We Do What People Like Us Do — Identity-Based Motivation (Part 5 of 5)

Well, hello there, my friend.

It's Jonathan Doyle.

Welcome to The Daily Podcast.

This is day five of our five-day series.

If you're just joining us on day five, you may wanna jump

back to the previous episodes.

They're all short, but we are answering together the great question of what

is it that explains why some of us are driven, motivated, passionate,

inspired, chasing after things, giving our full attention and energy to what is

significant for us, yet we observe that the vast majority of people don't do that.

It's not a condemnation.

It is not judgment.

It is not arrogance.

It is an observation.

It is not saying anybody is better than anybody else.

But you are given this one precious life, and you are given the freedom,

the capacity, the ability to choose what your experience will be like.

Yes, there are external forces.

Yes, there are things that happen to us.

I got a comment on YouTube the other day because I did an episode a couple

of weeks ago, and it was about, uh, if you're not achieving what you

want, it's because you're simply-- you don't care enough about it.

A little blunt, but it came from a discussion I had with somebody in

a high-level sales position who was telling me that they just keep hitting

the snooze button all the time.

They wanna get up.

They have these things they, they know that they wanna do.

And they asked me, like, you know, "Why don't I do it?" And I said, "Well,

'cause you don't care." And they're like a bit shocked, and they go, "No, I do.

I do.

I do." I said, "No, you don't." Because let's say, for example, that somebody said

to you, "Hey, um, if you get up tomorrow at three AM and come into town, I'm

gonna give you a million dollars," you're not snoozing through the alarm, right?

You're just not.

You're just-- You're gonna go and… The night before, you're

gonna go and buy 10 alarms, or you're not even gonna go to sleep.

You're gonna have somebody run in there with a trumpet

and, like, at two thirty AM.

So the fact that we snooze through an alarm isn't because

we have some genetic disorder.

It's because whatever we say we're getting up for doesn't mean enough to us.

It's that simple.

So this person was kinda saying, you know, "What about people who suffer, and they've

had this problem? They have mental illness and this and that and that." And I, I

immediately understood from the comment that this person was obviously, you

know, has been through a difficult time.

And I didn't actually reply this way.

I simply thanked them for the comment 'cause I don't like to just

end up spending hours of my life arguing with people online ever.

But my sense was, yes, y-you're correct.

There are lots of people that have debilitating mental illness and, um,

neurological problems and, uh, injuries and life setbacks and bankruptcies.

But what I will say is that the path of history is strewn with people

who have had obstacles like that and worse and still made something

extraordinary of themselves.

There's a guy on Instagram, I c- I have to… I'm trying to remember who's, who

he is, but he's in a wheelchair, uh, obviously has some very, very significant,

uh, disability Looks like he's been in the wheelchair his entire life and carries

this profound disability, but just every day is producing content about faith and

motivation, and it's quite extraordinary.

And I just look at that and I think if somebody like that, or Nick Vujicic is

another good example if you know his work.

Like, all of us go through difficulties.

Some people go through horrendous difficulties.

But the idea that that is a guaranteed free pass from ever having to

make something remarkable of your life, I just don't agree with.

I think no matter what has happened to you, you can still

find a way to contribute and grow.

That's my firm belief.

So thank you for listening to that little rant.

So today we're gonna wrap up just tailing off from something yesterday.

I talked a little bit about identity and how identity tends to drive so

much of what characterizes people who are passionate and chasing

goals and trying to really grow.

So today we're looking at identity-based motivation.

This is the research of Oyserman, and there's a quote here, and Oyserman says

that people act not because of incentives.

Remember we touched on that yesterday.

That's sort of interesting.

Does that sound a bit counterintuitive to you?

You're like, "Oh, Jonathan, that's ridiculous."

Like, if somebody offers you $1,000 to do something, within

reason, you're gonna do it.

Yeah, sure, but I'm talking about a lifestyle.

I'm talking about just a general interfacing with reality itself.

Incentives are gonna get you to do some things short term, but they're unlikely to

carry you across an entire life project.

You know?

So, uh, let's give you the rest of this quote.

He says, "People act not because of incentives, but because

acting is," and this is good.

You ready?

"Because acting is identity congruent. We do what people like us do." I have talked

for years about, uh, reference groups.

I'm really working hard on this with my kids at the moment.

Reference groups is simply that who we spend our most of our time with,

because the research is clear that the people we spend most of our time

with have a huge impact upon us.

So you have to be super selective about who you are giving your time to.

I don't mean that's arrogance.

I don't mean you don't…

Y- I mean, you still are, are kind and decent to everybody, but you

do get a vote about who you wanna spend most of your time with because

the people that you're around will have a profound influence on you.

And in Oyserman's research here, he says, "People don't act because

of incentives. They act because they wanna be identity congruent."

And I said to my kids, like, "Have you noticed that, you know, that when you're

in high school, that all the people smoking pot tend to hang out with all the

other kids smoking pot, and all the kids who are trying to become Dux or magna

cum laude or whatever, or get the highest results, tend to spend time around the

kids who are doing all the after-school study, and the kids in the chess club

tend to hang with the kids in the chess club, and, you know, the, the, the

athletes tend to hang with the athletes?"

'Cause we're a social species, and we tend to act in congruent ways

to the people that are around us.

So if you spend your time with really motivated, passionate, you know,

encouraging, generous, kind, alive, healthy people, you're probably gonna

pick up some of their behaviors.

So this question here, and we wanna pair it with a quote from William James, who is

seen as the father of modern psychology.

He says, "Compared with what we ought to be…" Just listen to that language.

Compared to what we sh- ought to be, should be, could be.

Based on what?

Based on the incredible potential that you have.

He says, "Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake.

We are making use of only a small part of our possible

mental and physical resources.

We are making use of a small part of our mental and physical

resources." I love this quote.

William James, way back at the dawn of modern psychology, saying, I

love that line, "Compared to what we are, what we ought to be, we're only

half awake." We're only using twenty percent, he says, of our capacities.

Uh, can I share something with you today?

My, uh, biometric data from my training said to me that my average resting heart

rate is now fifty-five beats per minute.

Friends, do you have any idea what that means?

Like, the, the normal range for somebody my age is high sixties to seventies.

My resting average heart rate is fifty-five.

And I come from a background of, my grandfather died at

forty-four of a heart attack.

My father had his first heart bypass in his very early fifties.

I'm fifty-two years of age.

I have a resting heart rate of fifty-five.

I walked to the studio today carrying a thirty-kilo backpack

of s- with steel plates in it.

I'm not saying any of that to impress you at all, and I, I hope you can sense that.

What I'm saying to you is that my sense of identity and purpose has led me to

train and live in a very particular way because, like William James says, I have

no intention of living at twenty percent.

No intention.

Absolutely none.

And I wanna encourage you, passionately encourage you, that what if this is true?

What if you're living at twenty percent?

That compared to who you could be, according to William James,

what if you're half awake?

So all of this is gonna, I guess, come down to this question for me of identity.

Here we are at the end of this five-day questioning process.

What's our question?

What explains why some people are driven, passionate, committed,

goal-chasing, and so many people settle and just settle for average?

What explains it?

Remember day one, we said, well, there's a genetic component, but you remember that

word, your baseline is not your ceiling.

Your baseline is not your ceiling.

And how do we do it?

We train ourselves, and we do it by getting small incremental wins.

So you literally have to become an architect.

You have to become an architect of your own life.

So if you are not where you wanna be, if there's a grand remarkable

future that you do want, but you are not there, what do you do?

You start architecting a small set of wins.

So I was able to, to do a 10K ruck pa- pack with 30 kilos of metal

plates because, you know, at some point I, I, I went for a 5K run,

and I built on that, and I built on that, and that builds identity.

If you can match a core identity to a core purpose, you are gonna be a

very long way to where you need to be.

A core identity to a core purpose, you are going to be a very long

way to where you need to be.

So ultimately, I think the transformation comes through this,

through identity and purpose.

What explains why some of us are getting after it?

In my-- if-- all I can do really is offer you what I know about

myself, because that's the only real data that I've got to work with.

I know why I'm here.

I know why I'm here in this studio right now, because I genuinely hope

that some of what I'm saying is going to encourage you, bless you, inspire

you, help you to believe that there's something more that you could do,

be, have, or achieve in your life.

And then there's a deep sense that this is my identity.

And you know the great thing about identity?

The stronger it gets, the less you care about what anyone else thinks.

You're just like, "This is who I've been created to be. This is my mission.

I just wanna do this and help people, and that's what's gonna happen."

So I want this for you.

So as we finish The answer to the question of whether you need more drive

or whether you feel you've got almost none is knowing what's important to you and

then deciding if you wanna expend enough human effort and energy to pursue it.

So you've gotta choose things that, to go after that are really

meaningful to you, and then you build a series of small incremental wins.

You don't get to the summit of Everest the first day.

Maybe you only climb 100 meters.

So you could be listening to me right now and your life

could be in a terrible state.

You could be financially wrecked.

Maybe your health is terrible.

Maybe your relationships are not where you need them to be.

Can I tell you that you can turn this around?

All you have to do is take the first incremental step.

Optimize your health, get your sleep back, improve your energy and fitness.

Stop putting dumb stuff into your body that's wrecking your

energy levels and making you miserable and cranky all the time.

Stop doing that.

Start to get some good supplements, creatine, get your protein up, get

your body right, get your sleep right.

Choose to be around people that encourage you.

Spend less time with anybody that is negative and pulls you down.

Then start to do some small things that move you forward.

Maybe you just save a little bit of money.

Maybe you start training.

Maybe you just join the gym, make the phone call, send the email, get started.

That's all you have to do.

You don't climb Everest today, but you start today.

And friends, I just wanna tell you as I finish, it's a great

place, this life that I have.

It's got its many challenges, but I, I-- when I get to the end of it, I can

promise you I will not look back with regrets, and I don't want that for you.

All right.

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hit subscribe because I love doing this.

I'm gonna got, uh, we do this every day.

Every single day there'll be something for you.

So, um, I hope to join you again very soon.

God bless you, my friend.

This has been the Daily Podcast.

My name's Jonathan Doyle, and you and I are gonna talk again tomorrow