Jun 26

Jun 26 Motivation and Getting Unstuck: Build Your Secret Weapons

I’ve learned it’s not enough to focus on what I trust, what I identify as my core values. I need to also be afraid of the opposite coming true. This means visualizing the negative and actually admitting that although it is a worst-case scenario, it is possible. This is how I ensure the things I don’t want to believe or happen don’t creep in without me noticing very often. I am watchful without obsessing over the negative. I use my fears, the bad what ifs, to motivate me.

Ask yourself these questions and write your answers in your notebook:

What will happen if I don’t complete the steps in this book, or start following some sort of a “Create, Launch, Learn, Repeat” system?

Who will suffer?

How will they suffer?

How will I feel one year from now if I don’t grow my community?

Motivation and getting unstuck

Stefi Cohen is a 25x world-record-holding powerlifter and the first woman in the history of the sport to deadlift 4.4x her body weight. She is a doctor of physical therapy and author with over one million Instagram followers who passionately educates people with her NO BS, evidence-based view on all things training and nutrition. She recently said some very valuable things on the topic of motivation and getting unstuck on my all-time favourite podcast, the Tim Ferriss Show, Episode #491.

Stefi seriously injured her lower back and rather than addressing it and backing out of a big competition to take the necessary time to recover, she took pain killers, cranked her belt tighter and kept pushing her injured body. Ultimately she bombed at the US Open and was psychologically beat up after the embarrassing public failure. That was her wake up call. She was ready to fix it and stop the constant pain. Her quest for figuring out lower back injuries led her to doing tons of research and eventually writing a book about it. She also began working with a sports psychologist and throughout the next year learned how to visualize the good and the bad. She would spend a lot of time visualizing getting out of bed, putting on her training shoes, driving to the gym, putting chalk on her hands, standing over the bar and executing those record-breaking lifts she knew she was capable of.

The one thing she began to do with the help of her sports psychologist was something she had never done before: prepare herself for the worst case scenario, or as Tim Ferriss calls it, fear setting.

If you haven’t heard of fear setting, I’ll bring you up to speed on why this is a valuable tool you MUST HAVE in your toolbox as you grow and connect your community. Fear setting is imagining every minute detail of a worst case scenario coming true. For example, someone comments below a post that your new book or course sucks or that half of it is plagiarized. Another example would be having a big ticket client, thousands of dollars and a priceless client success story, back out at the last minute or ask for her money back. Or you hold an event and no one shows up. What will you do? How will you feel? How will you get moving forward again? Fear Setting is about creating systems and preventative measures to minimize the chance of something bad happening and then accepting that if it does happen, it will not kill you, your career will not end, your business and reputation will survive and you will be stronger. By sitting in that pain and choosing how to react, practicing how you will react, you lessen the chance of being fooled by your emotions. Without preparation or prior experience, although imagined, you are more likely to react with more emotion and feel more pain to someone bashing your hard work in a comment or having someone you thought would be your rockstar client and amazing success story back out of a contract.

Actually visualizing things going wrong and how she would react emotionally helped prepare Stefi for her next competition in a whole new way. Actually having a plan for what she would do if she bombed out may sound like preparing to not succeed. If success came from one incident, one achievement, that might be true. But whether or not we feel “successful” and have a reputation for being successful comes from how we handle our emotions in ALL situations. Preparing for a negative outcome is how we ensure we don’t damage or kill our success in less than ideal situations.

In the past when Stefi missed her first attempt to squat, she admits her reactions included crying hysterically, feeling terrified she wasn’t going to make her next attempt, assigning the blame to someone else, it’s my coach’s fault for picking the wrong weight or it’s the judge’s fault - it was actually a good lift! It’s their fault for not seeing it! They don’t like me… the person who wrapped my knees doesn’t know what they’re doing, my left knee was hurting…

The next year, she was back at the US Open. In her first round of deadlifts (they get 3 chances to lift), she got red lighted, meaning her lift was illegal. Here is a quote from the podcast episode where she describes what she did when she saw the judge had flicked on the red light...

I was more prepared than I had ever been. I had been doing sports psychology for an entire year, I had took time off after my injury, I was feeling strong, I was making a ton of progress, feeling confident. I got up to the platform and I missed my first squat attempt, which is something I could have done - that I had done - in training for five reps. So it’s relatively light. Something you can do for five reps is like your 80-85% (of one rep max). I missed it on depth so the judges from the side didn’t think my hip crease was below my knee, that’s how they determine depth. So they gave me red lights. Previously I would have reacted to that very upset, I would have blamed them for not seeing the right thing. I totally brushed it off. I felt like I had been there a million times. My fiance was there and he was all worried about how I’m gonna react because in previous situations I’d have been very upset. It would have thrown me completely off my game. And instead I just kinda laughed it off and was like, I’ve been here before. I know exactly what to do. Don’t worry.”

Tim asked Stefi what she had rehearsed and chosen to do in this situation. Stefi basically says she stayed focused on her trust in herself and her capabilities. She repeated over and over that she was prepared, that she had trained really well and was feeling strong, that it was just a fluke. She was going to go back up there and crush the second attempt.

“I went up for the second attempt and got red lighted again. At that time I was pretty much reliving my experience from the previous year at the US Open.
I was completely calm and collected. My perception of that failure was completely different. I just thought of it as part of the game, as something that happens that doesn’t mean anything about my strength levels. It doesn’t mean anything about my abilities as an athlete, but what does determine what my abilities as an athlete are, is how can I respond to unfortunate situations during training? How fast can I pivot? How fast can I adapt to the competition standards? Because judges are different every time, bars are different, platforms are different. The better athlete is the one who can adapt to the competition standards the fastest.”

What do you do when you’re experiencing chronic pain, when you are longing for stability and ease in your body, mind and soul? What do you do when you know you need to make a change to relieve the discomfort or get you unstuck but you don’t know what to do?

It will happen to you. Just like you will one day be in physical pain from an injury - maybe a sprained ankle, broken bone or mountain biking accident - you will one day experience a major lack of motivation and direction in your business/organization. Plan ahead. Visualize the experience. Prepare the medicine and treatment prescription now. Be ready so you don’t have to be scared.

“Visualization, or what’s called motor imagery, is crucial, so when you’re under the bar, you know exactly what to do. The more detail you go into, the better—walking or driving to the gym, putting your shoes on, the sounds, putting chalk on your hands, grabbing the bar, the smell of the iron, the feeling in your hands, and a successful execution of the lift in detail.
The second part, which I believe to be even more important, is visualizing a negative outcome. We don’t want to plan for it, but we need to prepare for it so we know how to react. Can you keep it together and try again, or will you crumble under pressure?”

~Stefi Cohen, Source: muscleandfitness.com

You must identify what your ideal form is, what your bar looks and feels like, how much weight you’re lifting, what the judges are looking for from you, what the audience finds inspiring about you. You also must know what you’re going to do if one of these elements is off, if something goes wrong or not the way you want it to. And you have to trust that when things don’t go your way, it happened for a reason. Either you were unprepared and needed to learn how to better prepare in the future, or something happened that was out of your control and there is a valuable lesson in that painful experience. You have to use trust and fear to propel you forward. There is no other way to keep putting one foot in front of the other. It is rarely easy but it does get easier. And if it were easy, everyone would do it.

What are you going to do when you don’t feel motivated? How are you going to take that next step when you don’t know which direction to go or you simply don’t want to? Maybe you’re scared because you know that next step will command many more harder steps right away and you feel too exhausted to take it on, even though you desperately want to.

How will you get moving forward again?

The day I listened to Tim Ferriss interview Stefi Cohen on the podcast was one of my unmotivated days. Listening to the podcast episode while walking my dog got me excited about getting to work on this book, about continuing to serve. The podcast combined with fresh air and oxygenated blood pumping through my veins made me want to share with my audience what I do when I feel unmotivated, because it happens to all of us. For me, it happens about once a week. I’ve learned how to get myself moving forward, how to re-fuel my creativity when I need to. Sometimes I allow myself to have an unexpected me day, but when I have a deadline and know a me day will set me back too far, I know I have to bust out my secret weapons.

I’m going to share with you the things that pick me up off the floor when I want to just lay there, pondering the purpose of my existence and whether or not any of it matters. We all have those days when we have a really hard time living up to the standards that we’ve set for ourselves and we feel others have set for us. We feel guilty, like losers, because we’re not living up to our potential, yet we are struggling with negative thoughts about why it all even matters. Call it a moment of depression, PMS, or whatever you want to call it, but it happens to all of us. This is where fear setting is a secret weapon. You must know what you will do the next time this hour or day or few days of negativity hits you. Here’s what I do:

Secret Weapon of Negativity Destruction #1

Listen to an Episode of the Tim Ferriss Show while walking my dog. Or, sometimes I’ll listen to one of these podcasts instead:

Smart Passive Income by Pat Flynn
Masters of Scale by Reid Hoffman
***Of course… The Fempreneur Marketing Podcast by… me!

Although I’ve created the Fempreneur Marketing Podcast for you, I must say it has helped me get up off the floor more than once. Hearing my own voice, the excitement I had when recording a particular episode, really gets to me. It reminds me of who I really am and that this negative, unmotivated state I’m in is just that - a state - it’s not me.

Secret Weapon of Negativity Destruction #2

Check one thing off my to-do list - only one thing. No matter how small, I celebrate that accomplishment like I just ran a marathon. I allow myself to feel grateful for that one little win and give myself the grace to take a little break from thinking about what I should be doing. Perhaps it is only an hour or two, but I give myself a real break from all the pressure, people and to-dos.

Secret Weapon of Negativity Destruction #3

Reaching out to three of my Fempreneurs, I say, Hey, how are you? Is there anything I can do to help you or anything you’re struggling with? Even though I might not be at my very best that day, I trust my creative brain and I trust my servant heart. I know if they ask me something, I will be able to think of something helpful to share with them or I might be able to sit down at my computer and do something for them, perhaps a Canva image or make a quick Mailchimp tutorial video.

Focusing on others’ problems when you’re in a funk is an effective way to get out of your own way and stop the negative thoughts. Make sure to set an intention of focusing on others when sending those messages, creating an energy of giving and being open to taking on some of their challenges. Even though it has to be about them, you will gain tons by sending those three messages and taking the focus off yourself.

The longer you wallow in self pity and wonder why you feel down, the worse it will get. Reset your brain with a podcast, fresh air and movement, an easy win and focusing on helping others and you’ll be out of the mud and moving forward again.

Write what your Secret Weapons of Negativity Destruction will be in your notebook. This will become your trusty playbook for the next time you’re in a funk or feeling unmotivated.

Why do entrepreneurs need these secret weapons? Because when something on our to-do list seems too hard or too scary, if we don’t do it, the result will be worse than if we just do it. It’s not that we have to do it right now, but we do need to make sure we don’t miss an important deadline or opportunity because we are still sitting in the same slump we’ve been in for days.

Build yourself a trusty “get out of slump” plan now. You’ll be glad you did.