I love sharing tips on motivation because we ALL could use them. Here’s one called “decisional balance” that I use constantly to help myself take action.
The speaker greets viewers, explains they're sharing motivational wisdom, and notes they're about to go for a run while describing their current state and habit.
The speaker defines decisional balance as weighing pros and cons of doing versus not doing a task, suggests writing it out, and describes making a grid to evaluate costs and impacts.
Using an upcoming seven-mile run as an example, the speaker lists short-term costs (missing football) and long-term costs and impacts of both doing and skipping the run, explaining how running yields endorphins and improved endurance.
The speaker reiterates decisional balance as a motivational tool, encourages viewers to tolerate short-term discomfort for long-term gains, points to online resources, and offers closing motivational remarks.
What's up, Cadre? I am here to give you all some motivational wisdom. I'm wearing a hat where I went to grad school, UNCG, because I just woke up a little bit ago. My bed head is crazy, but I'm going to go for a run after this video and I literally just used a strategy to help myself run. I thought I'd share with you all because I use this all the time. Honestly, without me even knowing it, but I do it consistently now. It's kind of a habit in my brain, but it's really just one of the best ways, if not the best way that I've found to motivate myself.
And that's the idea of, to get a sciencey term, the decisional balance. It's really just weighing the pros and cons of doing the thing versus not doing the thing. So you weigh, all right, what's going to happen if I do this task that I want to do or what's going to happen if I don't do it? And then what's the long-term impact of that? So sometimes it could be helpful to write that thing out. Maybe it's like pros and cons. You can even create a four by four grid of, all right, if I do this, what are the costs and what's the impact?
And then same thing for if I don't do this, what are the costs and what's the impact of me not doing this? So for example, like I said, I'm gonna run after this. I really don't want to. I'm training for my second-half marathon. in Phoenix in January. So I'm just starting my training plan for that and have to kind of get a baseline for a longer run, about a seven mile run that I haven't done in a while. And so thinking, all right, what's the cost of if I do this? It's a Saturday here in Arizona and I really wanna watch, I'm a big college football fan.
So the cost of if I do the run is I might miss out on the first half of one of the games. that I really wanna watch. Okay, what's the cost if I don't do it? Well, I'm going to lose progress. I'm not gonna, on my running, I'm also not gonna feel as accomplished and I'm not gonna get that endorphin rush throughout the rest of the day because I am someone who gets the runner high. I know it's not, not everybody loves running, so I understand that. But I tend to get that endorphin rush right after. So I enjoy the after feeling of a long run.
So that's the cost. But then I also think about the impact. So the impact, if I do it, if I do the run long term, is I'm going to improve my endurance. Every run gets easier the more you practice, the more you train. So I'm helping myself long term. The impact, if I don't do it, is kind of like I said earlier, I might lose out on that endurance. and I also might not feel as accomplished on that day or today. So I just think of, again, it's kind of a sciency term of decisional balance, but really it's just weighing if I do it versus if I don't do it, weighing those options and that can help motivate you to, all right, a little bit of a short-term discomfort like today, I'm hoping to get my seven mile run in a little over an hour, all right, I can handle an hour of discomfort if that means that I'm going to get long-term and short-term benefits.
And that kind of helps me clearly see the decision that I'm trying to make. So hopefully that helps. Again, it's called Decisional Balance. There's a lot of great resources on it online if you just look it up. It's a great motivational tool. So use it to crush whatever you want to crush today, this upcoming week, and whatever you've got in front of you. So hope that helps. Some motivational wisdom for you.
