118. Delicious Motivation
Is there something you really want to do that you keep putting off?
Maybe you want to learn a new skill and you keep trying to get yourself to take the damn e-course, but day by day you put it off.
Maybe you want to land an intriguing new job opportunity and you keep trying to get yourself to spend an hour reworking your resume, but it’s been months and you’ve done zero work on it.
Maybe you want to invite friends over and you keep trying to plan the perfect yummy meal to cook for them, but you keep delaying picking a date and making it happen.
As much as you want the skill or the job or the dinner party, getting yourself to take action on it feels like swimming against a strong current that keeps pushing you further and further away from your goal.
You get frustrated.
You begin to shit talk yourself.
If you’re so smart, why can’t you figure this out?
If you’re so good at your job, why is it such a struggle to fill one simple page with information about yourself?
If you’re doing so well at life, why can’t you just invite some friends over and feed them?
I understand your frustration. But that shit talking isn’t helping you.
And those questions aren’t curiosity; they’re accusations with question marks.
You are smart.
You are good at your job.
You are doing well at life.
And sometimes, you need to find a different way to handle that strong current than trying to swim directly into it.
Enter delicious motivation.
Delicious motivation is a much more fun way to get yourself to take action on all those things you want to do but keep putting it off.
It’s fun. It’s effective. And you can learn how to do it today.
Check out today’s episode to learn what delicious motivation is and how to use it to get more of what you want in your life and career.
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
Why using fear, shame, and judgment to motivate yourself is not effective.
How I think about and use the concept of delicious motivation in my own life.
The value of thinking about all the delicious reasons you’re doing something.
Questions you can ask yourself to reframe anything you want to do through a lens of delicious motivation.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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35. The Pleasure Gloss: The Secret to Creating a Career You Love
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about delicious motivation.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hello, hello, hello, and Happy Wednesday. I hope this day is finding you very, very well. And if not, that’s okay, too. And we have lots of tools and things that could maybe help. Not that you need to be helped. It’s totally okay to have negative feelings sometimes, which is something we talk about on the podcast all the time. But I’m feeling delighted, and feeling delighted is super fun. So I just hope you are getting to have that experience today too.
And speaking of delightful things, I have a delightful thing I want to share with you all. So I was just on a coaching call with one of my clients. It was the final call of their package. We were wrapping up, and as part of that, we were taking the time to look back at what they had created in our time working together.
And this client came to me because they wanted to make more money in their business. And they had been in their business for at least four years, and all of those years, they had made, I think they said, less than 40k every single year. And before they had had a business, they had been a VP, and they’d been making about 200k a year.
And their business was in the same industry. So I think it was kind of a shock and a disappointment not to make as much money as they’d been making in their full-time role. And so this client hired me with the goal of making a bunch more money in their business.
And the goal that we actually set was that they would work towards making 100k in their business while not stressing out while taking excellent care of themselves while being aligned and having fun, and feeling a lot of ease. Rather than sort of like hustling and grinding to try to get to that 100k.
And since 2022 just wrapped up, we got the numbers. And guess what? That client made a little bit more than 100k in 2022. And that’s the first time in their business ever that they have made it into six figures. And I’m just beyond thrilled for them, and I wanted to share it with y’all, too, because I think this is a perfect example of the kind of thing that you can use coaching to create.
So just to give you all the details, my starter package with coaching, whether you sign up for a group or one-on-one, is six months. And this client added on an extra three months because when their six months ended, they were kind of at this really critical point where we could see that they had already laid the extremely powerful groundwork to hit their goal. But they were going to be heading into a few months of challenges.
And so, we decided to lengthen the coaching package. So in nine months of coaching together, this client created 100k in their business for the first time ever. And, first of all, they created the cash. That’s so exciting – money in the pocket. But also, they proved to themselves that they could do it and that they could create that kind of money in a business versus having to do it in a job.
And this podcast, obviously, is called Love Your Job Before You Leave It, but I am here to support you in all of your career adventures, whether it’s a J-O-B job where you’re an employee in someone else’s business or whether you have your own business. Because, to me, having your own business is also a job. And I know firsthand how hard it can be, how challenging it can be to run a business successfully and make money doing it.
And so if that’s what your job is, the job you’ve chosen, I want to support you in that as well. So a big shout-out to that client. I’m sharing this story with permission, but they did decide to remain anonymous. So we’re not going to name them, but it’s pretty exciting. And it’s just the beginning, right? Because now that this client has made six figures in their business in one year, they can do it again, and they can do it again, and they can do it again.
And they can shorten that timeline. And so they can go on to create even more money in less time, which is something that I help a lot of my clients do, and it’s something that I’ve done in my own business as well. So that is exactly the kind of win and results clients get when they work with me. That client has worked with me one-on-one, and my group clients get similar incredible results in their businesses, in their jobs, and in other areas of their lives as well.
And if you want to talk about what incredible results you could look forward to by working together, you can scoot on over to my website and sign up for a consultation call either for one-on-one or for SAF coaching.
Okay, now let’s move on to the topic of our podcast today, which is a concept I’m calling delicious motivation. As anyone who’s hung out around the podcast knows, delicious is one of my favorite words. I use it all the time, and I think it’s a really perfect word for this concept.
So a while back, I was talking to my SAF clients, and they were sharing wins. And one of the clients told me that they had wanted to kind of feel more at home in their space and like decorate it and make it feel cozier and like someplace they would want to welcome people over.
If I remember correctly, this client has actually lived in their space for several years, but they hadn’t set it up in a way that felt really yummy to them. And so that was one of the things that they were working on in SAF. And they did this thing where they decided that they, this was before the holidays, so they decided they were going to get a Christmas tree.
And they committed themselves to getting the Christmas tree. They may have even gone out and bought it but didn’t bring it home. And they used the knowledge that they were going to get the Christmas tree as motivation to move forward in cozifying their space and making their space more of what they wanted and making their space something where they could bring the Christmas tree.
And as I was talking to the client, I was like, oh, it sounds like you motivated yourself like in a – I think they called it positive motivation, but I was like, this is delicious. We’re going to call it delicious motivation. And so I got the client’s permission to share this concept with y’all. And now I’m going to.
So that’s like the basis of this idea and the story of the client who created it. But what I want you to think about is where in your life are you trying to get yourself to do something, but you’re using fear, shame, judgment, anxiety, embarrassment, and even anger, right? So often, I see this with my clients, where they want to do something, and then they don’t do it. And then they just like judge the shit out of themselves.
They just like beat the shit out of themselves mentally with how they think about themselves. They critique themselves, they call themselves lazy, and they call themselves stupid. And, of course, this does not motivate them to go do the thing. It just makes them feel like shit.
And again, this could happen with anger, too. I see so many people get so angry with themselves that they’re not doing the thing that they said they would do or the thing that they committed to doing. And then, again, from the anger, often beating themselves up, railing against themselves, calling themselves names. And it’s just deeply unpleasant. And I don’t think it’s effective at all. The data that I see suggests it’s not effective.
And here’s the other thing, even if it were effective, ewe, like it just feels terrible. Like why? There are lots of effective ways to do things, and some of them are more effective than others. And the pitch I’m going to give you is that delicious motivation is much more effective. But even if they were equally effective, why would we ever choose to motivate ourselves with shame?
Why would we ever choose to motivate ourselves with anger? Why would we ever choose to motivate ourselves with anxiety, or self-punishment, when it’s equally available to us to motivate ourselves deliciously, to motivate ourselves with joy, to motivate ourselves with delight, to motivate ourselves with peace, to motivate ourselves with just like yumminess, right?
And I can already hear a lot of you being like, that’ll never work, which I think is a hilarious criticism considering the shame, judgment, anger, guilt, and anxiety spiral often doesn’t work. And yet people are so committed to that one. So just like a little cheeky food for thought on that is like, okay, maybe it doesn’t work 100% of the time, but neither does this other terrible thing that has these awful side effects of making you hate yourself and feel like shit. Just saying.
Okay, but my pitch actually is that I think delicious motivation does work. And I think it’s something that I use a lot in my own life, although I’d never called it that. The way I think about delicious motivation is I think about it as a commitment to my future self and a commitment to my future self’s joy, and a commitment to my future self having the things she wants and needs to have a good life or a good experience of life.
So this is something I’ve actually used for years and years. And I think I’ve done this even before. I learned the coaching tools I use and teach now. And so this is something I’ve used to get myself to grocery shop when I don’t feel like it. It’s something I’ve used to get myself to do laundry. It’s something I’ve used to get myself to do the dishes. It’s something I’ve used to get myself to apply for jobs back when I had to do that.
And it’s something I still use in my business when I’m like, there’s something that needs to get done in my life but that I don’t particularly feel like. So that’s the point at which we could come in with judgment, shame, anxiety, anger like you should, you have to if you’re a good person, you’d do it. I’m going to be angry if you don’t. I’m going to judge you if you don’t. You’re lazy if you don’t, blah, blah, blah, all that negative bullshit.
Or we could come in with, ah, it’s going to be so great when this is done. It’s going to be so wonderful when this is completed. It’s going to be so yummy and delicious for me when I have done this thing. Like it’s going to be so wonderful later to have all the groceries I want to have in the house. It’s going to be so wonderful later to have this exact bottle of wine I really like in the house already chilled for me. It’s going to be so great to wake up tomorrow and have clean socks.
It’s going to be so great once I’ve posted this content on social media. Because sometimes posting our content on social media can feel uncomfortable, right? It can feel vulnerable and uncomfortable to put yourself out there for me, too, still, right? The way I handle this, again, the delicious motivation is thinking of how happy I’ll be later when it’s done. And then for this one, the other delicious motivation is I think about y’all.
I think about the people out there who are suffering, who hate their jobs, who are just so overwhelmed and upset about the prospect of working for another 40 or more years in a job they don’t like, 40-plus hours a week with only a few weeks of vacation a year, just having miserable experiences, just being so stressed out. I think about y’all. And so that’s delicious motivation, too, when I think about how much it’s going to help you when I put my information out there.
I think about how much it’s going to help you, like when I do my little social media posts and when I record my podcasts. Because, as I’ve talked about before on the podcast, even though I love talking to y’all every week, five minutes before I’m supposed to record the podcast, my brain is always like, “I don’t want to. It feels vulnerable. What if I say something stupid?” Blah, blah, blah, right?
And so that’s the moment at which I could go with that vicious motivation of you have to because it’s on your calendar. Or like the anxious motivation of like, if I don’t do it now, I’ll have to do it later, so just get it done, get it done. Or like the angry motivation of like, don’t piss me off by not doing what you said you would do. Or the shame motivation of, like, if you were a good person who actually cared about your business, you would.
All have those motivations, like you get to decide for yourself. And if you have interesting emotional BDSM with that kind of self-talk and that works for you, and you like it, and it’s yummy, fucking do what you want to. I support you. But for me, it just makes me feel like shit. And then, when I feel like shit, I don’t want to do anything. I’m like completely unmotivated.
I want to just sort of laze about on the couch and watch a lot of murder mystery TV, which is also what I do when I’m happy sometimes. So, you know, it can be for both things. But it doesn’t feel good to me. It doesn’t feel delicious. And it actually isn’t motivating for me to talk shit on myself in that way. And I don’t think it’s motivating for most of y’all, either.
Again, you get to choose for yourself. And I realize that some of us feel delicious and motivated about things that others of us are like, what? And yeah, I’m all for that. But for the most part, I think it is much more effective for many people to use delicious motivation and to think more deeply about the yummy reasons why they’re doing something versus the yucky things they’ll say to themselves if they don’t.
Now, let’s be clear, sometimes, when you’re using delicious motivation, there’s still going to be sort of like the middle part where you don’t really want to do the thing, right? I don’t 100% remember because it’s been a while since we had the conversation, but I think with that client, they used the Christmas tree idea as a way to positively and delightfully motivate themselves to take some action that they had perhaps been dreading, or dragging their feet on, or just like not prioritizing, you know, that maybe was either going to feel unpleasant or perhaps just boring.
And it’s like that for me, too. Sometimes the positive motivation, the delicious motivation that I use, then it’s like that carries me through something that’s not my favorite. Like I do all of the grocery shopping for our house because that’s part of the set of agreements that Alex and I made. This is probably its own podcast, but Alex and I like to make agreements about who does what. And a lot of it’s based on not doing the things that we each hate.
So Alex does not like grocery shopping, so I do all the grocery shopping. Not all of it, but almost all of it. And there’s other stuff that she does all of that I don’t like doing, like taking out the trash. But again, it’s like, just because I’m willing to do it and like it’s my assigned chore within the house or my chosen chore within the house, doesn’t mean it’s super fun.
I almost never feel like going to the grocery store. It’s not like a super fun activity for me, but it’s something I’m willing to do. And I do think it feels so much better when I use that like delicious motivation.
And for that one in particular, there’s the delicious motivation of I’ll be so happy it’s done because it’s my chore and it’s my assigned and chosen job to get it done. But it’s also like I’ll be so happy it’s done. I’ll be so happy to have the groceries. Alex will be so happy to have the groceries. I’ll be so happy seeing her be so happy.
And so there is like sort of the drudgery in the middle. But it’s also so much more fun and so much more interesting to think about all those yummy reasons I’m doing it and all the yumminess that’s being created for me.
Okay, so how could this look for you? Probably all kinds of different ways. But I’m guessing there’s at least one thing in your personal life or career that you have been trying to get yourself motivated to do that you haven’t done. And maybe you’ve tried yummy, delicious motivation. But if you’re anything like most people, you’ve actually probably tried the other kind of motivation, which is like threatening, cajoling, convincing, beating yourself up, raging, and then feeling terrible about yourself.
And then I have that podcast also about the associative connection that the brain makes where you can get a pleasure gloss or a displeasure gloss. So if you try to motivate yourself to do something for a while and then you don’t do it, you can actually sort of create a negative association with that thing. It’s like when people want to write a novel, and the more they don’t write the novel, the more the novel becomes like a symbol of pain.
And then when they go to write the novel, not only is it the hard work of writing a novel, because even for people who love writing, writing is hard, for most of us. There’s probably one or two who have a great time, and good for you. But for most of us, writing a novel is hard. But then they have that secondary pain of all that self-judgment and self-criticism and shame about not having done it earlier.
Versus delicious motivation would be kind of bringing them back to, like, why am I even trying to write a novel? And what if I’m allowed to have a blank slate? And what if I don’t have to beat myself up for not doing this sooner? And what if I could just focus on the yummy parts of this? And what if I could focus on how good it’s going to feel to write it and how proud I’m going to be of myself?
And what if I go ahead and give myself a little bit of that pride and delight now? And I use that pride and delight as fuel to carry me into this thing that I want to do, but that’s also going to be work, and it’s going to be discomfort. And I can love myself into and through that, versus using this as this way to measure myself negatively and this way to heap judgment upon myself.
So for you, anything in your life or career that you’ve been wanting to do that you’ve not been able to do, and you’ve been telling yourself you just need to be more motivated or just need to like stop being lazy, like what if we just delete, delete, delete all those things you’ve been saying to yourself. All the criticisms, all the judgment, and just come at it afresh with, like, what would be delicious about doing this?
If I frame this as an opportunity for deliciousness, what’s available in that framework? How can I be kind to myself about this? How could I focus on the delightfulness of it being done? How can I focus on the reasons I’m doing it are a place that serves often a lot of deliciousness?
I kind of just like switch the entire framing of the activity from something that, like, it’s bad about you that you didn’t do it, to something that could be wonderful. And you can choose to do it. And it can feel wonderful while you do it, even if there’s some drudgery in the middle, and you can use this deliciousness to motivate yourself instead of motivation having to be this way you’re hard on yourself.
I just think there’s like so much of us being so hard on ourselves so much of the time. And it’s not that that’s always a bad thing. But I think we just have an overabundance of it. I think we have, most of us, maybe not all of us, but I think most of us have too much being hard on ourselves and not enough connecting with delight. And not enough connecting with deliciousness. And not enough having fun and being silly and playful.
And I think there’s room for that, even in serious things like career and motivation. And really, at the end of the day, I just invite you to try it. Like you’ve probably been trying vicious motivation for years. So why don’t you just try on delicious motivation and see what happens? And you can always go back to the other one if you don’t like it or if it doesn’t work for you. But I just think, why not have it the delicious way?
Why not? Because at the end of the day, everything, all of our achievements, all of our accomplishments, like loving our job, doing a better job at our job, feeling more confident, it’s all really about having a good life and having a good experience of that life. And deliciousness is definitely a way to do that. And I do believe that deliciousness is also a great way to just get a lot of shit done. So try it on, and see what you think.
And if you really want to absorb this concept into your life in a really deep way, I invite you to come work with me in coaching, either one-on-one or in SAF, because we take this work really deeply to the next level when we coach together. And you’ll be amazed at what you can create when we do that.
You’ll be creating results just like that client I started telling you about at the beginning of the call who created 100k for the first time in their business. And you’ll be creating results like that SAF client I told you about who, spontaneously on their own, found a way to deliciously motivate themselves and then came back and told the group all about it.
And that’s what I want for you. I want you to create amazing results and have a really wonderful life. And I invite you to come work one-on-one or in a group with me as a way to do that.
All right, that’s what I have for y’all this week. Thank you so much. I’ll talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We’ll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you’re feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hello, hello, hello, and Happy Wednesday. I hope this day is finding you very, very well. And if not, that’s okay, too. And we have lots of tools and things that could maybe help. Not that you need to be helped. It’s totally okay to have negative feelings sometimes, which is something we talk about on the podcast all the time. But I’m feeling delighted, and feeling delighted is super fun. So I just hope you are getting to have that experience today too.
And speaking of delightful things, I have a delightful thing I want to share with you all. So I was just on a coaching call with one of my clients. It was the final call of their package. We were wrapping up, and as part of that, we were taking the time to look back at what they had created in our time working together.
And this client came to me because they wanted to make more money in their business. And they had been in their business for at least four years, and all of those years, they had made, I think they said, less than 40k every single year. And before they had had a business, they had been a VP, and they’d been making about 200k a year.
And their business was in the same industry. So I think it was kind of a shock and a disappointment not to make as much money as they’d been making in their full-time role. And so this client hired me with the goal of making a bunch more money in their business.
And the goal that we actually set was that they would work towards making 100k in their business while not stressing out while taking excellent care of themselves while being aligned and having fun, and feeling a lot of ease. Rather than sort of like hustling and grinding to try to get to that 100k.
And since 2022 just wrapped up, we got the numbers. And guess what? That client made a little bit more than 100k in 2022. And that’s the first time in their business ever that they have made it into six figures. And I’m just beyond thrilled for them, and I wanted to share it with y’all, too, because I think this is a perfect example of the kind of thing that you can use coaching to create.
So just to give you all the details, my starter package with coaching, whether you sign up for a group or one-on-one, is six months. And this client added on an extra three months because when their six months ended, they were kind of at this really critical point where we could see that they had already laid the extremely powerful groundwork to hit their goal. But they were going to be heading into a few months of challenges.
And so, we decided to lengthen the coaching package. So in nine months of coaching together, this client created 100k in their business for the first time ever. And, first of all, they created the cash. That’s so exciting – money in the pocket. But also, they proved to themselves that they could do it and that they could create that kind of money in a business versus having to do it in a job.
And this podcast, obviously, is called Love Your Job Before You Leave It, but I am here to support you in all of your career adventures, whether it’s a J-O-B job where you’re an employee in someone else’s business or whether you have your own business. Because, to me, having your own business is also a job. And I know firsthand how hard it can be, how challenging it can be to run a business successfully and make money doing it.
And so if that’s what your job is, the job you’ve chosen, I want to support you in that as well. So a big shout-out to that client. I’m sharing this story with permission, but they did decide to remain anonymous. So we’re not going to name them, but it’s pretty exciting. And it’s just the beginning, right? Because now that this client has made six figures in their business in one year, they can do it again, and they can do it again, and they can do it again.
And they can shorten that timeline. And so they can go on to create even more money in less time, which is something that I help a lot of my clients do, and it’s something that I’ve done in my own business as well. So that is exactly the kind of win and results clients get when they work with me. That client has worked with me one-on-one, and my group clients get similar incredible results in their businesses, in their jobs, and in other areas of their lives as well.
And if you want to talk about what incredible results you could look forward to by working together, you can scoot on over to my website and sign up for a consultation call either for one-on-one or for SAF coaching.
Okay, now let’s move on to the topic of our podcast today, which is a concept I’m calling delicious motivation. As anyone who’s hung out around the podcast knows, delicious is one of my favorite words. I use it all the time, and I think it’s a really perfect word for this concept.
So a while back, I was talking to my SAF clients, and they were sharing wins. And one of the clients told me that they had wanted to kind of feel more at home in their space and like decorate it and make it feel cozier and like someplace they would want to welcome people over.
If I remember correctly, this client has actually lived in their space for several years, but they hadn’t set it up in a way that felt really yummy to them. And so that was one of the things that they were working on in SAF. And they did this thing where they decided that they, this was before the holidays, so they decided they were going to get a Christmas tree.
And they committed themselves to getting the Christmas tree. They may have even gone out and bought it but didn’t bring it home. And they used the knowledge that they were going to get the Christmas tree as motivation to move forward in cozifying their space and making their space more of what they wanted and making their space something where they could bring the Christmas tree.
And as I was talking to the client, I was like, oh, it sounds like you motivated yourself like in a – I think they called it positive motivation, but I was like, this is delicious. We’re going to call it delicious motivation. And so I got the client’s permission to share this concept with y’all. And now I’m going to.
So that’s like the basis of this idea and the story of the client who created it. But what I want you to think about is where in your life are you trying to get yourself to do something, but you’re using fear, shame, judgment, anxiety, embarrassment, and even anger, right? So often, I see this with my clients, where they want to do something, and then they don’t do it. And then they just like judge the shit out of themselves.
They just like beat the shit out of themselves mentally with how they think about themselves. They critique themselves, they call themselves lazy, and they call themselves stupid. And, of course, this does not motivate them to go do the thing. It just makes them feel like shit.
And again, this could happen with anger, too. I see so many people get so angry with themselves that they’re not doing the thing that they said they would do or the thing that they committed to doing. And then, again, from the anger, often beating themselves up, railing against themselves, calling themselves names. And it’s just deeply unpleasant. And I don’t think it’s effective at all. The data that I see suggests it’s not effective.
And here’s the other thing, even if it were effective, ewe, like it just feels terrible. Like why? There are lots of effective ways to do things, and some of them are more effective than others. And the pitch I’m going to give you is that delicious motivation is much more effective. But even if they were equally effective, why would we ever choose to motivate ourselves with shame?
Why would we ever choose to motivate ourselves with anger? Why would we ever choose to motivate ourselves with anxiety, or self-punishment, when it’s equally available to us to motivate ourselves deliciously, to motivate ourselves with joy, to motivate ourselves with delight, to motivate ourselves with peace, to motivate ourselves with just like yumminess, right?
And I can already hear a lot of you being like, that’ll never work, which I think is a hilarious criticism considering the shame, judgment, anger, guilt, and anxiety spiral often doesn’t work. And yet people are so committed to that one. So just like a little cheeky food for thought on that is like, okay, maybe it doesn’t work 100% of the time, but neither does this other terrible thing that has these awful side effects of making you hate yourself and feel like shit. Just saying.
Okay, but my pitch actually is that I think delicious motivation does work. And I think it’s something that I use a lot in my own life, although I’d never called it that. The way I think about delicious motivation is I think about it as a commitment to my future self and a commitment to my future self’s joy, and a commitment to my future self having the things she wants and needs to have a good life or a good experience of life.
So this is something I’ve actually used for years and years. And I think I’ve done this even before. I learned the coaching tools I use and teach now. And so this is something I’ve used to get myself to grocery shop when I don’t feel like it. It’s something I’ve used to get myself to do laundry. It’s something I’ve used to get myself to do the dishes. It’s something I’ve used to get myself to apply for jobs back when I had to do that.
And it’s something I still use in my business when I’m like, there’s something that needs to get done in my life but that I don’t particularly feel like. So that’s the point at which we could come in with judgment, shame, anxiety, anger like you should, you have to if you’re a good person, you’d do it. I’m going to be angry if you don’t. I’m going to judge you if you don’t. You’re lazy if you don’t, blah, blah, blah, all that negative bullshit.
Or we could come in with, ah, it’s going to be so great when this is done. It’s going to be so wonderful when this is completed. It’s going to be so yummy and delicious for me when I have done this thing. Like it’s going to be so wonderful later to have all the groceries I want to have in the house. It’s going to be so wonderful later to have this exact bottle of wine I really like in the house already chilled for me. It’s going to be so great to wake up tomorrow and have clean socks.
It’s going to be so great once I’ve posted this content on social media. Because sometimes posting our content on social media can feel uncomfortable, right? It can feel vulnerable and uncomfortable to put yourself out there for me, too, still, right? The way I handle this, again, the delicious motivation is thinking of how happy I’ll be later when it’s done. And then for this one, the other delicious motivation is I think about y’all.
I think about the people out there who are suffering, who hate their jobs, who are just so overwhelmed and upset about the prospect of working for another 40 or more years in a job they don’t like, 40-plus hours a week with only a few weeks of vacation a year, just having miserable experiences, just being so stressed out. I think about y’all. And so that’s delicious motivation, too, when I think about how much it’s going to help you when I put my information out there.
I think about how much it’s going to help you, like when I do my little social media posts and when I record my podcasts. Because, as I’ve talked about before on the podcast, even though I love talking to y’all every week, five minutes before I’m supposed to record the podcast, my brain is always like, “I don’t want to. It feels vulnerable. What if I say something stupid?” Blah, blah, blah, right?
And so that’s the moment at which I could go with that vicious motivation of you have to because it’s on your calendar. Or like the anxious motivation of like, if I don’t do it now, I’ll have to do it later, so just get it done, get it done. Or like the angry motivation of like, don’t piss me off by not doing what you said you would do. Or the shame motivation of, like, if you were a good person who actually cared about your business, you would.
All have those motivations, like you get to decide for yourself. And if you have interesting emotional BDSM with that kind of self-talk and that works for you, and you like it, and it’s yummy, fucking do what you want to. I support you. But for me, it just makes me feel like shit. And then, when I feel like shit, I don’t want to do anything. I’m like completely unmotivated.
I want to just sort of laze about on the couch and watch a lot of murder mystery TV, which is also what I do when I’m happy sometimes. So, you know, it can be for both things. But it doesn’t feel good to me. It doesn’t feel delicious. And it actually isn’t motivating for me to talk shit on myself in that way. And I don’t think it’s motivating for most of y’all, either.
Again, you get to choose for yourself. And I realize that some of us feel delicious and motivated about things that others of us are like, what? And yeah, I’m all for that. But for the most part, I think it is much more effective for many people to use delicious motivation and to think more deeply about the yummy reasons why they’re doing something versus the yucky things they’ll say to themselves if they don’t.
Now, let’s be clear, sometimes, when you’re using delicious motivation, there’s still going to be sort of like the middle part where you don’t really want to do the thing, right? I don’t 100% remember because it’s been a while since we had the conversation, but I think with that client, they used the Christmas tree idea as a way to positively and delightfully motivate themselves to take some action that they had perhaps been dreading, or dragging their feet on, or just like not prioritizing, you know, that maybe was either going to feel unpleasant or perhaps just boring.
And it’s like that for me, too. Sometimes the positive motivation, the delicious motivation that I use, then it’s like that carries me through something that’s not my favorite. Like I do all of the grocery shopping for our house because that’s part of the set of agreements that Alex and I made. This is probably its own podcast, but Alex and I like to make agreements about who does what. And a lot of it’s based on not doing the things that we each hate.
So Alex does not like grocery shopping, so I do all the grocery shopping. Not all of it, but almost all of it. And there’s other stuff that she does all of that I don’t like doing, like taking out the trash. But again, it’s like, just because I’m willing to do it and like it’s my assigned chore within the house or my chosen chore within the house, doesn’t mean it’s super fun.
I almost never feel like going to the grocery store. It’s not like a super fun activity for me, but it’s something I’m willing to do. And I do think it feels so much better when I use that like delicious motivation.
And for that one in particular, there’s the delicious motivation of I’ll be so happy it’s done because it’s my chore and it’s my assigned and chosen job to get it done. But it’s also like I’ll be so happy it’s done. I’ll be so happy to have the groceries. Alex will be so happy to have the groceries. I’ll be so happy seeing her be so happy.
And so there is like sort of the drudgery in the middle. But it’s also so much more fun and so much more interesting to think about all those yummy reasons I’m doing it and all the yumminess that’s being created for me.
Okay, so how could this look for you? Probably all kinds of different ways. But I’m guessing there’s at least one thing in your personal life or career that you have been trying to get yourself motivated to do that you haven’t done. And maybe you’ve tried yummy, delicious motivation. But if you’re anything like most people, you’ve actually probably tried the other kind of motivation, which is like threatening, cajoling, convincing, beating yourself up, raging, and then feeling terrible about yourself.
And then I have that podcast also about the associative connection that the brain makes where you can get a pleasure gloss or a displeasure gloss. So if you try to motivate yourself to do something for a while and then you don’t do it, you can actually sort of create a negative association with that thing. It’s like when people want to write a novel, and the more they don’t write the novel, the more the novel becomes like a symbol of pain.
And then when they go to write the novel, not only is it the hard work of writing a novel, because even for people who love writing, writing is hard, for most of us. There’s probably one or two who have a great time, and good for you. But for most of us, writing a novel is hard. But then they have that secondary pain of all that self-judgment and self-criticism and shame about not having done it earlier.
Versus delicious motivation would be kind of bringing them back to, like, why am I even trying to write a novel? And what if I’m allowed to have a blank slate? And what if I don’t have to beat myself up for not doing this sooner? And what if I could just focus on the yummy parts of this? And what if I could focus on how good it’s going to feel to write it and how proud I’m going to be of myself?
And what if I go ahead and give myself a little bit of that pride and delight now? And I use that pride and delight as fuel to carry me into this thing that I want to do, but that’s also going to be work, and it’s going to be discomfort. And I can love myself into and through that, versus using this as this way to measure myself negatively and this way to heap judgment upon myself.
So for you, anything in your life or career that you’ve been wanting to do that you’ve not been able to do, and you’ve been telling yourself you just need to be more motivated or just need to like stop being lazy, like what if we just delete, delete, delete all those things you’ve been saying to yourself. All the criticisms, all the judgment, and just come at it afresh with, like, what would be delicious about doing this?
If I frame this as an opportunity for deliciousness, what’s available in that framework? How can I be kind to myself about this? How could I focus on the delightfulness of it being done? How can I focus on the reasons I’m doing it are a place that serves often a lot of deliciousness?
I kind of just like switch the entire framing of the activity from something that, like, it’s bad about you that you didn’t do it, to something that could be wonderful. And you can choose to do it. And it can feel wonderful while you do it, even if there’s some drudgery in the middle, and you can use this deliciousness to motivate yourself instead of motivation having to be this way you’re hard on yourself.
I just think there’s like so much of us being so hard on ourselves so much of the time. And it’s not that that’s always a bad thing. But I think we just have an overabundance of it. I think we have, most of us, maybe not all of us, but I think most of us have too much being hard on ourselves and not enough connecting with delight. And not enough connecting with deliciousness. And not enough having fun and being silly and playful.
And I think there’s room for that, even in serious things like career and motivation. And really, at the end of the day, I just invite you to try it. Like you’ve probably been trying vicious motivation for years. So why don’t you just try on delicious motivation and see what happens? And you can always go back to the other one if you don’t like it or if it doesn’t work for you. But I just think, why not have it the delicious way?
Why not? Because at the end of the day, everything, all of our achievements, all of our accomplishments, like loving our job, doing a better job at our job, feeling more confident, it’s all really about having a good life and having a good experience of that life. And deliciousness is definitely a way to do that. And I do believe that deliciousness is also a great way to just get a lot of shit done. So try it on, and see what you think.
And if you really want to absorb this concept into your life in a really deep way, I invite you to come work with me in coaching, either one-on-one or in SAF, because we take this work really deeply to the next level when we coach together. And you’ll be amazed at what you can create when we do that.
You’ll be creating results just like that client I started telling you about at the beginning of the call who created 100k for the first time in their business. And you’ll be creating results like that SAF client I told you about who, spontaneously on their own, found a way to deliciously motivate themselves and then came back and told the group all about it.
And that’s what I want for you. I want you to create amazing results and have a really wonderful life. And I invite you to come work one-on-one or in a group with me as a way to do that.
All right, that’s what I have for y’all this week. Thank you so much. I’ll talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We’ll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you’re feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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