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How Being Motivated Can Make You Fat

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About a month ago I decided to start focusing on losing weight and getting in better shape – AGAIN.

I’ve started the journey of losing weight and getting fit more times than I can remember, and I’ve actually had a lot of success with losing weight.

Losing weight is easy.

The challenge is that gaining it back is even easier.

Years ago, my primary focus and obsession with weight loss and fitness was figuring out what is the best, fastest and safest way to lose unwanted excess fat on the body and how to put on lean muscle mass.

Because I focused on that, I figured it out and I know exactly what to do and what not to do in order for me to lose weight.

However, this time around, I’m focusing on something different.

I’ve now been a lot more focused and obsessed with learning how to get fit, lose weight and KEEP it off after I lose it, and I’ve learned some very interesting things about that.

Here’s what I did first…

Discovering How Fit People Stay Motivated Long Term

In the past, whenever I would make the decision to lose weight, I would be highly motivated to produce results – and quickly.

I would either do a weight loss competition with one of my friends, or just make the decision to put energy, time and focus into losing weight.

And I would do it.  I’d lose the weight I wanted to lose and hit my goals.

Each time I would start highly motivated to lose the weight, however as time would go on my motivation levels would drop.

By the time I was hitting my target weight loss goal, usually my motivation was pretty low at that point…

… so after I hit my goals I would stop doing the things I was doing, and I would go back to eating unhealthy again…

… and the interesting thing I noticed was that when you’re in great shape, and you start eating unhealthy again, you actually don’t gain weight right away…

In some cases I would eat unhealthy foods for weeks or even a few months without gaining much weight, because my body was still in great shape and my higher set metabolism would just burn away any excess food.

Also, my appetite for unhealthy foods wouldn’t be that great – at first…

… but as I would start eating crappy food again, the addiction would start up again and slowly I would eat healthy foods less frequently and start eating unhealthy foods more frequently.

And then a few months later I would start to gain the weight back, but there was usually something else I was focused on in my life outside of health and fitness which held my attention and motivation.

Eating healthy and being fit was not a priority at all, and so I would start to gain the weight back.

And then of course a year or two later I’d be right back where I started, or even a bit heavier and wondering how the heck this happened and why didn’t I STICK with it!?

So this time around, when I decided to go on this journey I started thinking that what I need to figure out is how to stay highly motivated to be healthy and fit not just for a short period of time, but for a LONG time – like forever!

You see, I know when I’m highly motivated to do so, I can lose weight and get fit, but when my motivation goes down, I start gaining it all back.

So my thinking was that if I could JUST figure out how to stay motivated long term, I could keep the weight off forever.

So I started doing research, reading health and fitness and bodybuilding forums, reading articles, and seeking advice from various people who have transformed their bodies long term on how they stay motivated long term.

Surprisingly, what I discovered was kind of interesting…

Virtually NOBODY could answer that question.

NOBODY could tell how the heck they stay motivated to be fit and healthy for more than just a short period of time.

After a while I started thinking maybe people just don’t know what keeps them highly motivated to be fit and healthy long term because they don’t think about it, so if I can just figure out what questions to ask them I could figure out what’s going on in their heads and understand their motivations better.

After a few weeks of searching, I was honestly no further ahead than when I started.

I still had no idea how the heck these people keep their motivations high to eat healthy, work out and stay fit for long periods of time.

I was frustrated, because I couldn’t believe it was this hard to find an answer to seemingly such an easy question – “How do these fit people stay motivated long term!?”

Then during one of my sessions with my Retrofit coaches, I mentioned this and they recommended I look into the work of BJ Fogg.

BJ Fogg does lectures at Stanford and his area of expertise is understanding motivation.

The Truth Behind Motivation

After looking into BJ Fogg and after watching some of his lectures, I realized that the reason I wasn’t able to find the answer to my question on how to keep my motivation high for staying healthy and fit long term is because there is no answer!

Meaning, what BJ Fogg discovered is that it is impossible for people to stay highly motivated about something forever.  In fact he discovered that motivation is a VERY short-lived phenomenon in humans.

Our motivation levels are always going UP and DOWN like a roller-coaster, on a daily or weekly bases, and sometimes our motivation levels can even change throughout the day!

Here’s BJ Fogg’s lecture on this where he explains this phenomenon, why we are like that and what to do about it:

I absolutely LOVED this lecture.

It totally explained to me why I’ve failed to keep the weight off in the past.

You see, in the past, whenever I would decide to lose weight, my motivation levels would always be through the roof.

I’d be excited, I’d be pumped up, and I’d usually enter into some kind of competition with one of my friends to see who can hit their weight loss targets etc., so my motivation levels would be ultra high.

While my motivation levels were ultra high, I would find activities and action steps that I could take in order to produce results – fast!

In BJ Fogg’s motivation wave graph, these activities and actions would belong under the “Hard to Do” and “Requiring High Motivation” section of the graph.

Now, because my motivation was ultra high, the fact that those activities were hard to do didn’t matter, because when your motivation is high, things that are hard to do aren’t so hard to do!

And, typically when you do things that are hard to do, they usually produce results very quickly, which then fuels motivation even more, which in turn makes it easier to keep doing those hard to do things.

HOWEVER, once I would hit my goal, or I would finish a competition with my friends, my motivation levels would usually drop down – just a bit.

Not all the way down to zero, but they would drop from “Ultra High” to like “Medium”.  On a scale of 1-10, they might drop from 9 or 10, down to like 5 or 6.

This usually happened because I would get motivated by something else in my life.  Meaning, once I hit my fitness goal, I would move onto something else in another area of my life, such as manifesting a new car or increasing my income or something along those lines.

So then, while my motivation to do that OTHER thing would go up to like 9 or 10 out of 10, my motivation to eat healthy and be fit would drop down to 5 or 6.

The challenge with that was that ALL the activities and structure I put in place for eating healthy and staying fit while I was at level 9 or 10 were all HARD to do and required a lot of energy  or time to accomplish.  I guess you could say that those activities were a 9 or 10 out of 10 on the “easy or hard to do scale”.

So what happens when your motivation drops to 5 and the activities you are trying to do are at a difficulty score of 9 or 10?  Nothing!

You don’t do them!

Instead, what you do is you start eating crappy, and you start to skip workouts, and then you feel guilty for doing so, and you try find a way to get your motivation high up again.

Of course that doesn’t work, because you can’t fake motivation.  If you’re already highly motivated to be focusing on something else and that thing is already taking up all your energy, time, focus and attention, you can’t also be highly motivated to stick to a diet or fitness plan at the same time.

There’s only so much energy, time, focus and attention we all have in a day, and if you’ve already decided to invest that into something else you’re excited about, there just isn’t enough to also focus on a healthy diet and fitness plan which requires a high level of motivation.

So what’s the solution?

Creating a Variable Motivation Plan of Attack

Once we realize that motivation is not something we can fake or manufacture if it isn’t already there, the solution to how to deal with that is actually not that complicated.

The solution is to simply create a plan of attack which MATCHES your current level of motivation in any given moment.

Meaning, what we need to do is we need to create a plan of attack which moves us forward when our motivation levels are HIGH, but also continues to move us forward when our motivation levels are LOW – and everything in between.

For example, way back in 2009 I did a program called P90X.  Some of you probably heard about it.

When I started the program, my motivation was super high, and I had the time, money and energy to invest into it.

So when it came time to invest the 60-90 minutes to do the workouts, and maybe another 15-30 mins before / after the workouts, and the energy and will power to keep pushing through these insane workouts – it was no problem for me – because my motivation was high.

But 60 days later, when I had to shift my focus on my business, my motivation dropped a bit and I stopped doing the workouts and went from doing P90X every day to doing NOTHING.

This is because I had absolutely no plan in place as to what to do when my motivation goes down.

This is because when our motivation is high, we think that our motivation will ALWAYS be high – forever – so who the heck wants to plan for low-motivation situations when we are living in a fantasy that says that our motivation will never go down.

We think “No man, I’m done with being fat.  I want to be fit, I’m pumped up, I’m committed, and I’m never giving up!!!”

Yeah, right.  That’s a fantasy.

That might be our motivation in the beginning, but there will come a time when that motivation goes down – for any number of reasons.

The only solution is to have a plan in place which ASSUMES that at some point your motivation goes down, and it already gives you an exact plan of attack that you can easily accomplish even if your motivation is super low.

For example, right now my motivation to get fit and to lose weight is very high.  So for me to bang out a 60-90 minute workout today wouldn’t be that hard.

HOWEVER, I’ve already been working with my Retrofit coaches and we have a plan of attack in place where I have a 5 minute workout already in place, ready for me to implement on days when my motivation is low.

I have a printed out sheet which tells me EXACTLY what exercises I can do on that day, which only take 5 mins or less.

That is actually what we started with – an exercise program which is easy to implement and easy to build a habit with.

On the diet side of things, I’m doing the same thing.

I have a plan of action for what to eat while my motivation levels are high, but also what small changes I can implement when my motivation drops.

In other words, I have a plan in place which encompasses all the motivation levels from Ultra High to Low.

Now, it’s very important to realize that I am not saying that the solution to losing weight and getting fit is some 5 minute workout program…

Why Making Things Too Easy Isn’t The Solution

When people skim over this stuff and don’t take the time to actually understand what BJ Fogg’s research reveals, there is a tendency for people to try to oversimplify a complex subject like this.

I want to be very clear with this.

I am *NOT* saying that the long term solution to losing weight and staying fit is to create a 5 minute workout for yourself, or some super easy dietary change to follow.

Creating a 5 minute workout plan, or having a plan to make a super easy dietary change are examples of activities that a person would do when their motivation levels are LOW – for whatever reason.

However, they are NOT examples of activities you would do when your motivation levels are MEDIUM or HIGH.

Meaning, it’s not just as simple as saying “Oh okay, I get it.  So what you’re saying is that I should just create a simple workout like to do 10 pushups per day and just do that forever, and I’ll be in the best shape of my life, right?”

NO!

See, the challenge is that doing activities that are TOO EASY as compared to your current motivation level will not work either.

Reason being is that if your motivation is high, when you don’t match that high level of motivation with higher difficulty level activities, you essentially dissipate that motivation and produce very little results with it and that doesn’t feel good either.

Meaning, if you’re pumped up, excited to get fit, and ready to do a 60 – 90 minute workout, then THAT is what you should be doing!  Not a 5 minute workout.

Make sense?

Because if you are pumped up and excited to do that, but then you stop yourself and think “Well, I want to do a good solid workout, but I think that I should start slow, so maybe I’ll just do a 5 minute workout today, and then maybe a 6 minute workout tomorrow and build it up from there…” that will kill your motivation levels instantly!

What BJ Fogg talks about in his lecture is that when your motivation levels are high, you need to apply that motivation to taking action at that level, and there are a whole bunch of different things that you can do while motivation is high.

Also, besides applying that motivation to doing something that is harder to do – diet or fitness wise – another thing you can do with a high level of motivation is to do things that  might be hard to do in the short term, but which will make it easier to produce results when motivation is low.

For example, let’s say that currently the only place I can work out is at a local gym which is 20mins away, but I have a room in my house that I could transform into a home gym, but it would take a lot of work to clean it out, set it up as a gym, and to buy the equipment to make it into a gym.

That process of transforming a spare room into a gym might be a good example of a HIGH difficulty level activity, AND it can also be a good example of an activity that – if completed – could make it easier to work out when motivation is LOW.

So if my motivation was Ultra High, for example, that might be a good time to utilize that motivation and to apply it into cleaning out a spare room, going out and buying gym equipment and setting up a gym.  This way, on days when motivation is low it will be easier to do a 5 minute workout in THAT room, instead of having to drive 20 mins to go to a gym.

That’s just one example.

Other things we may choose to do when motivation is high is to go grocery shopping for healthy meals, or to pre-plans meals, or to even pre-cook some meals ahead of time.  Or we might go and buy some gym equipment, or some new clothes, or some new shoes or sign-up for some kind of class.

Again, these are just examples, you have to figure out what would work for you.

The point, however, is simply to just be aware of what your current level of motivation is, and then to take action based on that level.

Don’t do LESS than you’re motivated to do just because someone told you that it’s best to “start slow” or they told you to not “overdo it”.

If you do that, you’ll get bored, you’ll get mad for not producing results quicker, and you’ll just give up on the whole program.

Match your CURRENT level of motivation to the activity levels which will move you towards your goals.

And don’t feel bad or guilty for not doing MORE, if your motivation levels are lower than what would be required to do some activity.

Just match your activity levels to your current level of Motivation.

That’s what I’m doing now, and it’s working out really well for me.

I started my new program on June 1st, and on some days I’ve had more time, energy and motivation to do more so that is what I did.

On other days my schedule was so busy with my businesses, that I had to fall back on my “easy” activities that still move me forward like doing a 5 minute workout before going to bed when I was really tired.

I was so tired that I didn’t even want to do that workout, but because it was only 5 minutes though, and it was already pre-planned for me and I didn’t have to think about WHAT I needed to do, I just did it.

Only took 5mins and I felt great! 🙂

If you’ve been struggling to lose weight and get fit, or more importantly to KEEP the weight off and to stay fit, I highly recommend looking into this concept and the research/lectures on motivation from BJ Fogg.

Then, once you understand the concepts, focus on creating a plan that assumes that some days your motivation will be HIGH and some days it will be LOW – and have a plan in place for the entire spectrum of motivation levels, not just one or the other.

-Paul

P.s. Incidentally, if you haven’t already realized, this entire concept of matching activity to current motivation levels can be applied to EVER area of your life, not just fitness and health.  I’m just using health and fitness as an example, but it applies to everything.  Now that I’ve learned this simple but powerful concept I’m starting to implement it into other areas of my life as well and I recommend you try it out yourself as well.

Where I’ve Been Hiding the Last 7 Months and The Future of FreeYouNow.com

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Those of you who used to follow my blog – FreeYouNow.com – and maybe some of it’s previous incarnations might have been wondering where I’ve been for the past 7 months or so.

My last blog post was from October last year, and then I kind of disappeared.

I originally started blogging way back in April 2006, when there were much fewer blogs around and people didn’t live on Facebook and smart phones weren’t even around yet.

I really enjoyed blogging as both a kind of personal journal and as a way I could give back to the world.  The three main things I blogged about were entrepreneurship/making money online, personal development and fitness.

About five years ago now I also started offering one-on-one coaching and helping people to become entrepreneurs and to make money online for those who could afford my help one-on-one, and my Blog was my outlet to also offer some of that help and advice for new entrepreneurs for free.

At the beginning of 2015 I decided to really step things up and to put most of my one-on-one coaching on hold in order to instead offer and reveal a lot of the strategies and secrets I learned as an entrepreneur and personal development nut over 20+ years, totally free on my blog and YouTube channel.

I wrote hundreds of blog posts and released dozens of free videos.

By October, however, I had come to the realization that even though most people criticize coaches and mentors for not offering any of their advice for free to those who can’t afford to pay for coaching / mentoring, VERY FEW people out there actually value and utilize that advice, when offered to them for free.

This became even more apparent to me on multiple occasions when I was asked for advice on certain questions from someone who was a paid coaching client, and I had already answered that exact same question not even a week prior to that on my Blog.

Even when I would send them a link to a blog or video I recorded which answered their question exactly, they didn’t read it or watch the video – they would rather pay me and have me re-answer it or re-explain it to them on the phone and only then they would value the advice and take action on it.

I also started looking at the track records of my students who I had previously mentored one-on-one, and had now shifted over to giving them an abundance of awesome content, totally free on my blog, and it was completely obvious that they weren’t putting any of that advice into action.

This was one of the primary reasons I decided to put my blogging on hold, as the amount of time and energy I was putting into it was incredibly disproportionate to the amount of value people were actually willing to take from that content.

What I decided to test out and re-focus my energy towards was a different strategy.

Instead of trying to teach people what to do, how and why to do it, I decided to just start applying what I know works as an entrepreneur into starting and building a totally brand new business, part time.

The new business I started is in the tabletop gaming niche, a hobby that I’m becoming very passionate about, and so I re-launched an old blog I had called TabletopGamer.com and also launched a new ecommerce store at TabletopGamerStore.com.

I figured that by applying what I know about personal development, entrepreneurship and marketing to an actual project, I could teach people to be successful using a strategy that Abraham/Hicks beautifully summarized in this quote:

“Teach through the clarity of your example.” ~  Abraham/Hicks

Meaning, instead of trying to TELL people what to do and how to do it, instead I’ve been simply focusing on SHOWING them what I’m doing and using that as a tool to stretch their imagination, their beliefs and to hopefully inspire them to do something similar in their lives as well.

Shifting my focus to teaching in this way has had a HUGE shift on my life.

It is SO much easier to just go out there and DO what I know how to do, and to just produce results myself and then have my example be the teacher instead of me trying to teach what to do and how to do it.

Of course in hindsight this makes total sense.

Our world is becoming more and more inundated with an over-abundance of information, and so people are paying attention less and less to information until you show results, and even then they derive more inspiration from just watching you DO something, than from you teaching them what you’re doing.

So that is what I’ve been mainly focusing on.

My Tabletop Gamer business has taken off to a great start, generating sales almost immediately after I started applying some of my ninja marketing strategies and in February of this year I launched my first ever Kickstarter campaign for a new line of tabletop terrain I had designed.

It was a small, very specialized project which I had only expected to sell about $1000 – $1500 worth of terrain through, but I was very excited to see the campaign hit over $17,000 in orders in 30 days.

The project did so well that I am actually still in the process of producing all the tabletop terrain to fill all the orders that came in right now as I write this post.

So for anyone looking for an example and some inspiration for making money online with your own business, just follow along with my TabletopGamer.com blog and see what I’m up to there and then just apply it to whatever niche you’re passionate about.

Which now brings me to this Blog, and why I decided to write THIS blog post today.

The Future of FreeYouNow.com

With my tabletop business being there for anyone who wants inspiration or an example of how to build an online business part time, I’ve been thinking about what direction I want to take this blog.

What I’ve decided to do is to re-focus the direction of FreeYouNow.com to be more of a personal development and fitness blog.

I’ve just recently started a new weight loss and fitness plan, and this gives me the perfect opportunity to once again teach through the clarity of my example, by sharing the successes and failures I experience on my path towards getting fit and healthy.

I’ve already been learning some awesome new things that I’ve never talked about or shared in blog posts or videos before, which I’m hoping to share in future blog posts and to mainly focus on just going through my journey towards health and fitness and maybe hopefully inspiring someone else to take on that same journey in their lives as well.

So stay tuned, I’ll be blogging about my new fitness and health journey very soon.

Paul

How to Engage Your Inner Storyteller to Make Your Dreams Come True

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Inside your mind lives a storyteller.

This storyteller can either be a HUGE asset to helping your dreams come true, or it can be a HUGE demotivating force in your life.

We all have one of these little storytellers inside our minds.  The only difference is that some people’s inner storytellers inspire, motivate and encourage them to do great things and achieve their dreams in life, while others have an inner storyteller that demotivates, distracts and destroys their dreams.

Let me explain.

About two months ago I connected to a dream I once had for building a business in the tabletop gaming niche.

About ten years ago I walked into a gaming store and saw a display case with some painted tabletop miniatures and was completely mesmerized by how awesome they looked.

Shortly after that my wife bought me a starter set to paint, and I was hooked.

Since that day I’ve dreamed of building some sort of business in this niche market, and have been doing research on and off for years.

Back in 2011 I started a blog called TabletopGamer.com, and my first idea was to start an online store selling Warhammer miniatures from Games Workshop, who is the biggest name in tabletop gaming.

Unfortunately around that same time Games Workshop changed their policies, effectively completely shutting down all relationships with any online retailers of their products.

They made the decision to only sell their products on their own website, and at physical local gaming shops who are not allowed to sell any of their products online either.

Around the same time, one of my other businesses went through a rapid expansion so I had to put my TabletopGamer.com website / project on hold, while I focused on my growing business.

It is now four years later, and I’ve re-launched my TabletopGamer.com blog a few months ago, and this time around I have a dream of creating my own line of tabletop products.

So how does the “inner storyteller” relate to this?

Well, when I was trying to make the decision to get into the business of producing and marketing products in the tabletop gaming niche, I did a tonne of research trying to find a line of products that I would enjoy creating and selling, and which would also be useful and wanted in the marketplace.

Once I had an idea of the types of products I wanted to create I had to figure out how I would go about designing and manufacturing those products.

In order to get setup with the resources I needed to get into designing, manufacturing and selling those products I had to setup a workshop for myself to be able to do it in.

I chose to setup the workshop at home, and that required me to do some renovations on a workshop that I have in my home that I haven’t used since I moved here eight years ago.

For the workshop to work for my needs it needed to be completely gutted to the bare bones framing and re-built from scratch with new insulation, drywall, etc.

I knew that doing a reno like that wasn’t going to be easy, but I was excited to make this project work.

This is when I really started to notice my “Inner Storyteller” coming to my aid.

Essentially I broke down the project into individual steps and one of the first steps was to clean out the workshop room, and to get it ready to be gutted.

When I thought about doing this first step, my inner storyteller started saying things like “Well, once you get that room cleaned up, the rest of the stuff will be easy…”

So I got the room cleaned out and then I sat down to plan the next step.

The next step involved ripping apart and completely gutting the room, which required ordering a garbage bin, taking down an old workbench that was in the workshop, and ripping down all the walls, ceiling and insulation etc.

Again, my inner storyteller starting saying things like “Well, once you get that room gutted, and all the garbage and stuff out, the rest of the project should be pretty easy…”

So, with the help of my friend Jabeel and a few other family members that came out to help with the project, I started gutting the room.

It wasn’t an easy job, but we got it done and I noticed something interesting…

… when we finished doing that step, I noticed that a few of us would say something like “Well, that wasn’t easy, but at least now the hard part is done….”

Again that was our inner storyteller talking.

So then I started on the next part of the project which involved clearing out a whole bunch of other garbage I had laying around my property from previous renovations and landscaping work I did over the last eight years.

I had ordered a huge 40 yard garbage bin, so I figured it was the perfect opportunity to get that garbage off my property while I had the bin there.

So for the next week or so I spent time hauling garbage from around my property into the garbage bin.

I live on acreage, so there was quite a bit of landscaping garbage that had piled up over the years from things like some old wooden fencing that I took down a few years ago, a bathroom reno we did a few years ago etc.

All in all we filled up the entire bin full of reno garbage, yard waste and landscaping garbage.  The total weight on it was 3 tonnes!

That was NOT easy, physically speaking… hauling that much garbage into that bin.

But here’s the interesting thing…

… once we completed that step and the garbage bin got picked up and taken away, we once again said “Well, that wasn’t easy, but at least the hard part is done now….”

🙂

Starting to notice a pattern?   AGAIN our inside storyteller told us a story.

The story it was telling us was “Hey, the hard work is done…everything from now on will be easier, so just keep going…”

The project required MANY more steps to get my new workshop fully renovated.

At each step in the process the interesting thing is that my inner storyteller kept telling me “Ohp, well… the hard part is now done…keep going…”

I noticed this and realized that this inner storyteller has been inside my head all of my life – TELLING STORIES!

I say “STORIES” because what it tells me is neither true, nor a lie.  It’s actually both truth and fiction, intermixed into one… which is why I like calling it a story.

YOU have an inside storyteller inside your head as well.

We all do.

Since I’ve become aware of this little inside storyteller, I’ve started to really pay attention to what other people say and it has become really clear to me that each of us has a different storyteller.

Some people have a storyteller that tells them things which motivate and inspire them, and other people have storytellers which demotivate them or cast doubt in their minds.

See, nothing our inner storytellers tell us is actually true.  It’s just a story.

That story can HELP us to make our dreams come true, or it can HURT us by creating doubt and demotivating us.

The truth is that none of the things my inner storyteller was telling me was the truth.

Meaning, when I was working on the first step in my project of clearing out the stuff inside my old workshop, when I completed that step my inner storyteller told me “The hard part is done.”

This helped me to stay motivated and to tackle the next step.

But was it really true?

Was the “hard part” really done?

Not really… the hard part hadn’t even begun.

Hauling 3 tonnes of garbage into a bin was harder work than cleaning out the workshop.

And when that part was done, my inner storyteller again said “oh well, the hard part is done.”

Was that true?

No, not really…

In the grand scheme of building an online business there will be a LOT of steps, challenges and situations I will have to go through before my business becomes successful.

Even though I’ve already put in a LOT of work to get this project off the ground, in the overall scheme of things I’m just getting started…

… so the truth is that the “hard part” is NOT done.  It’s not even close to being done.

I’ve built businesses from scratch to millions of dollars in sales numerous times in the past, so I know how much work it takes.

BUT… here’s my point…

The whole time, as I’m working on the current step I’m working on, my inner storyteller is keeping me motivated by telling me these little stories, saying things inside my head like “oh well, at least the hard part is done….”

You have an inner storyteller inside your head as well… and it’s telling you stories ALL THE TIME about everything.

I’ve been really paying attention to this with other people as well as with myself and it’s really fascinating how we all tell ourselves stories.

You see, as we go through life, we are almost always acting and thinking based on incomplete information.

Our senses only allow us to perceive less than 1% of what is really going on in “reality”, and the rest we fill in with our inner storytellers.

Yesterday, for example, was the Canadian federal election and I was trying to decide what time would be best for me to go and vote.

My inner storyteller said “Go around 2pm.  Around that time it’ll be the least busy with the people who went to vote at lunch time already gone, and the people who come after 3pm not there yet.”

So I went and voted around 2:30pm and it wasn’t busy at all.

But was that REALLY the least busy time in the day to go vote?  I have no idea.

My wife’s story teller told her “Go first thing in the morning…” so she went and voted first thing in the morning.

Was that the best time to vote?  Who knows.

We all go throughout our lives mostly living in a reality where we perceive only 1% of what is really real, and the other 99% we make up as a STORY inside our heads.

When some people look at a potential business model, and they see no competition they think “Oh man, there’s no competition!  This is awesome.  I’m going to make a lot of money!!!”

Others think “There’s no competition, which means nobody is doing this, which means there’s no money to be made here.”

When some people see a young man driving a Ferrari they think “Wow, that guy must be really smart!  Probably an entrepreneur.” while others instantly think “Must be nice to have rich parents…” while others yet think “Must be a drug dealer.”

The truth is we have no idea HOW that young man is able to afford that car.  It could be a rental for all we know.  We have no idea, but we make up these STORIES inside our heads, and then we convince ourselves that they are true… because it “makes sense”.

But in reality, we are all going around telling ourselves STORIES which are not really true… at the very least they’re inaccurate.

We all do this.

We can’t really ever know what is really true, nor would it be practical to live our lives trying to know the truth about everything, all the time.

We use these stories inside our heads as shortcuts, to navigate the reality we live in.

When we walk into a BestBuy store and we see a young guy or girl wearing dress pants, a dress shirt, and a tie walking towards us, we think “Oh, they must work here…”

Why?  Because most people who work at BestBuy dress that way.  But that doesn’t mean it’s true.

I was once at a BestBuy wearing a shirt and tie, looking to buy something, and a woman walked up and starting asking me all these questions about some product they had.

I quickly realized she made the assumption that I worked there – LOL.

HER inner storyteller told her a story.

Our inner storytellers are always telling us stories, and most often they’re not even really true.

So the real question is this…

If our inner storytellers are going to be telling us stories, all of our lives, and those stories are not going to be completely accurate no matter what we do, how can we use this to our advantage?

Well, we can start to PROGRAM our storytellers to tell us stories that INSPIRE and MOTIVATE us towards our dreams.

When I had to do my workshop renovation, and my inner storyteller said to me “Well, at least the hard part is done…”  it was telling me a story.

That story inspired and motivated me to keep moving forward.

Other people have story tellers which in the same situation would tell them “Man, that was hard work…and it could get even harder…what if this doesn’t work out?!”

And that type of story will create doubt and demotivate them from moving forward.

Start paying attention to your inner storyteller.  What’s it telling you?

Is it saying something that will inspire and motivate you, or is it casting doubt and demotivating you?

Either way it’s just a story.

Either way it’s not going to be 100% accurate.

However, one story will help you to reach for your dreams and to make them come true, while the other story will destroy your dreams.

It’s your choice.

This storyteller works for you.  It’s inside YOUR mind.  You have FULL control over it

You just have to become aware of it first, and then start to make choices where the only stories you listen to are those that are motivating you towards your dreams.

Pay attention to people who have already achieved what you want to achieve.  What kind of stories do they tell themselves?

You’ll notice that people who make their dreams come true, and who achieve great things in their lives are masters at telling stories…

Not to the world, but masters at telling stories inside their heads.

They’ve engaged their inner storyteller to be a force of positive, motivational, inspiration power for them, while those who fail use the same inner storyteller as a force for creating inner doubt, inner conflict and inner demotivation.

I’ve been using my inner storyteller to keep me motivated, and now my workshop is done, and I’ve just finished putting together my first prototype terrain piece for the tabletop miniature gaming.

It’s a little house / hut, designed from scratch and laser cut from 3mm MDF, which will be part of a whole village set I’m working on for 28mm miniature wargaming games which are set in medieval times.

Here’s a picture of my prototype:

wargaming terrainIt even features a little outhouse. 🙂

I’m very happy with how quickly I’ve been able to get my workshop done and to finally get my prototypes produced.

It would have never happened if my inner story teller was a “Negative Nelly” always casting doubt and demotivating me from moving forward when things get tough.

What’s your “inner story” teller doing for you?

How to Stop Manifesting Needless Struggle in Your Life

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One of the sneakiest little “mind viruses” that MANY people suffer from is the addiction to manifesting needless struggle in their lives.

To some degree we all suffer from this.

Some people more than others.

I know I’ve done this to myself many times in the past, and it wasn’t until I became aware of what I was doing to myself that I finally stopped manifesting this pointless, needless need for struggle.

Let me explain what I mean by this.

Have you ever been at a party with a bunch of friends you haven’t seen for a while, just catching up on what’s new with people, and someone asks someone about a trip they went on recently…

… and then that person says something along the lines of “Oh-ma-Gawd, did you hear what happened to us?!” …

… and then they proceed to tell a tale that sounds a little bit like this…

“Okay, so you won’t believe what happened.  Here we were, on our first trip to Mexico.  It all started when on our way to the airport George realized that he had forgotten his passport, and we were already half way to the airport, so we had to turn around and head all the way back.

But then, as we’re heading back home, we catch a flat tire so we have to pull over to change the tire – right?  And THEN, we realize that the spare tire in the back is FLAT as well!

So then, we start freaking out, and then George starts flagging down cars as they’re driving by, to see if we could catch a ride with someone, while I’m on the phone trying to reach anyone to see if someone could help us out – but nobody was available because everyone was at work.

So then George finally flags down this car and the guy agrees to give him a ride home and back for $50!  So he catches a ride with this guy, goes home, grabs his passport, and also the spare tire from MY car which was parked in the drive way.

He heads back TO the car, where I’m waiting for him, with all these people staring at us on the side of the road.  I was so embarrassed!

Then, George gets dropped off, we throw the spare on the car, and we proceed to the airport, but now instead of being 3 hours early for our flight, we’ve got 15 minutes before the flight leaves…”

… and as they’re telling you this story about their trip, the craziness continues!

All kinds of weird shit manifests, like the plane loses a wheel, the luggage gets lost, security requests a strip search, some lady at the airport spills her coffee on their luggage, aliens invade earth, World War III begins…

… and 45 minutes later the story finally ends with the people surviving the ordeal and making it home in one piece…

Have you ever heard one of these stories?

Have you ever TOLD one of these stories to people?

Do you know what I’m talking about?

For some people, every DAY is one of these crazy stories where all kinds of weird shit happens to them that is just totally out of this world, and in the end they always end up victorious!

They emerge as the HERO of the day, not letting life take them down!

And each time this happens, they LOVE telling everyone their newest “STORY”.

You want to know my latest story?

I’ll tell you.

I went out for dinner with my wife today.  We went to a restaurant, had a nice meal, then went to the mall where I found the exact shirts I was looking for and got a $20 discount without asking for it.

Then on the way home I realized I had to get gas, found a gas station really easily, got gas at a good price, and stopped for ice cream at Menchies and it was delicious.

The End!

THAT is how life SHOULD BE – simple, and in the effortless FLOW of the Universe.

THOSE are the stories you should be telling, and THOSE are the stories you should be applauding…

… not all the stories of STRUGGLE and “Oh Ma Gawd you won’t believe ALL the things that went wrong for me today” type of stories.

The more stories of struggle you tell everyone, the MORE struggle you manifest in your life.

The reason why is because you’re addicted to the feeling of being this self-created HERO in your stories of struggle.

You manifest all kinds of stupid unnecessary shit in your life, just so that you can find crazy ways to overcome it, and so that later you can tell everyone who’s willing to listen what a HERO you are for overcoming that crap.

We’ve all done it.

I know I’ve done it in the past.

Once I became aware of this, however, I started to realize that I don’t NEED that anymore.

I don’t NEED to be this “Hero” who first manifested a bunch of stupid shit, just so that later he could overcome it and “save the day” in my own life.

It’s SO MUCH more fun living life in the flow of ease and simplicity and without the need for constant struggle.

Pause for a moment and think about the last time you got together with some friends at a party or some get-together.

Was there someone there who told a story of great struggle and how they overcame it?

BINGO!  That’s the example I’m referring to!

Maybe it was even YOU!

If you were the one telling your story of recent struggle, guess what you were doing while telling the story?

You were sending a message out to the Universe basically saying “Universe, I want you to send me MORE of this struggle that I recently had.  I want you to send me more and more struggle so that I can find ways to overcome it and so that I can keep telling these crazy stories to my friends and so that I can keep looking like a HERO in front of them.  Send more struggle!  Send more struggle!”

THAT is what you’re communicating to the Universe.

And by the Law of Attraction THAT is exactly what you’re going to manifest more of…. because its the LAW!

You cannot be telling your stories of struggle and woe, and swimming around in that vibration of struggle in your imagination as you tell the story, and NOT manifest more struggle.

You also can’t be listening to people tell their stories of struggle and engrossing yourself in their stories without attracting a little bit more struggle into your life as well.

This is why it’s important to try to stay away from that kind of drama and struggle.

It’s totally fine to listen to someone’s INSPIRING story where they share some initial struggles they may have gone through in their life when that same story is then filled with 90% – 95% POSITIVE and INSPIRING things that happened to them after that.

A story like that will HELP you in your life because while you’re listening to it, you’ll be engrossing yourself in the vibration of INSPIRATION and POSITIVITY 90% – 95% of the time.

But if the stories you’re listening to and telling people are 90% – 95% filled with nothing but struggle, you’re just going to manifest MORE of that struggle in your life.

Try this…

… try going on a “Struggle Story Fast” for 90 days…

… for the next 90 days, make a commitment to yourself to NOT LISTEN to people telling you stories of struggle…

… the minute you hear someone start telling you a story of struggle, about the crazy weird stuff that happened to them recently, just interrupt them and find a way to get out of that situation…

… and also, for the next 90 days don’t TELL any stories of struggle yourself either…

Crazy stuff MAY happen to you.  You may go through some struggles that you manifested.  And that’s okay.

But you don’t need to TELL stories about it afterwards.

Just get through it, write about it in your journal if you want to, but then don’t tell anyone else about your struggles.

Stop trying to impress people with your stories of struggles and how you are this HERO who overcomes all the odds.

YOU’RE the one manifesting the struggle in your life because we all manifest 100% of everything in our reality, so all struggle is self-manifested.

So if that’s true, what kind of HERO do you really think you’re convincing people that you are by telling your stories of struggle?

Everyone you THINK you’re impressing with your HERO stories is just thinking “You manifested that yourself in your life you idiot!” … so they’re not impressed anyways.

Just for the next 90 days, don’t tell any stories like these.

Instead, start telling stories of EASE and SIMPLICITY and manifesting FLOW in your life.

Tell those stories to yourself, and if anyone asks you how things are going, tell them your stories of ease.

Most likely they probably won’t be too interested, as most people PREFER to listen to stories of “weird shit” and “drama” and “holy crap you won’t believe what happened to me”, but that’s okay…

… you don’t need your life to be a source of drama like that…

If you want drama, go see a movie or something. 🙂

Try this out for 90 days and notice how things in your life start to shift.

You may start to notice very quickly that things start to flow for you much more easily and with more simplicity.

It really is magical if that is what you CHOOSE to CREATE in your life.

3 Reasons Blogging is Better For Lightworkers Than Posting on Facebook

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One of the more common reasons that people say that they don’t want to start a Blog is because they say they don’t have the time.

We all have busy schedules and lives, and I totally understand the time commitment required to blog on a regular basis.

However, I often find that the very people who say that they don’t have time to Blog, are constantly posting and sharing pictures, videos, and writing multiple-paragraph posts on Facebook.

This is especially true for Lightworkers – people who have a desire to positively impact our planet.

Most Lightworkers I meet have a message inside them, and they desire to share that message with as many people as possible to impact their lives in a positive way.

A Blog is an awesome outlet for that with many benefits.

Most Lightworkers who don’t have a Blog though, will often put in a lot of time posting positive things on Facebook and sharing them with people.

They feel that deep desire to share and help people, and they try to use Facebook as a platform for that.

Here’s why that is NOT a good idea, and why starting a Blog is MUCH better.

#1 – Blog Posts Can Grab Attention Better

The truth is that when someone posts a paragraph or multiple-paragraphs of text on Facebook as their status update, trying to share a positive message with people, most people will simply ignore and scroll right past that status update.

People on Facebook are more and more becoming conditioned to just keep scrolling and scrolling and to quickly look at pictures, or perhaps a video that grabs their attention, but any amount of text beyond a few words usually gets ignored.

If you take your message and convert it into a Blog post (just like this one), and you share that blog post on Facebook, there is a much higher chance that someone on Facebook will actually read it because you can write a headline which grabs someone’s attention and include a picture as well.

Once someone reads the headline and sees the picture you posted with your Blog post, if they are interested in reading it, they will click through to you Blog and read the actual article ON your Blog where they are much less likely to get distracted by Facebook.

This means that the hard work you put into sharing your positive message is much more likely to be seen by your Facebook friends, simply by taking the content you were already going to be creating for Facebook and making a Blog post out of it.

#2 – Facebook Posts Have a VERY Short Lifespan

When you write a post on Facebook, not only is a very tiny percentage of your audience actually exposed to it, but also that message has a VERY short lifespan.

A Facebook message is usually posted, and shows up in some of your friend’s timelines, and sometimes just a few minutes later it disappears forever.

Of course people can go to your Facebook profile page and scroll through your posts to try to find an older post you posted, but very few people actually do that.

The majority of people on Facebook can barely keep up with their own Facebook wall, so they’ll usually never bother trying to dig through your posts to see if they find something interesting.

The truth is that once you post something on Facebook, it has a very short and limited lifespan, and then that message is gone.

Contrast that with writing a Blog post.

Once you write and publish a Blog post, which only takes a few extra minutes as compared to posting the same content on Facebook, that Blog post can live on the Internet forever!

For example, this Blog post and the hundreds of posts I’ve written on this Blog are indexed into the Google search engine and can potentially be found by people at any time, any day, anywhere in the world.

I have people visiting my Blog and reading Blog posts that I had written months or years ago.

Every Blog post that I write has the potential to positively influence someone at any time, anywhere in the world.

In fact, since there are a lot of Internet archives sites which store public date from the Internet, it’s entirely possible that people might still be reading my Blog posts hundreds of years from now.

Imagine writing a positive Blog posts and having your great, great, great, great grandchildren reading it a few hundred years from now.

How cool would it be if YOU could read stuff that was written a few hundred years ago by one of your ancestors?

That’s entirely possible with Blogging today, but I really doubt anything you write on Facebook will survive that long since it’s hard to even find something that was posted on Facebook a few days ago!

#3 – Blog Post are Indexed by Google and Searchable Beyond Your Friends List

When you write a Blog post, Google will index your Blog post and it’s possible for people all around the planet to find your content.

So if you share something positive, it’s possible for ANYONE on the planet to benefit from that message.

When you post a post on Facebook, only a small group of people are exposed that message for a short period of time and then it disappears.

As a Lightworker, any time and energy you put into sharing a positive message in a Blog post can help an exponentially higher number of people than posting the same message on Facebook.

As an example, here’s a map of the world showing which countries in the world have had people visit my Blog.

Any country in blue has had some visitors to my Blog.  As you can see, besides a few countries I’ve had visitors from almost every country on the planet!

And this is just since the beginning of this year.

Your content simply won’t get that kind of exposure from your Facebook post updates unless you have a massive Fan page setup with tens of thousands of followers.

 

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There are just a few of the reasons why Blogging is so much better than posting to your Facebook wall.

I’m not saying that every Facebook update post is worthy of a Blog post, but from what I’ve seen from people who are Lightworkers, a LOT of the stuff that they write on their wall could easily be turned into a Blog post with just a little bit more effort and produce a LOT more benefit for the world AND to the person writing the content.

If you’d like to get started as a Blogger using the ultra-easy and highly-effective blogging platform – Kalatu – click here to get started.