Welcome to the Own You Podcast, where we chat all things healthy habits and self-improvement.
I'm your host, Angela Jones, and my purpose is to remind you just how much control and
power you have over your life.
I've stepped into this by focusing on mastering my own daily habits, and I couldn't believe
the positive effects it had on life.
If you're ready to take the reins, surprise yourself by your own potential, and create
a life you've only dreamed of, then you've come to the right place.
Own your habits, own your life, own you.
Let's get started.
Hello, and welcome back to the Own You Podcast.
Since the dawn of time, I've always wanted to say that, we have been programmed to keep
our species alive.
This was done through motivation.
We naturally are motivated by a triad called the motivational triad, and this was not so
long ago discovered by doctors Douglas Liesel and Dr. Alan Goldhammer, and they identified
the motivational triad as seek pleasure, avoid pain, and conserve energy.
Now, just like most things, this triad can be used for both good and evil.
First let's start with a good.
Think about how motivated you might be for a new habit.
If you incorporated all three of the aspects of this triad, think about how you could modify
the action or the reward to play on this, on these three things, maybe brainstorm how
you could adjust your habit reward using the triad to your advantage.
So look at your habit that you want to create.
Think about how you can add in pleasure, how you can decrease pain and how you can conserve
energy.
And that will naturally be a habit that you want to continue and practice and feel more
motivated.
Now, the bad part of this motivational triad.
Unfortunately, we can also thank the motivational triad for many bad habits.
We have think eating an extra piece of cake.
That's certainly seeking pleasure.
If you like cake, that's avoiding the pain of starvation and you're conserving energy
because you're increasing the calories that you're taking in.
You're giving yourself more ATP and energy for your body to utilize, or maybe that sitting
on the couch.
That's certainly conserving energy.
That is generally a pleasurable activity to do nothing.
And you're avoiding pain because you're not out there doing anything that's hard.
You could say the same thing for avoiding the gym or working out or drinking alcohol.
All, all of these bad habits play on the three things, the three aspects of the motivational
triad.
And unfortunately, this is why breaking these types of habits can be so hard.
So what do we do about it?
Let's talk action.
We can use the triad to increase motivation of habits that we want.
And we can also do the opposite and use the triad to decrease motivation of habits that
we don't want the bad habits.
So look at your good habits and think about how you can add or increase these triad elements
to make it more naturally, more attractive.
We will naturally be more attracted to things that seek pleasure, avoid pain and conserve
energy.
Think back to caveman times.
We had this natural motivational triad to stay alive.
It was important that we reproduced, that we avoided pain, that we conserved energy
so that we could stay alive and maintain the human species.
Now we're no longer in the caveman era.
We are no longer threatened by saber-toothed tigers and generally threatened by things
like starvation or predators, but our brains don't really know that.
Our brains think they still have to keep us alive and seek these three things so that
we can maintain the species.
For bad habits that you want to break, look at how the triad may contribute to these actions.
Where in this bad habit of yours is it pleasurable?
Where are you avoiding pain?
How are you conserving energy?
Think about how you can eliminate or decrease these motivators to make the habit naturally
less attractive.
If you tweak things just enough to minimize or completely eliminate any component of the
triad that will make us want to repeat the bad habit less and less.
So although the triad helps and hurts us in ways, we can use this as a tool to both evaluate
our current habits and customize the habits that we want or to stop bad habits completely.
So think of it as another tool in your toolbox, another way to analyze and tweak and customize
the habits that you want or no longer want.
And ultimately we can use this as a tool to become the person that we want.
I think of the motivational triad similarly to how I think about the habit loop.
The habit loop is a way that we can look at the components of a habit and customize it.
We can look at it just as information, or you can look at it as a way to help yourself.
And I think of the motivational triad in a similar way.
I think it would be easy to kind of get down on the fact that this is why breaking bad
habits can be really tough, or we can say, cool, we have a key that we can unlock and
hack the system.
So just like I have taught how to use the habit loop to hack the system, use the motivational
triad as well.
Think about how you can use that to increase the desire for a particular reward of a habit,
how you can either increase or decrease the resistance to a habit, depending on whether
or not that's something you want to continue or to break.
So use it as a tool to help you don't get discouraged.
The fact that this contributes to bad habits that by the way, we all have.
So don't, don't feel discouraged that you one have bad habits or that our brains naturally
kind of navigate towards certain bad habits.
Use that as a way to break it down, hack the system and become who you want to be no matter
what habits those are.
So to recap the motivational triad, seek pleasure, avoid pain and conserve energy.
Think about how you can use those to increase the attractiveness of a habit that you want
to continue and how you can flip it on its head, do the opposite and make bad habits
less attractive.
Leave it to psychology to both give us something that is frustrating, but also something that
we can utilize to our advantage.
So I hope this helps take this as a tool, look at a habit that you're focusing on or
something that you're trying to break.
If it's a bad habit and see how you can apply the motivational triad or the opposite to
give you an assist and make it a little bit easier.
I hope this helps.
I will see you right back here next week.
Thank you so much for listening.
My dream is to help as many people as possible take control of their habits to build big,
beautiful lives.
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And I will catch you right back here next week.
