5 New Tricks To Get Motivated

Hey Tai here, I'm not a motivational speaker, but sometimes I feel motivated by things that I read. Today, I read a few books this morning. One of them was Elie Wiesel's book, Open Heart on how he had open heart surgery at 82 – he's a Nobel Peace Prize winner that escaped from Auschwitz or lived through Auschwitz – the concentration camp. Life, if you really get down to the core of it, is about motivating ourselves, right? What separates the people like Elie Wiesel that changed the world? Win a Nobel Peace Prize. I already read this morning about a guy in the middle ages, 1100s – Abelard, who was a famous Catholic priest, but we're still talking about him 1,000 years later. Is it motivation? What motivates us? If you're in business, sometimes I meet people or have business partners or mentors and sometimes I think, "What motivates these them? What motivates me?" One of my business partners has made hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean, he's basically at the billionaire level. Yet, 70 years old, still motivated to go on and go forward. There's something about you and I that should not be ignored – should not be suppressed: It's that motivation to do – that's what makes us human. There are times when I feel levels of motivation and times when I feel unmotivated, but what we know now about the human brain is that you literally can rewire your brain to stay motivated. There are many sources for motivation. Whether it's Tony Robbins, whom I love, or I've seen some TED Talks with Simon Sinek: The why – getting to the why. That's how you motivate yourself: what's the core reason you're doing this? I think that as a human, unless you repress it, motivation is already there for whatever you're trying to get. All you need to do is remove some of the blockage. You as a human are already motivated – trust me. I lived on a farm for some time. Every little calf, lamb; every little puppy, or chicken that was born, was born with some innate motivation there. The wiring is already there; It's the default mechanism. However, what is it that separates the doers from the people who never do? I received an email from someone on Twitter of a rich investor’s speach talking about the have and the have not’s: Pitchfork – talking about how soon he's predicting that the world will revolt in the United States. The rich who are getting much richer than the poor; the disparity is growing. They are going to rise up and revolt against the uber rich. I don't know if this is going to happen – It's very hard to predict the future. What I think is more powerful is knowing there's a time to revolt, but also knowing the easiest thing to do is to unlock the motivation that's already within you. I don't mean this in some "woo-woo" "motivational" way. Think of it like Charlie Munger said, "let me invert." If you don't feel motivation, there are several reasons: 1.) The first reason you might not be motivated is because you're doing the wrong thing. So remember, the human mind is extremely powerful. There is a reason it has the ability to lose motivation – it's an adaptive trait. If you don't feel motivated let’s say in your dating life, or your job, sometimes it means you should follow Kenny Rogers like he says in his song, The Gambler, "You got to know when to hold them and know when to fold." Sometimes all you have to do to motivate yourself is to quit something. Although, sometimes quitting is a mistake: An ancient Chinese philosopher once said, "The motivation to give up is greatest right before you're about to succeed." I've definitely seen that. So, walk carefully; tread carefully along the lines of this motivation. Of trying to unlock motivation through quitting. Just know that sometimes it can be the best call. Seth Godin, a prolific writer on marketing and business, also talks about this in his book, The Dip. He mentions, "it's a little book that teaches you when to quit and when to stick." 2.) Second reason is the contrast bias. If you study the human brain in terms of cognitive biases and how we're motivated, studies show it comes through the contrast bias. You must be careful with who and what you contrast yourself with. Jonathan Haidt, an NYU professor and one of the leading psychologist or researchers on human happiness told me once, "Tai, if you make $10 million and then buy a big mansion in Beverly Hills where everybody there makes $100 million, you may not experience happiness." This makes sense: happiness is somewhat related to motivation when you're driven to do something, not just happiness in this emotional sense, but that feeling of you moving forward. Now, with regards to motivation and how the contrast bias applies: if you don't have a good contrast on what truly motivated people are doing, you might find yourself consciously motivated, but subconsciously, your mind will tell you, "You're not motivated." There's this inner barometer that you and I have; we know how much we should accomplish. Elie Wiesel wrote a fascinating book, Open Heart. Elie lived through Auschwitz and at age 82, his doctor told him he needed heart surgery. In one page of his book, he looks back at his life and he basically says, "Have I done enough? Have I done enough?" This is from a man who's written around 20 books, won a Nobel Peace Prize, and traveled the world. He's questioning himself. He says, "I've written some 50 works." He's written 50 articles, novels, books, but he's still questioning himself, "Did I do enough?" That shows you the inner motivation that you also have. You will never be able to trick your mind into not doing much and yet feeling that peace with the accomplishments you've done. My advice to you and I is to change who you're contrasting yourself with. You can't fool the mind into thinking you've accomplished much. Elie Wiesel did say something interesting in this book: he said, "I think I did all that I could, but I'm not sure if it was enough." But he was satisfied with himself. It reminds me of that Chief Tecumseh poem I quote so often: "So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. When it comes to your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes, they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again and in a different way." Tecumseh said, "Sing your death song and die like a hero going home." That is what Elie Wiesel is saying – he had the proper contrast; he knew he had done all that he could. Look back through your life – start with what makes up the good life: your health. I look back at my life and I've always been in pretty good shape, but my dad was one of the first bodybuilders in the world – I was given this legacy and had this contrast bias. He had won the world record bench press and was declared Mr. Canada along with other awards. I didn't really grow up with my dad, but I had that contrast bias – I had someone to compare myself to. Looking back over my life, I know I underperformed. I should have been able to tell myself, "I've got this legacy from my dad, I should work out an hour a day or two hours a day." My dad used to work three or four hours a day. I, certainly, could have done at least 30 minutes. So I tell myself, "No, Tai. You missed it." The motivation was there, but it was hidden. What was it hidden in for me? I think you have to be careful when you're given something, if you're given a gift, you usually take it for granted. 3.) Third Reason is Prosperity. I think in the modern world, one of the biggest things that cover up our hidden motivation that can bring us to do great things and change the world is prosperity. It's not ironic how Elie Wiesel at 15 years old went to Auschwitz. It's a heartbreaking book at some level. If you've ever read his book, Night, it's even more in depth, but even in his book Open Heart, he says, "When I was going into my heart surgery, I looked back and I drifted into this dream and I saw my sister holding my mother's hand, little girl, walking away from the train in the opposite direction of me and my father going into their concentration camp." He said, "I never saw her again, this beautiful sister that I had." This was similar for my grandmother, who lived through World War II, but her brother didn’t die in a concentration camp. He was killed in the army. My grandma is 96 years old and If you bring up her brother, she still cries. It's that heart wrenching. My grandma was motivated – she is one of the most motivated people I've ever been around. I have to think in part it's because she was born in 1918 – World War I was still going and the recession in Germany came. She said to me, "Tai, when I was a little girl, we only had carrots sometimes to eat all day long. We, literally, turned orange in skin." When she first came on a boat to the United States and was taking some classes at Bryn Mawr or Yale, She saw in the cafeteria other girls eating three eggs for breakfast. She said, "I had never seen somebody eat three eggs. One egg maybe, but three was ..." She said, "I was in this land of milk and honey, the most prosperous place in the world," she thought. So that motivation for you and I has been covered up by prosperity. I know the statistics show the disparity between the rich and the poor is getting larger. However, it also shows everyone’s become more prosperous. So I don't care if you have $100 million in your bank account or if you're living check-to-check right now. Understand that you and I, if we're not careful, will be the victims of prosperity. The only real victim is our motivation: us and our motivation being covered up and leading us to not accomplishing what we could do. As you read of people like Elie Wiesel it always revolves around the same concept: "What could I have done?" I don't care if you're religious or not religious. It always come to, "Damn! I wish I had done more," or sometimes, "I wish I hadn't done this." Generally, even the things you wish you hadn't done, it's because it kept you from doing something more significant. Humans are motivated. You have it – you don't need it. 4.) Your motivation is hidden. I'm not a motivational speaker – sometimes people say that about me, but I'm simply interested in ideas. If I have a mission on earth, it's to spread good ideas using mass media: the shows I have and things I do on YouTube, TV, movies, radio and launching a magazine, my articles. If I can spread good ideas, I hope they're powerful in and of themselves to motivate you. The Idea for today is to show that motivation is already inside of you. Elie Wiesel has said, "I am no different from you," but he had certain things that happened to him that unlocked the motivation that was already there. I was reading about Abelard in the 1100’s. This man was motivated in that time in the Roman Catholic church to spread ideas about Plato, Socrates and others – he had this intense motivation to do it. You have it. There’s no reason to explain with Freudian reasons or psychoanalytic evidence of where our motivation comes from. Elie Wiesel says in his book, "Sometimes we know too much." It's like Alexander Pope talks about the Pierian well, drink deeply or An Essay on Criticism, "A little learning is a dangerous thing. Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring. There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain and drinking largely sobers us again." He's saying, "Think deeply or don't think at all," but Elie Wiesel takes it one step further and says, in the Talmud, in his Jewish tradition, there is a rule that sometimes we think too deeply. So for this conversation that I'm having with you now, let's not go try to figure out why we're motivated. Let's just know the human is motivated. The animal in your farm is motivated. The cow, the calf is motivated. Life is a motivating force. There's many reasons, probably, why that is, but make sure you control the contrasts. Make sure prosperity doesn't cover up the motivation. For me, why I think I didn't live up and didn't work out as much as my dad is because I grew up in an extremely healthy family. My dad and my mom became committed to health. My mom was extremely healthy. My dad, like I said, was one of the first pro-bodybuilders and owned gyms and that's all he basically did. So I grew up with this understanding, you could call it entitlement, that I was just naturally going to be healthy. You see this in rich kids. What happens to rich kids? They inherit money or even the thought that they would inherit. That prosperity does what? It covers up the motivation. You may not come from a family that has $100 million. I didn't come from that, but the prosperity that's rampant in the world is still affecting you and I. My father was born and when he was born, at one or two years old, he was born in the '30s, he got Scarlet fever. The doctor said, "Your son is probably going to be dead at 12," talking about my dad. The doctors back then in the '40s said, "Hey, keep him inside. Don't let him workout. Don't let him exercise. It will hurt his heart." He was 12 years old and he was this sickly kid. Then at around 13 or 14, he picked up a magazine that talked about lifting weights. Nobody was doing this. This was way before Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gold's Gym and all this kind of stuff, LA Fitness. My dad said, "I'm going to try this." He started trying it. Out of the lack of health prosperity that he had, he became motivated. He became Mr. Junior USA. He was on the cover of magazines at 15 and 16 not because he was different from you or I, but because of the hardship that he had that motivated him. It unlocked the motivation that’s latent inside you and I. That's why I'm such a big believer in doing some things that are a little bit tough. Toughen up a little bit. It will unlock the motivation that's already there. You don't need a motivational speaker. You need to remove the barriers and to find what's already there. We know this, even the laziest person in the world, if you stick their head underwater, try to hold them underwater, they will fight back with every ounce of strength that they have in their body. Why? Because like Elie Wiesel says, "Instead of asking the question, 'What would you do if you die today?'" he says, "Think of it from the opposite perspective. Live life. Choose life," right? All organisms, not even just humans – we all want life. That's the motivation; It's strong; It's so powerful that we will do anything to keep it. The only thing that makes it disappear are subtle little things. As mentioned in the beginning, you may be doing the wrong thing. If you do the wrong thing, you will lose motivation and rightly so because your mind, which is smarter than you think even if you don’t have a 150 IQ like Bill Gates, it doesn't matter. Like Warren Buffett says, "If your IQ is over 130, you can sell the extra – you probably don't need it." Most people don't need more IQ. You could probably sell some of it. What is true is if you read Daniel Pink, his books on what motivates humans, he concludes it's not just money. You will be motivated by a multiplicity of things. So be cautious if you're doing the wrong thing, if you are dating the wrong person, if you are living a lifestyle that's not congruent with your inner beliefs, if you're going into a nine-to-five job you hate or if you're an entrepreneur and you're just doing something for the money alone. Some of those motivators are the intangibles like Jonathan Haidt told me. He said, "Tai, humans are hive people. They need the hive." You need to be connected to other humans, which is the next on the list. 5.) Your educational framework. We now know schools kill motivation more often than not. They violate many of the principles I’ve mentioned. One of them, schools violate the concept of quitting; they force you to take classes that you hate. Of coarse 6-year-olds need some direction in their learning; math is still an important topic for kids to learn at that age for example. There's a fine line and a balance that must be found. It’s my current belief, and I could be wrong, that schools take this restriction of courses too far, making us victims of classes that, while they may have some purpose, people often forget. Let me explain... One of the most misunderstood and forgotten principles is Newton's third law, "For every action, there's an opposite and equal reaction." Modern curriculum, how you and I were taught in school, we were told for example to learn Calculus because it would have a certain outcome for us, it would help us theoretically and teach us to be logical. Yes, this is true, but they forgot it also has an opposite and equal reaction. You must not forget what they call unintended consequences. The unintended consequence of pushing kids too far into things that the child's mind or you and I mentally didn't see a purpose for is dead motivation – it kills motivation. For most adults reading this: the past is gone. Stephen Hawking says, "The arrow of time is moving forward," we can forget about this past. Although, epigenetics, as explained in the book Inheritance, has found we might have some genetic changes that happen to us on a motivational level. Those dopamine and testosterone and all our complex receptors have been affected. Dr. Ian Robertson talks about this as well in his book, The Science of Success. Understand that some of your motivation has been destroyed by the educational system and it's your responsibilty to unlock that motivation – it’s possible. You can get it back – it’s not that difficult. Understand it's your responsibility to go out and find – educate yourself. There is no learned helplessness. Everyone’s educational needs are different, so take the reins and educate yourself. This is why I read a book a day. That's why you should too. I know it sounds impossible, but it's not. Flip through the pages; read five pages of a book, then move on to the next book every day. I know it's hard to do, but try it – It will change your life. Some books should be read fast and others slow. I'm reading Fast Food Nation and I'm reading it fairly slowly. As you educate yourself understand what Nelson Mandela says, "Education is what took a poor farm boy and made him the head of a nation." The motivation came through knowledge. As your eyes are opened to the world, motivation naturally comes. Most people that I find that are not motivated, they're too insular – they're too in their own world. For some of you, you may need to get on a plane and fly to India. I did that when I was 16. That will motivate you in more ways than one. One of the ways that it will motivate you is by changing your contrast biases. All of a sudden you'll know life could be so much different. About 300 million people in India live on $14 a month or less. They pick plastic out of the trash all day. It's a horrible life. It's sad life is still that way in the world, but it is. If you travel there, you’ll change your contrast biases, toughen up, and educate yourself. You're going to gain knowledge in a much more exciting way than when you had to sit in school everyday with kids you may or may not like, maybe kids that bullied you, an environment you didn't like, teachers that weren't motivated. Again, take responsibility for this. For some, you may need to get on a plane somewhere and begin to apply number one. That might entail quitting some things you're doing. You might need to give up on what you're doing. I'm indirectly working with someone at the moment who's very depressed (their son came to me). I'm not a psychologist, but I've tried to help where I can. He said, "I'm working with my dad. There's so much depression there. They're just almost at the end of their rope." I said, "Well, maybe they need to get on a plane; go work on an orphanage in Africa. There's millions of kids born with HIV, helpless, innocent kids that are dealt a raw deal." I said, "You want to snap out of depression?" Now, I’m not claiming to know all the answers about depression – I don't. I know there’s a physical and non-physical aspect about it. Some of it comes from losing perspective. Some of it comes from doing the wrong thing and forgetting that we sometimes need to quit, as explained in The Dip. That person, maybe, and I know them. They're stuck in a career too long, so they feel depressed now – they ended their life. It’s time for a change. Here's a time to move forward. Make a change. Quit being in your little house in the middle of nowhere. Get out on a plane. Go to Africa. Get the contrast biases going. Go out there, educate yourself because you sure as heck will get educated. You will change the prosperity entitlement that's probably holding back your motivation. I've seen this work and snap people out of depression. It won’t always work, but If you feel depressed, it could be your brain saying, "You should quit what you're doing. This life isn't the life you should have." Never be one of those people that says, "Always be happy." No. Understand the functional purpose of depression: when you're not motivated, that's generally when you get depressed. One of the common traits of depression is, "I don't feel motivated to do anything." I don't have the answers for everything, but certainly, this is a powerful methodology for you. Most are not in an extreme case. Don't let yourself get to the extreme. Elie Wiesel looked back at 82 years old having open heart surgery after winning a Nobel Peace Prize and enjoying love with his wife and kids – having almost everything even meeting presidents, and said, "I lived the life that I wanted, but I was still afraid. It wasn't enough." If a man so accomplished as him had that perspective, you and I have much yet to do. One of the greatest lines in this book is after his surgery when he mentions, "What is different is that I know now that every moment is a new beginning, every handshake, a promise." Powerful words, "Every moment is a new beginning." That lines up with science. That lines up with what Stephen Hawking says, "Time is moving forward in a direction." This confirms it. Take this motivation, even though I'm not a motivational speaker. Just understand that you can motivate yourself. It's there in you. You don't need anyone, necessarily, although in the sense of the contrast bias, certain social associations will help you. You may need to change some of the friends that you have. Remember, the law of 33%. Most of us don't apply that last 33%. Make sure you spend 33% of your time with people who are far ahead of you, who are acting on their motivation much more efficiently than you. Stay motivated. Never look back at your life with tears like in the poem saying, "I wish I had a little more time to do things over," like the Indian chief, Tecumseh, said, "You won't have that opportunity." Every moment, every minute, is a new beginning. Every handshake with a person you meet is a new promise of friendship, of moving forward. Remember these things. Quit some things and stick to others. Adjust your contrast and who you compare yourself with when it comes to motivation. Don't let prosperity cover up this latent motivation that is within you. Do some things to toughen up at all times. Take the reins of education upon yourself – knowledge. Not only education, but If you can download the knowledge of the wisest people in the world, whether it's reading a book or getting on a plane to go to India, these things will inject new knowledge in your brain, which will unlock this motivation. Remember, get to the bottom of motivation. Time moves quickly. As I've talked about before, you never know your real age because you can't count your age backwards from when you were born. You must count your age forward. None of us know how long we're going to live. It doesn't mean you need to live frantically, spend all your money, and never save. You're probably going to live a few more years, maybe a lot hopefully, but remember this: what will make your life amazing is if you can unlock the latent motivation that’s within every human and animal. It's in our DNA. Some people just let it out better than others. Thanks so much. Talk to you soon. Stay Strong, Tai [Manage Email Alerts]( | [Unsubscribe From All]( | [Unsubscribe From Tai's Emails Only]( You have received this email to {EMAIL} because you are a registered [Tailopez.com]( subscriber. 8581 Santa Monica Blvd. Suite #703 West Hollywood, CA USA Do you like this email ?