Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 172 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope you're all doing great and that you feel motivated to practice your English with this episode.
And I mention motivation because in this episode...
I want to talk about how I increase my motivation to do certain things, to achieve certain goals, to do what I want to do in theory.
So I think that you all like episodes about motivation.
It's a topic that I think that we all like, because we all want to feel more motivated, and motivation is something that comes and goes.
It goes up and it goes down, but I think that there are ways that we can actually increase our motivation and maybe have a little more stability, in the sense that we can keep our motivation higher if we do certain things.
So that's why I like to talk about this topic.
And I'm sure that in this episode today you'll get some ideas maybe about how you can increase your own motivation.
So that's what we'll talk about today.
And if you feel motivated to practice with my advanced podcast episodes, in which I speak fast and I provide the transcript, then make sure to sign up to become a Listening Time family member and you'll get two new advanced podcast episodes every month.
This is the perfect practice for you to start to understand fast English.
So I really encourage you to sign up for those episodes.
And I also encourage you to sign up for my US Conversations podcast so you can practice with my conversations that I have with people from all over the US, from different cities and states.
You learn a lot about the country with this podcast and it's a lot of fun.
And this is a great introduction to listening to two people talking and not just one.
So the link to sign up is also down below.
And you have the link to the transcript for this episode down below as well.
All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
All right, let me talk about how I increase my motivation to achieve my goals, to do things that I want to do.
How do I increase my motivation for different things in my life?
Well, let me just be honest.
Many of you are not going to like the answer to this question.
So that's okay.
It's okay if you don't agree with me about this.
However, even if you don't agree with me, I think that there are some things that you can take from this episode that you can still apply to your own life and you'll see some benefits.
So how do I increase my motivation?
The way I do that is that I remove things from my daily life that give me a lot of instant pleasure.
So I actually take away a lot of things that... most people have in their everyday lives.
And so I know just hearing that doesn't sound very good for a lot of you.
And like I said, it's perfectly fine if you disagree with me on this.
And I might be a little extreme with this.
So, like I said, you might just be able to apply a little bit of this and that can really benefit you.
So why do I do this?
Why does removing things that give me pleasure help me be more motivated to achieve my goals?
Well, it's pretty simple.
When I remove things that are really stimulating and pleasurable, that I can do on an everyday basis.
When I remove those things, then the other activities that I do that are related to my goals or that are the things that I want to do, but I have trouble starting them or they aren't necessarily as fun at the beginning those things, these good activities I'll call them, become the most interesting things in my day.
So if I don't take away those instant pleasures, then those things will always seem better, funner and preferable.
Preferable refers to when something is preferred, right?
Those things will always be preferable if I have them in my day, and it will always be harder to do the things that are related to my goals that don't give me as much pleasure right now.
So let me give you four examples of what I have removed from my daily life and how that has helped me actually do other actions differently that are related to my goals.
And maybe you can remove one of these things or decrease one of these things, or maybe you can think of something else that you might be able to remove from your day that can allow you to take more interest in another activity that is related to your goals.
So the first one that I want to talk about is TV and movies.
This is one of the hardest things I think for people to get rid of.
And I'm not saying that you're all going to be able to do this really easily.
But I have been able to do this and it's had great benefits for me.
So I don't watch TV in my everyday life and I don't watch movies.
And because of that, I've been able to do a lot more reading in the last couple of years.
One of my goals, one of the things that I really want to do is to read consistently.
It's something that I really enjoy.
It's not like I need to force myself to do this, but it definitely doesn't provide the instant pleasure that watching a movie does, or something watching something on Netflix does right.
You know what I'm talking about.
If you turn on the TV and you start watching something, it's very pleasurable.
You're able to relax and just be absorbed in that TV show or that movie, and it's very easy to do that.
Reading a book is not as easy.
It takes more effort.
It takes more brain power, more attention.
It is not something that sparks that same immediate reaction in your brain that these other things do right.
When you're watching Netflix, for example.
However, I really like reading and I have the goal of reading consistently throughout my life.
And one of the ways in which I can do this more easily is by taking away these other things that are the easier choice instead of reading.
And so, because I don't watch TV and because I don't watch movies, I really look forward to reading, because this is my main form of entertainment.
This is where I can get that interesting story, the interesting plot with interesting characters.
By the way, the word plot, Plot refers to the story of some book or movie, etc.
So I get all of that from my books because I really like to read classic fiction, classic novels.
And so I get that stimulation from my books instead of from a TV screen.
And so you can see how that works.
If TV and movies aren't an option, and I want that interesting story, I want that entertainment.
Well, suddenly books become very attractive, because that's the way that I fulfill that desire, right.
So books have become more desirable and they've become more fun for me since I took away those other easy forms of entertainment.
And Honestly, I don't regret this decision at all.
I don't think about watching TV or movies.
I save a lot of time and I spend more time reading and this is a very rewarding thing for me.
So I'm not saying that you need to do this, but I'm just trying to give you some ideas, okay?
The next thing that I have removed from my life that has helped me be more motivated to do other things is social media.
I've talked about this a lot.
I don't consume social media in my life.
I haven't done this in I think maybe two and a half years or so and because I don't have that.
I have more motivation to have genuine interaction with other people.
I have more motivation to actually socialize with people in the real world, because social media can kind of make us feel like we are with the world, because we're consuming things from other people.
Maybe we're even talking to our friends on social media.
It's a type of interaction, right?
However, for me, because I've taken that out of my life, I've removed that, and Now if I want to interact with people, I have to actually do so in the real world.
I have to go see those people and talk to them.
I've noticed that since I took away this social media, I have had a bigger interest in socializing with people.
I'm more interested in talking to people, going out and spending time with people.
I remember that when I was living in Mexico for the last year, or maybe the last six months that I lived there, I had just removed social media completely from my life.
And that was also when I just felt the need to go to these meetup events where people that were locals and then also foreigners would go and meet up and have conversations and eat at a restaurant together.
That was when I started doing that was after I completely removed social media from my life.
And I don't think that that's a coincidence.
I think that before that time I was able to just feel like I had interaction with people via social media.
But when I took that away, I had that desire for socialization and communication.
I actually felt motivated to go out and meet people and talk to people and interact with people, etc.
So that's another thing that I have removed from my day and has helped me be motivated to do something that's good for me.
Okay.
Another thing that I've removed from my day that has helped increase my motivation for something good is that I don't watch YouTube in English anymore.
Or I do so very, very little or very rarely.
So before, I watched a lot of YouTube in English.
But now, because I don't do this...
When I'm on YouTube, I have to watch things in French because that's the language that I'm learning.
And so watching YouTube in French has become my source of pleasure, instead of watching YouTube in English.
And this is great because I'm actually learning French, which is my goal.
So if I still watched YouTube in English, it would be hard for me to choose to watch videos in French, because of course it's English easier and more pleasurable to watch things in English and just spend hours watching videos in English.
That's easy and it provides instant gratification.
This means that it gives me immediate pleasure.
But now because I've removed that.
If I want to watch YouTube and get that pleasure, I watch it in French, which gives me the benefit of learning French.
So this has increased my motivation to consume content in French, because watching videos in French is the only way that I get to watch YouTube nowadays.
So, of course, I watch YouTube in French with the goal of learning French, which is great, but I actually sometimes just feel like I'm really interested in that YouTube channel or the content of the video or whatever, just because it's really interesting for me.
So I'm not only doing it to learn French, I feel motivated because it's actually fun, right?
It's like watching YouTube in English, except it's harder.
I'm actually doing it in a different language.
So you can see how taking away that option to watch YouTube in English gives me motivation to watch it in French, because I still want YouTube in my life.
And so that's the way I do it.
I watch it in French.
Right.
So that's another thing that I've taken away.
And one other thing that I've removed from my day that helps increase my motivation to achieve certain goals is that I don't have a lot of easy entertainment at home.
So, for example, I don't have video games and other things that are just really fun and give instant pleasure and that are addictive or whatever.
In my house, there isn't a lot of entertainment, to be honest.
There just isn't a lot of entertainment in this physical space.
So because of that I feel more motivated to get out of the house to go be in the real world and to do things that are fun outside of my house.
Because when I think of all the fun things that I do during the week...
Pretty much all of them are outside my house because I don't have a lot of really fun entertainment here.
And so this helps me to be motivated to actually go out and do things outside.
I think some of you might have that goal already to go explore new places, go to different parts of your city or go to different nature places and hike or do things like that.
But it might be hard to do so because you have tons of entertainment at home that makes it really easy to just stay home and stay indoors all day.
So for me, because I don't have all of that entertainment here, my fun is found outside my house.
Yeah.
And this also helps me do things like go running.
So I've been running more recently and I've been feeling really motivated to run because it gets me out of the house.
I get to be outside in the fresh air, in the sunshine, or around nature.
And I feel motivated to go outside to run, because it's actually funner than being here at my house, for the most part because I don't have all of these easy sources of addictive entertainment here.
So that's actually helped me be healthier, because I feel motivated throughout the week to go outside and not just run, but to go on walks in nature, go on hikes, go to parks, take my kids to fun places, things like that.
And so I've been able to spend some more time outdoors, and I hope that I can explore a lot of different places around me in my city and see some cool nature places.
I feel motivated to do that because those things, those places are, are more fun than my own house.
But of course I'm not saying that we should just have a really, really boring living environment here at our house.
Of course not.
But I think that if we limit how much addictive entertainment is here at our houses, we can feel more motivated to actually find fun things outside of our house in other places.
And so this is a goal that I have to spend more time outside my house.
So yeah, That's how I can feel more motivated to achieve that goal.
So hopefully this episode gave you some ideas of things that you might be able to reduce a little bit so that your other activities seem more interesting for you.
And really, In summary, that's what I was trying to get across with this episode.
The phrase get across means to communicate something.
So what I was trying to get across with all of these examples in this episode is The way I increase my motivation to do things in my life is to remove the other things that give me more pleasure but that I don't really want to do.
I want to do the activities related to my goals instead.
And so, because I want to do those activities, I take away the easier activities that are more pleasurable.
I think that makes sense, right?
But of course, it's okay if you disagree with me about this.
That's perfectly fine.
But maybe this episode got you thinking about some things that can help you increase your motivation.
All right, remember that.
If you want my advanced episodes, if you feel the motivation to start practicing with those, then make sure to become a Listening Time family member.
The link is down below.
And if you feel motivated to practice with my conversations with other native speakers from around the US, then make sure to sign up for my US Conversations podcast.
It's great practice and it's a lot of fun.
So the links are down below.
And you have the transcript for this episode down below as well.
All right.
Thank you for listening to this episode.
And I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
