Motivation… it is either a stick or a carrot…
And it is either an inside job, or an outside job.
I am more motivated, more nudged on to do a move, to do something, to make a change in behavior by the stick than by the carrot… the inside stick…
Most carrots promise you some goodies… goodies you don’t already have, or more of what you already have. But human preference is not in that direction. No matter how trapped you are in desire, wanting, being induced to doing anything for what you want is really rare, unless it is for instant gratification. 1
The stick promises to take something away.
Life, goodies, love, self-love, comforting lies about yourself. And that is the main motivation to take action for people. The threat, the “promise” of loss.
The question, “am I being weak?” is a stick question. Why? How? you may ask, because you may not be clear about what is a stick… and what is a carrot.
You probably resent being called weak, fear being considered weak, and prefer to avoid it… But, for the most part, not the action, not the behavior that suggests that you are weak… no, not that. You resent, fear, and therefore avoid the admission of it. The confronting it. The truth of it.
That, what comes after the “therefore” is what I call “sideways move”. The move that I wrote an article about yesterday. but I didn’t publish that article, because it came out dripping with disgust… and wasn’t palatable enough to read it. I am not very skilled at being a Mary Poppins: “A teaspoon of sugar and the medicine goes down, the medicine goes down, the medicine goes down…”
But the medicine is valid, the medicine is healing
…but unless you want to see it, want to take it, you’ll move out of the way, you’ll get all busy lying, justifying. You get huffy and puffy to avoid looking at the truth: you are, your behavior shows some things that you don’t like in yourself, and despise in others.
Like being weak. Being soft. Being cowardly. Being puny. Being powerless.
Weak is a self-image… it is a behavior that shows that you honor “weak” as your self. Sometimes it is closer to powerless, slow, stupid, puny, insignificant, unable to do anything right, unable to say the right thing, unable to do what is needed in the situation. Baah…
It is always a lie… and it is always an excuse: a sideways move out of reality.
In the “script” I ask you to follow in the partner calls, I ask you to say: There is nothing wrong in reality. Let me see what IS in reality?
So let’s do it together:
There is no weakness in reality, only refusing to do one thing, only doing something else.
Just like there is no trying in reality… trying is words to cover up that you are not doing. Just like “no matter what I do… I can’t blah-blah” is a lie. Or “I can’t” that is always a lie as well.
You are a liar. How is them for apples? lol
You prefer to lie to being measured, you prefer to lie rather than doing what you need to do to have what you want. Instead you’ll talk… or eat… or sleep… or play video games. Or complain, ugh. Look really sad. Crocodile tears. “Can’t you see Sophie that I am really trying but I just can’t!”
You Refuse To Be Cause
I ask you to want to look what this is exactly. If you are willing you’ll see that you refuse to be cause… To be at cause of your actions, at cause of your life. You refuse to be who you claim you want to be: powerful. You are full of crap… and that is the truth about you, that is the truth about the current humanity… the direction evolution has taken the species… soft, weak, preferring to be slaves than masters.
Even though the human DNA has the “rails” laid for a higher quality way of being, to become a creator like a god, the rails are rusting for non-use.
Am I shaming you? Yes, I am. Is it any useful? I am not sure.
When I ask myself: am I weak? I am shaming myself, and it works for me. I immediately start to do what takes some effort, what takes some courage, what I was avoiding, what prompted the question: am I weak?
Notice that I am not giving myself an escape route by asking “Am I BEING weak?” that would allow me to avoid the confrontation: yeah, but… not always… lying. Who you are is what you do regularly. Regularly demonstrated weakness says: you are weak… 2
Just a few minutes ago I was craving another cup of coffee, nothing wrong with that.
But I said, just minutes earlier: I won’t have another cup… so in that context, breaking my word is a sign of weakness… and I don’t want to be weak. For myself. It is something I don’t want to be. So I sat back, and continued writing the article. And had some energized water instead.
The urge hasn’t gone away. I have won over the urge, for now. It will tempt me all morning, I am sure. And I will use it. I will use it to increase my self-trust: one of the most important capacities to activate.
OK… this is 4-5 hours later… and the technique worked: I kept my word.
OK, this is two days later… and I have kept my word. I will develop this muscle by tracking it.
By the way, this is how you learn new skills. Saying no to an urge is a skill.
Most of you never have done it. You deflect responsibility to some rule, but not take responsibility that you are causing your word to be law. For yourself. For integrity. For increasing your personal authority. For becoming more of who you were meant to become.
If you have “rules” in your life, you probably have NO personal authority. You have rules, and you probably break them, but you never consider that you are a weakling, a cheater, a liar, a “never do well” puny thing… that should not call themselves a person.
How did that feel? Bad? Good.
It didn’t feel bad? You are past being able to change.
“The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.”
But here is the “trick”…
Just like with the two wolves that live inside you: the one you feed wins in the end… you can start building new habits… and feed them.
Of course, if tedious, slow irks you, then probably you won’t… If you are an excitement seeker, then you probably won’t. If you love drama… then you probably won’t. If you love to win every time… then you probably won’t. If you consider everything an attack… you probably won’t.
Yesterday I muscletested every one of my students. The question was: How much energy (Life Force) do they have to do the work, to create new habits, to face the habitual ways of being and not move sideways? To face the tiger…
It seems that the more you are trying to protect your self-image, the less energy you have to grow, to live, to produce, to live life.
It’s a snapshot… To what degree you are about protecting your self-image right now, and are unwilling to look the “tiger” in the eye.
My own numbers are not on the chart. My about-me score is 10%. My Life-Force, aka my willingness to be my Word, is 70%. Not so hot… but with this new habit about the coffee it may go up… eventually. It IS a long process. I have patience. Do you?
- Here are a few things to read if you are interested in addictive pleasure seeking behavior:
addicted-brain pdf
Atomic habits… a book 
Observe that the meme with the quote from Aristotle doesn’t talk about weakness… it talks about something positive… therefore it strengthens your “carrot” illusion, but makes absolutely no difference. It allows for a sideways move.It would be funny if it were funny… It isn’t. It is alarming, scary, and sad. But proves my point. You, we, humanity, are liars… to make ourselves feel good… And then we don’t love ourselves, because lying does that to you. Whether you lie to another person or to yourself won’t matter at all.
interesting take, Baheej. The dictionary defines authority as “the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience.”
When it comes to all that: the recipient can be yourself… You can set consequences of no compliance… I do. for myself. The more personal authority I have the more compliance…
Yeah, I think you do write the law… wow. thank you for that Baheej.
This thing about rules and whatnot…hmmm…so, I have been allowing the rules to be law instead of my word. It, probably, is easier to break a rule. Personal “AUTHOR”ity= I write the law with my word or perhaps this is close to what it means.