77: Confidence or Survival Motivation: What Helps More?

Episode 77-Motivation vs Confidence.mp3

Speaker1: [00:00:09] You're listening to the.

Speaker2: [00:00:10] Time to Level Up podcast. I'm your host business life coach, Andrea Libros. I help women in business commit to their own growth personally and professionally. Each week, I'll bring you strategies to help you think clearly. Gain confidence. Make your time productive. Turn every obstacle into an opportunity. And finally overcome the overwhelm so that you can make money and manage life. Let's create a plan so you have a profitable business, successful career, and best of all, live with unapologetic ambition. Are you ready to drop the drama and figure out the how in order to reach your goals? You're in the right place. It's time to level up. Let's do this.

Speaker1: [00:01:11] Hello my friends and welcome back to the podcast. I think we are up to Episode A 77 or 76. I don't even know which is it. Anyway, we're going to continue our discussion of confidence. So today I want to approach confidence by looking at it as it compares to motivation, right? So motivation versus confidence, that's kind of our topic of the day. But before we get started, I want to tell you, I just got back from my own coaches mastermind and it was amazing. We went out to the Funky Island, which is off the coast of South Carolina near Hilton Head. We flew to Savannah, took an Uber to a dock, took a ferry to the island and took a golf cart to the house which was on the beach. And it was beautiful. So this morning my trainer asked me what was my biggest takeaway? And I really said, well, I got a couple. Number one is that you really do need to step away from your norm in order to move towards something new. And I do find that when I step away from my norm and that sometimes doesn't mean having to get out of town, although that's always helpful, it's then that I have the biggest breakthroughs. It's then that I really feel like I am moving towards who I want to become as a person and who I want to become as a business. So stay tuned because there are some changes that are going to happen in the business that are coming soon.

Speaker1: [00:03:07] The next thing, the next biggest takeaway was that focusing on one thing versus everything is very powerful. And this is something I realized that kind of scares me because I am not someone that finds it easy to focus on one thing. But if I do focus on one thing, I make huge progress. And I kind of decided that focusing on one thing, there could be one overall goal, like all encompassing. But if I can just focus on the one little part that it takes to the little thing that I can achieve on my way to achieving the bigger goal versus trying to focus on all the little parts at the same time, I make much more progress. So does that scare you, that statement, that one focusing on one thing is better than focusing on everything? I don't know. It kind of scares me a little. But anyway. And here is my third takeaway. My third takeaway. Came from some she had cards like these cards and I'm not super into. Spiritual crystals, all that kind of stuff. But she did have these cards and every morning we flipped one over and one day one of the cards said something to the effect of In order to create something big, you have to break down what you already have. And again, that kind of led me to think about what I want to create in my business. So if I look about what I look at, what I have now and I break it down into pieces, how could I put those pieces back together in a more impactful way? So something for you to think about.

Speaker1: [00:04:54] All right. So let's switch over or head into the topic that we're going to talk about today. So as a coach, I really help my clients see how their thoughts are creating the results in their lives. And so many times clients will say to me, Why am I thinking this way? Why is it so hard to change my habits? What's my problem? And the answer to most of those questions really stems from the fact that our brains are wired for survival. So our primitive brains, the ones that helped us survive when we were living in caves and hunting for food, really only had three priorities to seek pleasure, to avoid pain and to conserve energy. And we're going to get into that a little bit today. But I want to tell you also kind of the outline for today in that we're always going to be wondering these things, why I'm thinking the way I'm thinking or why is it so hard to change my habits? Unless we understand why and how our brain works. That's kind of number one. Number two. Okay. How to consciously engage our thinking at a higher level and kind of chart a new course, which is not just about motivation, which we think, Oh, I just need to become motivated in order to think something different or to change something.

Speaker1: [00:06:38] So that's not really the case. And then the third piece here is we've got to be disciplined enough to continuously stay on the course that we do desire, which is really about having some confidence. So that's kind of the outline for today. We're going to understand why the how the brain works. We're going to figure out why it's not just about motivation. And then we're going to talk a little bit about confidence. So, okay, here's your science lesson. And, you know, I am not Miss Science, but I think it's important to understand that our brains are generally composed of three main sections that function at different levels. So we're going back to like Neuroscience 101. So there here the three main sections, the first section is really our low level or our reptilian brain, and that includes the brain stem and the spinal column. And it really controls all of our basic unconscious automatic functions for physical survival, breathing movement, heartbeat, temperature, all that. Then we've got our mid-level brain or or our mammalian brain, which is really part of our limbic system. And that's what creates our emotions in our stores, our memories, which is why sometimes we go back to our memories and create an emotion from them without looking forward. Also, this mid-level brain or limbic system, it's socially aware and it's kind of responsible for motivation. And our survival instincts like the fight, flight or freeze.

Speaker1: [00:08:21] And it responds in the present. Maybe it goes out to near future, but pretty much it's living in the present. And it also helps us provide communication with other sections of our brain. And it's really the part that's most responsible for anything you're doing or not doing or reacting to. And then we've got our highest level brain, our human brain, which is our neocortex, and this is our kind of large brain. I know I'm being so scientific here, but it's really the logic center that's responsible for all of the reasoning and problem solving and creativeness and language and high level communication. So when we say things like, I really know what I should do. So that message is coming from your higher level brain. And then when you say, but it just doesn't feel right, that's coming from your mid-level brain. All right. So although these three sections are super distinct and do different things, they do kind of have this synergistic energy and they communicate between each other. So. Why is it then that sometimes our brain says, oh, eat the pizza, not the broccoli? Why do we oftentimes resist doing a really hard workout? Why do we spend so many hours on our mobile devices and not as many hours doing work that may move the needle? Okay. Why? Because our most powerful motivation in emotional drivers are really in that mid level or mammalian brain. And our limbic system and our actions at this level are motivated by three deeply rooted survival instincts.

Speaker1: [00:10:19] So to go back, I said, deeply rooted. So that's like caveman, I want you to picture. I always picture the Flintstones in their little cars, moving their feet with no motors, just the feet moved the cars and bam, bam, walking around with his big bone. That's when I think of cavemen. You guys are getting a sneak peek into what I always think. So here are the three things that motivate. Our actions. These are like deep level rooted survival instincts. I like to call them the motivational triad. So here is our motivational triad. We are wired to seek out pleasure. Desires, happiness, comfort. Okay, so in the caveman era, how would we seek out pleasure? Well, anything that kept us alive was pretty pleasurable. We thought that staying in groups was pleasurable because we were safer. Okay. We thought food and feasting on food was pleasurable because it might be a long, long time until our next meal. And we also thought sex was pleasurable because we could procreate. So in modern times, food, social relationships, reproduction, acceptance and recognition, drugs and alcohol, they all seem pleasurable. All right. So number one, seek out pleasure. That's one part of our motivational triad. This is why you do things. This is why you want to watch Netflix versus workout. All right. Number two, we are wired to avoid pain, both mental and physical. And here is where all of our fear and anxiety and anger resides in back in the caveman era, back in the Flintstones, avoiding pain that meant staying safe, avoiding being eaten by the lion.

Speaker1: [00:12:26] That's why they stayed inside the cave or being attacked by another caveman tribe. Stay in the cave. Don't go out. Avoid pain or death, physical and mental. All right. And the third piece of the motivational triad is really to conserve energy and seek efficiency. It's kind of like the path of least resistance to get to avoiding the pain and seeking pleasure. Okay, so cavemen, they wanted to expend the least amount of energy needed to perform a task so that they had energy later inside the cave in case they needed to use it for survival. All right. So in modern times, as my kids used to say in the 1980s, like 1996 and in the 2000s, we need to overcome these primitive instincts, this motivational triad. We need to take control of them with decisions that we make, not in our lowest brain, not in our mid-level brain, but in our highest level brain and our prefrontal cortex, part of our brain, so that we don't remain the victim to our habits, because today our primitive brain is always telling us to seek pleasure. And there are so many ways to do that, to overdo it. But we're not it's not about survival anymore, which it used to be. We have a hard time, though, controlling ourselves around all of the things that are pleasurable. For example, we don't have to hunt our own food anymore.

Speaker1: [00:14:15] It's everywhere. And yet we overeat. Okay. So today our primitive brain still wants to avoid pain and is about avoiding anything that hurts us, and that includes anything that causes us to be uncomfortable or feel discomfort like emotions. So I will tell you that sometimes when I start working with a client to three weeks in, it starts to be feel really uncomfortable because they're uncovering things kind of they're uncovering how they really feel. They're uncovering some of their limiting beliefs, which we talked about in a previous episode, and all of a sudden they want to quit. They think, Oh, this isn't the time for coaching. Okay. But avoiding pain. Is really not necessary anymore. We need to be uncomfortable in order to create change a better lives for ourselves. All right. We'll get a little bit more into that. But then the third thing today, the problem is that your brain cannot tell the difference between physical pain and emotional pain. So just like you want to avoid the physical pain of breaking a bone. Or spraining your ankle or hitting your thumb with a hammer. Your brain also wants to avoid any negative emotion like fear or sadness or anger and anxiety, which the brain also perceives as pain. It's painful, right? When we're going through something sad, it's we sometimes say, this is painful. Okay. And then we avoid our emotions by overeating and overdrinking and overspending or over Facebooking.

Speaker1: [00:16:07] Instead of feeling our feelings, which is a lot of what we do inside coaching. Okay. So I have a client who is realizing that the reason that she is avoiding looking for new opportunities is because she is avoiding feeling her feelings. She doesn't want it to be hard. She doesn't want it to be uncomfortable. And in fact, she had an opportunity present itself this week, and she left me a message and she said, help me work through this. I feel like I'm wanting to run away from this opportunity. It seems scary, it seems hard, but I know that I probably should take advantage of this opportunity. So. We are working through on how she's going to do that. But notice her instinct. Her instinct, she instantaneously messaged me and said, I don't know if I really want to do this. It seems scary, right? It seems scary. She doesn't want to feel that. So she's trying to avoid it. But. We don't have to avoid emotional pain because discomfort is not going to kill us anymore. And in fact, we need to feel those feelings in order to evolve. So she definitely needs to feel this feeling in order to evolve. So last week we had a conversation about where she wants to evolve to. Now notice this week when it seems like there might be a little pain in the way she's avoiding it. All right. So that's the second piece of the motivational triad, which looks different now than it did in the caveman era.

Speaker1: [00:17:57] All right. And here's the third piece. Today, we no longer have to save our energy like we did when we were cave dwellers. No one is about to chase us. We are not likely to see a Tyrannosaurus rex outside our front door later today. And today, you know how we save our energy. We procrastinate. Right. We think procrastinating is going to save us a lot of energy, but actually it creates a lot of stress. All right. But one of the ways that our brains conserve energy is by creating habits. Or sometimes I like to call the self automation so it doesn't have to think about what to do and when to do it. So if we go deep into creating rituals or routines and there is an episode with Saira Khan that is about that, so go back and try to find that one. But that helps us conserve a lot of energy. And this also can be good when you're driving your car somewhere, right? Because we think we already we already know where to go. So we don't have to spend energy in trying to get there. All right. So even driving sometimes can become a habitual. Right. But when we're trying to work at changing our habits. We do not need to access this saving energy. Piece of the motivational triad. Habits. Help our brain to save energy. But it keeps you from making the change you want to make.

Speaker1: [00:19:46] Okay. So habits can be good and bad if they're if they're we're using them to automate things and save energy, that is great. But if we are using them, if we are stuck in the habit of overeating, for example, like a bad habit or procrastinating, we have to stop those habits. So you've got to be aware when it comes to habits, are they really saving you energy? Or are they delaying change? So if you want to evolve into that next level, you have to be the one in charge of your primitive brain. So instead of defaulting to what your primitive brain has always done, you need to take control by making decisions ahead of time with the prefrontal cortex part of your brain so you can break the default habits and make the changes you want in your life. And that, my friends, is a lot of what we do inside committed to growth. I am encouraging my coaches in there to think ahead as to what they want to accomplish this week. All right. They're using their prefrontal cortex. To create the change they want to create this week. They are not relying on their lower brain to direct them. They're asking their prefrontal cortex to direct them. And that's hard because you know why this is so hard? Because this isn't the way we're wired. So a lot about what coaching is about is kind of rewiring your brain. So again, nothing's gone wrong, right? You're not broken.

Speaker1: [00:21:25] You don't necessarily need therapy. What you need is to figure out how to rewire your brain. And that's what we do a lot of inside committed to growth. So. I'm going to switch this shift now to motivation, not motivational triad, but motivation. All right. So I would say the common day definition of motivation is trying to overcome that motivational triad, that caveman triad. And we try to willpower our way through things. We think that if only I can just push through this, it will all be better, right? I just needed to be motivated. But motivated doesn't last long. And there's been other podcasts where I've talked about that. I don't really love motivation as a word because it doesn't last. It's fleeting. And I was listening to a podcast this week, and I pulled this quote from it, which I thought was so interesting. Motivation is entry level, the temporary rush you get from eating too much frosting. Motivation is for those who haven't decided whether to commit to their goals or how much time, effort and life they're willing to invest to achieve them. I'm going to read that again because I think it's pretty good. Motivation is entry level. It's the temporary rush that you get from eating too much frosting. Motivation is for those who haven't decided whether to commit to their goals or how much time, effort and life they're willing to achieve them. They're willing to invest in order to achieve them. So when we talk about motivation, I don't think it's really what you need because that motivational triad is always going to be there and it's going to be more powerful than motivation in and of itself.

Speaker1: [00:23:25] What you need, my friends, in order to think differently or change your thoughts or habits is confidence. So if you go back to my definition of confidence, which is your willingness to feel all the feelings, well, guess what? If you're willing to feel all the feelings, then you're willing to commit to the goal regardless of how much time or effort it's going to take. Because effort always doesn't feel good. Time doesn't always feel good, right? You need confidence to get to the goal, not motivation. All right. So, you know, I am a big believer in facing your fears head on. And that's really how I found my own courage, my own bravery, my own what led to confidence. It's how I kind of discovered. Who I really am. So for example, I will admit I was afraid to start this business, even though I knew I didn't want to work for anyone else. And even though I knew I loved coaching. And in fact, when I started, I actually worked for someone else and kind of like a trial because I was afraid of doing it on my own. And I told myself I would work there for three months and if I still loved working there after three months, I'd stay. And if I didn't, I would leave.

Speaker1: [00:24:53] So here's what I found in those three months. I loved coaching and I was coaching, but I didn't love working there. So I had promised myself that I would commit to starting my own business, but I had to face my own fears in order to do that. Right. In order to make that happen, I had to face my own fears. So that's confidence. Motivation wasn't going to get me to start a successful business. Here's another thing. I will admit that I was afraid to have children. I was sure I would mess them up. Okay. I don't think I have, but I was sure I would. And I was also afraid to get married and even more afraid to carve out new paths for myself along the way. Okay. And for sure, I was afraid to become an entrepreneur. But. If I fell back on the safe, pleasurable, pain free. Exerting no energy path. In those categories. I wouldn't be the person I am today. Okay. So here's one thing I've learned. Fear can show up in really any stage of life, no matter what you've accomplished and not pushing through your fear, not pushing through what scares you. Relying on motivation only will leave you feeling that you're not brave and it will leave you with an unknown, realized, unfulfilled version of yourself. And believe me, that is something I fear an unfulfilled, unrealized version of myself in in order to get to the version I want.

Speaker1: [00:26:41] I have to create confidence. I have to be willing to feel all of the feelings. I have to be willing to experience pain, become expend energy, and do hard things. Motivation in and of itself will not last because that motivational triad is so deep within us. So. That's where I'm going to leave you today. When you think about motivation as the key to achieving something versus confidence, which is going to take you further, and why won't motivation in and of itself work? It's because it's kind of a byproduct. Okay. And not a strategic one. Motivation is something that we've developed or thought about in order to overcome that motivational triad. But it is fleeting because instinctually we want to be safe. Do pleasurable things and not use energy. Okay. I hope that helped answer some of your questions about why am I thinking the way I'm thinking or why is it so hard to change my habits? Or What's so what's wrong with me? Nothing. You're human. This is how you were wired. But now you're smart and we don't have to rely fall back on that motivational triad to live or to survive. We can access our higher level human brain, our neocortex, our prefrontal cortex in order to make decisions. But in order to stay there in that prefrontal cortex, we have to always know that it's going to feel uncomfortable and that you're going to have to seek out confidence to push past it. And I would bet that anyone that has been inside committed to growth for more than two months feels that confidence.

Speaker1: [00:28:48] If I'm wrong, let me know, because I know you're all listening. But how have they how do they feel? More confidence? Because they've realized they understand how their brain is working. They are actually consciously engaging at a higher level and charting a new course, which is not just about motivation. And they're starting to become disciplined enough to continuously stay on that course, which is really about confidence. Does this sound like something you want? You can get it. You can get it. Schedule and info call with me. Head over to Andrea Libra, ask.com backslash apply and schedule a call with me. We can get you going. We can get you that confidence you want. And. And. And while motivation isn't a bad thing, we can stop relying on it. It's kind of rollercoaster motivation. We can stop relying on it and start relying on you, you and your human higher level brain to get you where you want to go. I'm happy to show you the way. All right, my friends. Until next time, remember, level up. Like, what would it look like for you to level up? What would it feel like if you kicked yourself up to that next level? But would change what's possible. You need some confidence to do it. You need more than motivation, but there is never a better time to do it than right now. So I will see you next week. Have a great week.

Speaker2: [00:30:33] Thanks for listening to the Time to Level Up podcast with me, your host, Andrea Libros. If you know someone who could benefit from listening to this episode, I encourage you to take a screenshot and share it with them. Okay, now what about you? You've listened to the podcast and if you now know that you're ready to upgrade your life, upgrade your business, upgrade you, then stop being only a listener and start being a liver living that upgraded life. Head over to my website and schedule a call right there on that call. We'll start changing the way you think and act so that you can have the freedom to achieve the impossible in life and business and have the resources to do it. You deserve an upgrade. Let's do it.