119: 5 Things You Need to Know About Staying Motivated As a Female CEO

Welcome to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I'm your host, Andrea Liebross. Each week, I focus on the systems, strategy, and big thinking you need to CEO your business and life to the next level. Are you ready? Let's go.

Hello, my friends and welcome back to the podcast. It is the middle of March and this is a time when I think it is sometimes hard to stay motivated. I don't know about you, but all of a sudden in March, it feels like there's a lot going on. There are spring breaks, there's anticipating the spring. It's like the middle of March through the middle of May are just one big blob of time.

I find at times that the women that I am coaching need a little help to stay motivated as the CEO of their business no matter what. I'm going to give you today five keys to staying motivated. Plus a couple of things along the way to help you figure out a little bit more about how to do it in a very practical sense.

Here are the five things, I'm just diving right in today, the five things that you need to know about motivation. Number one: motivation is what I call an inside job. It is a feeling. Although we talk about “I need to find motivation” as if it were a lost item, there is really nothing to find on the outside. It is all on the inside.

Our insides, our caveman insides, our caveman brain, our primitive brain tells us that no, no, you shouldn't do anything hard. Keep everything easy and comfortable. I wouldn't try that new thing. I wouldn't even get up out of bed if you don't want to. That's all part of the motivational triad. Keeping things easy, pain-free, comfortable, and efficient. But that's all a lie. In 2023, we don't need that. We just need to feel motivated, to rise up above that primitive brain of ours, and to feel motivated.

The second part of that inside job feeling is that it's hard to keep over extended periods of time. But we gotta remember this is not a competition. We are amazing and a hot mess all at the same time. I will tell you over the weekend, I am recording this way ahead of time, but my son and my husband had a competition at the gym that they work out at. I was not there to witness this but we have it on video.

I guess my son felt like he could beat my husband in lat pulldowns. He challenged him to some lat pulldown competition. Needless to say, my son lost. Shame on him for actually challenging my husband but he lost. But somehow, I think he is going to use, or he says he is going to now use that as motivation to continue to work out while he is in Europe and away from his regular gym.

But here is what I want him as I drove him to the airport, “You are motivated now to continue to work out on a daily basis when you're in Italy and I hope you do. But you need to remember that there are probably going to be some days when you're not feeling super motivated and you're feeling like a hot mess.”

Motivation is not a competition because we have to remember that although on some days we're motivated, on some days or not. But we need to be on to ourselves if our brain goes into a place of thinking, “Ah, motivation is overrated.” That's our primitive brain talking and that's not a helpful brain.

Number two: you can't motivate other people. You can only attempt to influence them. This is another thing we try to do. I just need to motivate my team. I just need to motivate my kids. I just need to motivate my husband. You can't motivate them because motivation, going back to number one, is an inside job. It has to come from within.

But I will tell you, in your attempt to influence them, you will be much more effective at influencing if you yourself are in a good spot. This is a whole put-your-oxygen-mask-on-first type of scenario. If you are taking care of yourself, then it is much easier to attempt to influence others.

Now, I think this is a really good distinction to think about. We don't say this to ourselves, “I'm going to influence this person.” We say, “I want to motivate them. My kids just need to be motivated to pick up their rooms.” Now, they don't need to be motivated to pick up their rooms. In fact, they could actually pick up their rooms if they weren't motivated, but I, if I’m good, can influence them into understanding how a cleaned-up room can get you off to a good start for your day.

I cannot motivate my contractors in my business to work faster, but I could influence them if I shared with them how my pace of work helps create the results we're looking for. I cannot even motivate my clients. If you get on a consult call with me and you say, “I just need you to motivate me,” I'm going to say the act of you reaching out to talk to me should be motivating in and of itself to you because you are seeing what is possible.

Inside my coaching, if you're in there, you will notice that I don't really ever talk about motivating you. I talk about you helping you make whatever the next move is. Which leads me to number three: your main job is to motivate yourself. Very few things are more motivating than winning or success. That is true, my friends. You know when people are on a winning streak, it's motivating. They keep winning, they keep celebrating, they keep going.

Celebrating in and of itself is very important because that celebration implants the win or the success in your brain. Right now, it's NFL playoff season, and I watched a little football yesterday. You can tell when teams have momentum, they seem to have good quarters and bad quarters, good halves and bad halves, and they have the momentum to continue to move forward. They are certainly motivated by success.

Think about that, and it helps you stay on the offense, not the defense. That offense/defense is a concept that I want you to start to think about in your own lives. How much of your time are you spending on offense and how much are you spending on defense?

Now, this is hard to stay motivated and to see the wins and successes sometimes. But you are responsible for doing that. Go back and listen to episode six on emotional childhood and emotional adulthood. Emotional childhood is someone who has a temper tantrum, stomps their feet, and does a lot of the blame and shame game or compare and despair.

But when you're in emotional adulthood, you are responsible for your outcome. You are responsible for how you feel. If you start saying things like, “Nothing is working. I've tried everything and just nothing seems to work. I can't get up and work out in the morning. I just must not be a morning person,” have you really exhausted every option? How long are you willing to work at it? Until you get it?

Or are you willing to just not work at it anymore and try something completely different? Are you working on the right things? Are you working at all? Or are you just thinking you're going to sprinkle some magic fairy dust and it's going to come out of the sky?

Another thing we throw at ourselves with this is other people don't have it this hard. Other teams in the NFL don't have this hard. They don't have as many injuries. They have a bigger, better roster because they've paid their players more. Other moms don't have it this hard. They only have two kids, not three. Other business owners don't have it this hard because whatever they sell or do is much more desirable.

That, my friends, is compare and despair. That does not help us. That does not help us at all. Catch yourself, eavesdrop on what you're thinking, catch yourself, and be onto yourself if that's the road you're going down.

Here's another thing that sometimes gets in the way of winning and success and using that as momentum: we think we should be grateful for where we're at and what we have. “I shouldn't want anymore because I'm grateful for what I have right now.” That is a motivation killer.

I want to ask you, do you think that whatever higher being that you worship or even if you don't worship, do you think that higher being wants you to settle for less, or do they want you to live in abundance? I'm going to go with abundance. That higher being always would love you to have more and to have the motivation to go after it.

Which brings me to number four. A lot of times when we're in this grateful thing, we also have self-pity. Self-pity is feeling like a victim. Powerless. But I want you to think about movies. In movie, there's always a victim and a hero, and a mentor and a villain. We all want to find that villain. A few podcast episodes ago, maybe 10, I talked about victim and villains, the episode that came out right around Thanksgiving.

I want you to recognize that our brain is always on the lookout for who's the villain when we feel like the victim. I'll give you a couple of examples. When a family member, potentially a child, is acting out and you feel powerless, you just can't manage them, it's exhausting and overwhelming, you are being the victim and they are being the villain.

A five-year-old can be a villain and a 45-year-old can be a victim if we allow that kind of thinking. But equally available to you is the hero role. You could choose to be the hero. In a work situation, if you're thinking, “I've got a client or contractor or someone in my business who just doesn't want to put the work in,” and you feel powerless and a victim because they're not putting the work in, you could, in this situation, choose to be the hero.

You can say to yourself, “Who is the best person to work with this individual who doesn't want to put the work in? Me. I'm here. I will save the day. I will help them see the light. I will help them turn this around.” You then are the hero.

If you were to write an article in the newspaper, you would be really focused on headlines. Journalists are always focused on headlines. When I'm actually working with these podcasts and creating the show notes for the podcast, I'm really focused on what should the title of this podcast be? Because it's super important. It's what captures your attention.

Really, it's the message you walk away with ultimately. What's your headline? Are you the villain? Are you the victim? Are you the hero? Are you the mentor? Sometimes when I'm coaching a client inside I've Got This, they will start out when they'll tell me some big long story about what happened. It's like almost as if they are reporting it.

I always say, “You're telling me that like it's the news.” Now coming to you live from inside 2022 Oak Street, three people are sitting around a table. One person says, “I don't like meatloaf.” The other person says, “Well, that's what I made for dinner.” Then disliker gets up and stomps away. The person who created the meatloaf who cooked it feels miserable. Over and out.

That's like you're reporting the news. Headline: Chef feels miserable when five-year-old says he doesn't like meatloaf. Now, my friends, is that the headline you want? Or do we want it to be “Chef creates delicious meatloaf despite disgruntlement from the crowd and teaches people the value of such meatloaf”?

Self-pity or “woe is me, why did I spend all this time cooking this? Why did I spend all this time on email if no one's reading it?” no, that is victim self-pity mentality. You get to be the hero.

Which brings me to the last and final point. You cannot hate yourself better. You can only love yourself better. What do I mean by this? “I'm so mad. Why can't I do this? I just need to be motivated,” that's a phrase where it's like the angrier I get at myself for not doing this, the more motivated I'm going to be. Is that really true?

You can't get better at being disgruntled. You can't get better at that. You can't get better at being disappointed. You're just disappointed. You can't get better at being frustrated. You're just frustrated. You can't get more frustrated or more disappointed in order to be turned around and become more motivated. But what you can do is you can love yourself better.

You can be curious with yourself. Why aren't I working on this? What is it about this? Why do I let the kids get to me every night at five o'clock? Why do I keep cooking meatloaf if no one likes it? Then you can add some compassion to that. Of course, it's difficult at five o'clock. Everybody's tired from the day. Of course, you want your email to be amazing.

There is you showing yourself some curiosity and compassion. Fear-based motivation versus love-based motivation. Fear-based motivation is temporary. Steve Jobs reported that he used to try to motivate through fear but it didn't work bcause his people got burnt out.

Fear is not going to get you what you really want. It is not sustainable. Although Steve Jobs may have had some fleeting success in his early days with his people, it wasn't sustainable. He had to change the way he approached things because he lost all his original people. You should go read his biography.

Love-based motivation is sustainable. You want to feel better so you can be better. Because when you feel better, you actually do better and you continue to do better. You keep wanting to work at it. But our brains like to trick us and they say the only reason they're really on to like why do we want this, we want something because we think when we have it, we’ll feel differently.

When I win the Superbowl, then I will be on top of the world. When I have 20 people open an email, then I'll be great. When my kid can drive himself to and from school, everything is going to be better. But I want to remind you that you can feel these feelings right now today. You could feel love, confidence, and motivation. Because, my friends, success is not final. You can continue to have success.

Failure is not fatal. In fact, we need failure to keep going. It is really the courage to continue that matters. That is why motivation is so, so important. How do you do this? Well, number one, you have to be on to yourself. If you need to break, you take a break. If you need to find some more energy, pause and reboot whether that means taking 10 minutes or 10 days off.

Another way to regain motivation is to be reflective. I swear meditating for 10 minutes a day can do you wonders. It is part of my morning routine. I do my best to make sure that it happens on a daily basis. I schedule it in. I use one of my favorite tools Focusmate to help me focus in on those 10 minutes.

But the third thing that I'm just going to offer you on how do you figure this all out, the third thing I think is the most important, you need to take ownership for your own emotional health. You have to look inside you. You have to feed your spirit. You’ve gotta look inside. This is oh, so important.

How do you do that? You learn. You invest in learning. Learning can come in all forms. It can come in observation, it can come in watching things, it can come in listening to things. But I think the best form of learning is doing. Actions make us remember things. When we take action, we remember better than any other way.

What actions are you taking to take ownership for your own emotional health which is what ultimately drives your motivation? I want you to picture pearls on a string. My mom gave one to me, she gave one to my daughter, she gave one to my niece. My mom gives this gift of add a pearl. Each year, she gives each child, each female child, a pearl to add to their add-a-pearl necklace.

I like to think of those pearls as just attempts at being better. We need to add a pearl. We don't take the pearl off that came before. We keep it, we learn from it, and we add a pearl. What are you doing to add pearls to your necklace? When you've got a complete necklace, you have accomplished a lot and then it's time to reflect.

To recap, motivation is an inside job, it is a feeling. Do not listen to your primitive brain telling you, “Oh, stay safe.” That's a lie. Number two: you can't motivate other people, you can only attempt to influence them. In order to influence them, you've got to catch yourself in a good spot.

Number three: your main job is to motivate yourself. Very few things are more motivating to yourself than seeing success or experiencing a win. We need to celebrate those wins. We need to realize that we are responsible for the wins because we are adults. No compare and despair, no shame and blame, and no stuck being grateful.

Number four: self-pity really can crush motivation because we feel like we are victims. We are powerless, and we often look for a villain. But heroes are always available too and the heroes are what motivate us. What's the headline of your newspaper article? What's the title of the movie? That's what we're going to remember. Usually, those are about the heroes. Number five: you cannot disappoint yourself better or more in order to motivate yourself. You can only love yourself better or more.

Be compassionate and curious. Remember that fear-based motivation is temporary but love-based is sustainable. Take ownership of your own emotional health. Look inside you to feed your spirit. I welcome you to feed your spirit in all sorts of ways. If you would like to explore what coaching looks like and you really want to 10x this learning, then it might be time to go to andreaslinks.com and set up a call. Why not? You've got nothing to lose.

Okay, my friends, who else needs this podcast? Can you share with just one person? Share with them the episode and say, “I am motivated by you.” Until next time, remember, now is the time for you to level up.

Hey, listening to podcasts is great. But you also have to do something to kick your business up a notch. You need to take some action, right? So go to andreaslinks.com and take the quiz. I guarantee you'll walk away knowing exactly what your next best step is to level up.