How Get Motivated — and Stay Motivated for Life
Why do Navy SEAL candidates in BUD/S training tend to drop out during the “reward” phase of Hell Week and not the “punishment” phase? And how does this relate to staying motivated?
There are two forms of motivation: extrinsic and intrinsic. This article focuses on intrinsic motivation — i.e., “How do I motivate myself and keep myself motivated?” — but I did want to touch briefly on the extrinsic part, because much of how we have thought about it is wrong. The typical and historic model for extrinsic motivation has been the “carrot and stick” approach. Do well, you get a reward. Perform poorly, get punished. For one of the most obvious examples, think of the corporate world today with salary increases and performance evaluations.
Much of this thinking is wrong. Here’s an interesting and illustrative case in point. In the Navy SEAL BUD/S training program, and particularly “Hell Week,” drop out rates are insanely high. Almost everyone is punished except the boat crew that comes in first place in various grueling competitive events — that crew is rewarded with a brief respite. What has always been fascinating to me, though, is this one fact: Almost no one ever drops out during that actual “stick” part of Hell Week (in this case during the physical punishment) — SEAL candidates don’t stop during a run, turn around and get out of the cold water, or stop while carrying a log across the sand over their heads. They drop out, in essence, during the reward periods. When they are resting, not physically training. When they are in their own minds, singularly contemplating their “why” for being there. At that stage, if they are motivated to remain a part of the program and Hell Week intrinsically, no amount of screaming or exercise (barring physical incapacity) can get someone to drop out. On the flip side, if they have decided they are done, per those who have dropped out, nothing will at that stage change their mind. No amount of encouragement from their peers and boat mates will ever stick for them. They are done.
In technical terms, from Daniel Pink’s Drive:
Rational driven economic theory predicts that in a world of prefect information and low transaction costs, parties will bargain to a position of wealth maximization. But this is not what happens in reality. People make decisions more on internal factors than external factors — we spend hours mastering an instrument for no external financial gain, we leave expensive jobs to work to become teachers, nurses or aid workers. As Frey writes, “It is inconceivable that people are motivated solely or even mainly by external incentives.”
So if people make decisions based more on internal than external factors — and I would agree with the research 100% here from personal experience — how do we get internal motivation? More importantly, because we all have experienced fleeting periods of motivation (think January 1st and the few weeks that follow), how do we sustain motivation over long periods of time? Over our entire life?
Let me start with the only bad news. You can’t be motivated every single day of your life — motivation isn’t a linear trend upward but rather uneven progress. What you want is for it to move upward over time, and that is indeed possible. This may sound obvious to you, but let me use an example from author James Clear’s Atomic Habits to illustrate. Every Olympic athlete and hopeful starts off with the same goal: to win the gold medal. But only one will in each sport. The point is two-fold: first, you can’t just set a goal and at an orthogonal point of time bee-line from where you are to that goal; and second, motivation is much deeper than just goal-setting (which I would note is a point I am very much open to despite that fact that my early doctoral research was on goal-setting).
So if not just setting intrinsic goals, then what? There are four key elements I want to cover, because I think this is where the magic of motivation rests. Let’s start with (1) dopamine and effort. If you, like me, are vaguely familiar with the neurotransmitter dopamine, you likely associate it with pleasure — say, playing a short-lived video game and winning. There’s a dopamine surge. Have a piece of chocolate. Another dopamine surge. But, new research shows it doesn’t just have to come from spikes of pleasure. Psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman words this perfectly: “Dopamine predicts how much effort we put into anything.” Here is a key change in wording. Not focusing on pleasure — but effort. Again back to Kaufman: “Dopamine’s primary role is to make us want things, not necessarily like things.” There it is, and it makes perfect sense. I get dopamine (and endorphins) from trail running. So I will hike in freezing snow to the top of a mountain to trail run. People at times assume I must be highly motivated to do this, but the fact of the matter is that specific activity gives me dopamine, and thus I put effort into it. A close friend of mine gets dopamine from golf — so he will go play golf with a blinding migraine. The reward or even thought of the reward elicits the effort. But it can be much deeper than that, which will soon bring us to purpose. I would just note, leading into that, that learning gives me a dopamine reward just as much as running. It’s longer-lasting and maybe not as acute, but I put more effort into learning than I do into running. Arguably, then, my brain perceives learning as more rewarding than running. The dopamine release is greater than the dopamine + endorphin rush. If you want to get really nerdy, this is likely because there are multiple dopamine pathways and receptors. Per Psychologist Colin G. DeYoung:
Dopamine is involved in a variety of cognitive and motivational processes; dopaminergic neurons originate in multiple sites in the midbrain; and dopaminergic axons extend to multiple regions of the striatum, hippocampus, amygdala, thalamus, and cortex. Finally, there are five different dopamine receptors, in two classes (D1 and D5 are D1-type, whereas D2, D3, and D4 are D2-type), with very different distributions in the brain.
There’s an inspirational quote to pin on your refirgerator. Point being, there’s a lot more going on than we initially thought and we can get dopamine reward from the fleeting (like winning the video game), but also from things much more lasting. But before we get to the much more lasting, one important side question: “What if you have to do something you don’t get an intrinsic reward from?” — say, study for a test? In this case, visualization can trick your subconscious mind. A study by University of Michigan researchers Arif Hamid and Joshua Berke posits that visualization helps people decide how vigorously to work toward a goal. If you’ve ever felt lackadaisical about starting a new project, Hamid and Berke contend, focus on imagining the joy of completing it. That too will cue in dopamine, which explains the motivation to start and the satisfaction of finishing work, they say. This would apply to the LSAT, for example, where you may not want to start a practice test but visualizing finishing it and getting a strong score back gives you just the nudge you need to study. If you finish that diagnostic test strong, you create success, which creates a motivational loop that will require less effort to get going on the next one. I tested just this on myself yesterday morning, when it was 17 degrees and snowing at 4:30 AM. I didn’t want to go outside and run in that mess so I visualized myself having just finished it — a little further and a little faster. Data point of just one, but sure enough it worked. Not only did I go faster, I was more energized. You can hear it in my voice here , where literally 10 minutes before I was contemplating not running at all.
Where does this all land us? Back to Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman (and just about every other person I have referenced in the entirety of my blog posts, starting with Viktor Frankl and Man’s Search for Meaning), it would be at (2) purpose. Think on this unattributed quote:
Decide what kind of life you actually want, then say no to everything that isn't that.
What this is saying is, “Once you know your purpose, you get to decide what drives you toward it.” Why is this so important? Because unhealthy things can cause us pleasure too. We can be motivated to gamble, overly consume alcohol, steal from others. Some may remember when actress Winona Ryder was convicted of shoplifting. She had zero need to do so, of course; she was at the height of her money-making days in an incredibly well-paid industry if you reach those heights. So what does she say on that? “A lot of people had the perception that I just disappeared in the 2000s. And I did, but only from that world. I appeared elsewhere, I promise you. I was transformed into doing stuff I really wanted to do — it was a great awakening.” How do you read this? I see someone who was getting motivation from fleeting dopamine pleasures (the act of stealing certainly can produce that), who took the time off to discover her purpose. With purpose comes motivation. But what is more, with purpose comes healthy motivation. If your purpose, to use the Navy SEAL example, is to serve your country, that will become a motivator that overrides any obstacle. You will be perpetually motivated. The great thing is you get to choose. In fact, Viktor Frankl posits that part of meaning is that freedom of choice. Frankl goes on the state three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times. Find what is significant to you. You already know what that is I would imagine — family, loved ones, principles, politics, inspiring others, etc., and I could go on — and let it rip. Once you have your purpose you will have your passion. Motivation will be there on most days, I guarantee it. In fact, you won’t be able to escape it.
I found myself uttering to a friend of mine the other day that bears mention: (3) habituation over motivation, which I suspect I at least half stole in my subconscious from James Clear.. After I said it, I researched it, and it turns out there is a great deal of truth to this. In this TEDx talk, speaker Jeff Haden talks about how there are no grand extrinsic motivators, and that “The Motivation Myth” is key is to enjoying your small, seemingly minor successes. Motivation is not the spark, posits Haden; it is a part of the result. If you can cherish a small victory, like running today for the first times in years, that will motivate you to run tomorrow. Then, if you see your time or distance or fitness goals improving, all the more motivation. Per Haden:
Success is repeatable and predictable. It’s about doing the right things diligently, the right way, over and over.
When you consistently do the right things, success is predictable/inevitable. Success begets more motivation which begets more success. It’s a beautiful upward spiral that I have seen in my own life and that of others when things are clicking. We’ve all seen people, and likely ourselves, in some form of downward spiral before. Inverse that. Visualize that. That is entirely possible, and the starting point is small wins and good habits. You can start that today.
There used to be this fitness magazine I bought without fail every month called “FitnessRx” — I liked it because it always referenced scientific studies in peer-reviewed publications; it wasn’t just some person who reached some goal writing about how they got fit. It was science-based. But over time I realized I was paying $15 a month for the same two points, restrict carbohydrates and do high intensity interval training. That was it. Everything was always about that, just in highly technical language from different studies. Yet I kept buying that stupid magazine even though I knew what was coming. Why? It habituated me. It kept me in the moment, and it kept me in a routine. Literally the process of buying those 50 redundant pages, which I stopped reading, still motivated me. It was a habit that drove me toward my aspirations back then.
Which all brings me to this quote, which I found attributed to James Allen, though I vaguely remember it as being attributed to Heraclitus when I was an undergraduate philosophy major:
You will become as small as your controlling desire, as great as your dominant aspiration.
I discussed this in the purpose section, because we can have healthy and unhealthy motivators. Want a New Year’s goal? Devote a good amount time to yourself — every healthy and grounded person I know has done or is doing just that — and make part of that time center around, “What is my greatest desire, what is my purpose?” For me, that is to impact as many people as I can in a positive way. That is my end-of-the-day marker for if I did well that day, or if I backtracked. Roughly a thousand people have listened to this 3 minute podcast I recently did on overcoming difficult times, and if I knew 10 of them were positively influenced or helped I would think that is a great think. It would create more motivation for me to do another — and to do it better. But, it is also my beginning-of-the-day jolt that gets me out of bed at 3:00 AM and, more to the point, motivates me to stay on course. To do the things I like, but also to do the things I never used to enjoy. Truth be told, I never cared much about learning through and beyond college (ironic given where my career has led me), but I care a great deal now because I have the privilege of being able to pass it on. Having a purpose has changed my life. I believe it can do the same for you, and motivate you from this day forward. You won’t even think in terms of motivation anymore, because you will say no to everything that isn’t the kind of life you want, instead working toward your dominant aspirations. I wish you all the best in that goal!
– Mike Spivey
P.S. — I have to end on (4) goals. They actually do matter in motivation; just make them short-term and attainable, and write them down. I have checkboxes for mine (10 of them every day). Each night as I check off a box, I am incentivized to do the same the next day. I maintain this is perpetual, and hence you really can stay motivated for the rest of your life.