really isn’t one better than the other just some different benefits and drawbacks to these. In the next video, we’re going to be talking about motivation source.
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