Hello. Luke Michael Howard, clinical hypnotist and owner of Lukenosis Hypnosis here today with a whiteboard. Yes. I've caught up with the times. I'm going to make a whiteboard video today and it's all about motivation and why your motivation isn't where it needs to be and why motivation is shit and doesn't really work for us. So I'm going to draw a beautiful line on this board right now and I will tell you, I did fail art A levels, that's the English system at high school, if you will. So please do forgive my drawings.
So I'm going to draw a line on this whiteboard right there and this line, as straight as I can make it. And on one end of this line, I'm going to put a P. That means pain: physical, mental, emotional, whatever. On the other end, pleasure. So I'm going to put a PL for pleasure. I'm going to a put a PI for pain. That is total physical or emotional pain, trauma right down there. This is pleasure, this is what you'd want to get out of your life. Now, do forgive the lovely circle that's been reflected and see it as a holy circle there and use this as a special video if you will.
Okay. So let's say you have a problem. Let's say you are a smoker, for example, and you start off here, start off right in the middle. And then, you keep smoking, smoking, smoking, you start to have heart issues, your wife, your husband tells you you need to stop smoking or they're going to leave you, right? Your kids see you smoking, they're like, "Daddy, mommy, stop smoking." This is really, really bad. You have a COPD, you're all the way down there, you're about to have a heart attack. Massive amount of pain, right? You've got your motivation to quit smoking at that point.
So then what happens is you get further and further away from the pain, further and further away from the pain, further and further away from the pain, COPD sorted itself out, wife/husband staying with you, kids aren't bothering you anymore, and you're there, that's where you started. You're like, "Oh, okay. Oh, well maybe, I could try another cigarette right now because I'm not in any pain, you know. I'll be all right if I try another one."
So you go back down this journey again of, because you need to get your motivation, right? So you go down there again, you smoke, you smoke, you're breathing heavily, you get COPD, wife/husband's bothering you, parents are bothering you to quit smoking, your clothes smell really bad, when your partner kisses you, they taste it, your kids are seeing you doing it, you're feeling really guilty, you've realized you're spending four or five grand a year on cigarettes and you're all the way back at pain again. You're at that massive amount of pain. "Oh I'm ready to quit right now. I'm ready to quit right now. I've got all this pain in my life."
So then, you start the journey up again, COPD kind of works itself out, parents stop bothering you, partner's still not bothering you anymore because you're not smoking anymore, kids aren't seeing you again, then you lose your motivation. You have to do it again and again and again. You have this vicious cycle.
I'm talking about smoking now but it's the same things with weight loss. Use this for weight loss. You're gaining weight, you're 10 to 5 pounds overweight, 10 pounds overweight, 20 pounds overweight, 30 pounds overweight, 50 pounds overweight. Your wife or husband leaves you because you're too fat. You sweat when you tie up your shoe laces now, walking up the stairs. And you're so fat now you can't fit in your clothes anymore. You go to the airport, you get in an aeroplane, you can't fit in the seat anymore. You go to a theme park but they won't let you sit on the chair because you're fat. Spills over to other seat. You're in a massive amount of pain there.
You've got a massive amount of motivation to change it, to shift it. So you lose 5 pounds, 10 pounds, 20 pounds, 30 pounds, 40 pounds, you lose your 50 pounds. You're great. You get right back here and you're like, "Well I'm not...I guess, like, if I eat a little a bit more now, if I eat a bit more sugar and a bit more junk, it won't really matter because, you know, I've lost that weight." So you start eating more and more shit again, more and more shit, 5 pound, 10 pound, 20 pound gain, gain, 30 pound, 40 pound, 50 pound. So you're right back where you were at the beginning and now, you've got that hot poker in your butt, if you will, of pain.
You've got a massive amount of pain because your wife, your husband's leaving you, you can't fit in the airplane seat, you can't fit in the seat at the theme park, you can't fit into your own clothes anymore, you can't breathe properly, you're just sweating all of the time, you don't feel good about yourself, you've got no energy, can't sleep, can't ever get comfortable. You've got a massive amount of motivation now to change again. So that hot poker, that proverbial poker sticks up your butt and you get further away from the pain. Lose 5 pounds, 10 pounds, 20 pounds, 30 pounds, 40 pounds. You've lost the 50 pounds but you have to keep doing this loop over and over and over again to keep motivated.
Think of Oprah Winfrey. Gain 100 pounds, lose 100 pounds, gain 100 pounds, lose 100 pounds, gain 100 pounds, lose 100 pounds. It works with addictions as well. It works with addictions. Let's say you're an alcoholic. Insert your specific addiction here. And you're okay, drinking a bit too much but it gets to a point where you lose your car, you lose your job, perhaps you lose your children, you start to lose your mind, your license gets taken away from you, your driving license because you're driving while drunk, while impaired. You can't think straight for yourself, you're losing everything in your life, you hit rock bottom. You're at pain. You're right here, you're at pain, you're feeling a massive amount of pain for all those issues in your life.
Guess what? You've got some real motivation to change that. You've got that hot poker up your butt, you want to get to get your driving license back, you want to get your kids back, you want to get your job back, your wife back, your husband back. So you start to do whatever you need. Stop drinking. Stop drinking. You start to clean yourself out, feeling better and better. It's been 10 days, 20 days, 30 days, 40 days. You're like, I got this handled now. I've got this handled now. I can start drinking again. I've got my wife back, my husband back, my kids back, my driving license back, my job back.
I can handle a little bit of drink right now. Then it starts all over again. One drink, 2 drinks, 3 drinks, 4 drinks, 5 drinks, 6 drinks, 10 drinks. You lose your car, you lose your wife, your husband, your kids, your job and you start doing this vicious cycle again and again and again because that's what motivation is folks. It's transient. As soon as you achieve it, you're like, "Well I'm not motivated anymore." Like climbing to the top of Everest. Take all this time, effort to climb to the top. If you're not fulfilled, you get to the top and you're like, "Is this all there is? I thought the pearly gates were going to open for me. I thought there was going to be some chariot playing their rusty trombone for me. Is this it? Is this all that there is?"
It doesn't work. Well, it works short term and it's really, really effective for working short term. But long term, it doesn't work. This is pleasure. You're nowhere near pleasure. So as long as your motivation is about that, you stay trapped because that's what motivation is for most people. Getting away from pain. Because most people will do far more to get away from pain than they will to get to pleasure. What if we turn that on its head? What if we stopped you from doing that vicious cycle inside your mind with whatever your problem is? Whether it's an addiction, whether it's an emotion, whether it's a weight issue? Anxiety, depression, it's all the same loop over and over again. Ultimate pain.
So what about this? What about you get inspired instead of motivated? What if you stop focusing on, "When I lose that weight, I can gain all that weight back again and enjoy the meals." "Once I've got my car back and my wife back and my kids back, I can start enjoying a little tipple of drinking here and there." No. It doesn't work. You've got to get inspired. What do you want? Not what you don't want, what do you want?
See, in my life, I ended up having these problems. Weight was an example for me. I'd lose 50 pounds, gain 50 pounds, lose 50 pounds, gain 50 pounds, massive amount of pain, couldn't get girls to like me, couldn't be successful in my job because I wasn't walking my talk. So I did this loop over and over again but as soon as I got to here, I lost the motivation, gained all the weight back again in order for me to get motivated to lose it again. Vicious cycle, low level of living, low vibration of living. I was there. I know how it feels.
I know how it feels to be trapped in that fucking loop until one day, I'm like, "What if I focus my attention about what I wanted? Not, I just don't want to be a fat bastard anymore, but I want it to be sexy, I want it to be lean. Whatever it was. Call me conceited if you will, I don't really give a fuck." What if it was about me be in the best health I could possibly be? Be in the best kind of shape that I could be? Not just getting away to do enough to not be in a massive amount of pain. If I focused my attention on being sexy, on being lean, on having the kind of physique that I wanted to have. Because I knew that if I focused on what I wanted, I'd get more of it. If I focused on what I didn't want, I'd end up getting more of it and loop and loop and loop and I sit with my clients over and over and over again. This does not work long term folks.
It's great motivation to pull you out of the flaming pit in the moment for a few months but you will keep going back because that's how we motivate ourselves when it's about an away from pain. You've got to start motivating yourself. Actually, fuck motivation. You've got to start inspiring yourself. Motivation is transient. It comes, it goes. Inspiration's always there in the background. Like a screensaver on your computer. If you were to just stop for a moment, that screensaver would pop back up again.
Always Believe,
Luke Michael Howard CHT
Clinical Hypnotist
