I WANT to Stop Being Busy, So Why Am I Not Doing It?

Did you know that us human being are motivated by 3 things? Do you know what those 3 things are? I'm gonna tell you. 

Do you get frustrated with yourself because you can't stop putting more on your plate than you can manage, or you manage it all but you feel completely burnt out. Let's put a stop to the dread you keep feeling about how busy and stressed you feel year after year? You need to understand the motivational triad. 

Lisle and Goldhamer, and more recently my teacher Brooke Castillo, talk about something called The Motivational Triad. As biological beings we have been wired through the centuries to be motivated by 3 things: (1) Seek pleasure, (2) Avoid pain, and (3) Exert the least amount of effort.

The Motivational Triad.png

This means for us busyaholics, the path of least effort, is to continue being busy. I know what you're thinking, "but being so busy doesn't feel good." Yes, but it is familiar. Anything that takes effort (think anything unfamiliar), if we’re on cruise control, is not gonna happen naturally. We're tired of being busy, but our brains are familiar with and conditioned for, busyness because that’s what we’ve trained it to do for years.

It’s going to take effort and energy to create something different.

It’s a habit now, and our brain is not going to want to expend that effort, it’s busy conserving our energy remember? So we can’t wait for our biological self to “want to.”

We have to choose to exert effort and change that behavior.

I laugh when my mentors or I say, “hey it’s not your fault...” your brain operates from these motivations-- because it's so true. You may know this, if you have read anything on new brain research.

"Cool, it's not my fault, now I can stop beating myself up and get to understanding how I can get less busy now."

Understand this, we are wired to do this. As a species. To survive. In today’s world, for the most part, we don’t need to stay alert for saber tooth tigers, eat food when we can get it, conserve our energy in case it’s needed for an emergency. Brooke doesn’t stop there though, she also teaches that in order to evolve we must change our motivation. And of course, this requires, yes, effort.  As a peer of mine says….

If you want to change, you’re going to have to work for it, because your default settings are not going to get you there.

Change takes effort. It requires us to proactively act differently than our auto-pilot wants to lead us, and so it requires awareness and choice.

When you begin to operate in awareness of the Motivational Triad, your biological pre-sets, you empower yourself to change, because you empower yourself to choose differently.

Can you see that if we continue to operate the way we always have, believing what we’ve always believed, not believing what we don’t believe, all that is possible for us is to create more of the same? The same results we’ve created in our past. But, there is SO MUCH MORE!

What’s between you and that “more” is choosing and effort.

I wish I could tell you it doesn’t take work, but it does. But, here’s the deal, the pay-off down the road of that effort is so huge because you begin to create a whole new experience of your life. Yes it takes work, and yes it takes time and, absolutely yes, I’m telling you the effort, the exploring, the practice is worth it!

Your path to a life without busyness does not lay in your past behaviors.

That’s what got you there. Working hard and choosing differently and staying committed, eventually, a powerful and doable schedule will become no effort at all. But first, you have to practice it enough, for it to become habit.

My blog is filled with lots of tools and teachings designed to help you on this journey.