The Motivational Triad can help you create an “extra-ordinary” life….
I learned about the Motivational Triad from Master Coach, Brooke Castillo. It is a concept that puts into perspective how we have been living our lives and how we can change our lives for the better.
Is your life ordinary and you feel that ordinary isn’t enough for you? Are you living from your past or from your future thinking? Did you know that you can “deliberately change” the way you think in order to change your future?
Well, that is a lot, right? Let’s get started. The motivational triad, as explained by Brooke, is what human beings have been motivated to do in order to survive. What does that mean you might ask….., we as humans have evolved to survive in this way, 1) to seek pleasure, 2) to avoid pain and 3) to exert the least amount of effort.
When we seek pleasure, we survive. Some of the pleasures that we seek include connection with other people, food, sex and other things that help make us feel good and help us survive in this world.
We avoid pain. We try to keep ourselves away from things that hurt us. We protect ourselves from any kind of emotional pain. We have felt like this is the way to live and be happy, but pain is built into the human experience as a way of survival.
We exert the least amount of effort, in most circumstances, as a way to stay alive and to be happy.
Again, we are designed and we are evolved to seek pleasure, to avoid pain, and to exert the least amount of effort as possible. This is what has gotten us to this point but that exact motivational triad that we've evolved to is the exact problem that we are going to have when it comes to moving into our futures because all of the things that got us here are the exact opposite of what are going to get us to the next stage in our lives.
So, in a nutshell, you are looking to your past to create your future, which as I just explained in the triad, is the problem. This causes a sense of dissatisfaction with your life. That desire for something more, that desire to go into the next version of yourself becomes totally misdirected. We buy more things, which doesn't seem to solve it. We overeat more food, which doesn't seem to solve it and we over-drink or overplay. This is what is called BUFFERING. As humans, we have learned how to buffer as a way to survive. Buffering is avoidance, which means we are avoiding any kind of pain or discomfort and instead of dealing with those things we buffer them. Since our brains have evolved to avoid pain by buffering, we end up seeking pleasure to avoid pain, which puts us into survival mode. [Buffering to avoid Suffering].
What is the solution….? The solution is to put effort, the exact opposite of the motivational triad, into changing those neuropathways in your brain. We need to do the opposite of what the old motivational triad was and ON PURPOSE, create a new motivation. Pave some new pathways for your brain. Our brains are very efficient. That is your brain’s job, to be efficient and remember. Give it a new thought to use and memorize. We must give up that immediate pleasure for the long-term pleasure, the exact opposite of what we've evolved ourselves to do.
* You are going to let the normal pleasures of life, instead of the artificial pleasures of life, grab your attention.
* You are going to be willing to move toward the discomfort.
* You are going to be willing to take massive action toward your future to get the positive results in your life.
You need to deliberately change the way you are thinking now and the way your “past thinking” has been to a new thought and a new plan. It takes practice and effort, which we are not used to doing, but is essential to our new survival plan.
I can help you start this process.
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