And most of your stress is because you're thinking about too many things at once.
In fact,
when people don't do things,
it's not because they can't—
it's not even because they don't want to—
it's because of the way they are focusing, or what I call "chunking things."
When people don't follow through, here's what they do. I'll give you an example.
Who here believes exercise is very important
but you don't exercise regularly? Let me see a show of hands. Raise your hand.
More hands than most of us want to raise our hand, right?
Now, who here exercises regularly? Raise your hand. Regularly? OK, great.
Who here does not exercise regularly even though you believe it's important? Just be truthful.
OK, great. So let's see what the difference is here.
A person who does not exercise regularly: I want to raise your hand and I want you to
tell me why you don't exercise regularly. Be truthful.
OK, yes sir.
"I don't have the time."
Now, is that true?
He even knows it's not true! He's going to answer you first! "No."
But it feels like he doesn't have the time because time is
emotion
and he's got so many other things he is focused on getting results in
that adding this to the list
seems like a lot,
right?
And the other things are very important to him, like his business. "I don't have the time."
He has the time.
What's the real reason he doesn't do it? Because of the way he thinks about
exercise: when he focuses on what it would take to exercise, he does it very
differently than someone who follows through.
When you think about exercising, what's involved?
OK, he starts thinking about "I've got to get to mile 14 of the London marathon,"
and that--even the thought of trying to get to the 14th mile much less
the 25th mile,
is like, beyond my imagination right now.
So, he is what I call "over-chunked."
He's not thinking about
what he wants.
He's thinking about what's painful.
You just saw a perfect example.
He's not even thinking about victory or succeeding, so the chance of him following through
on something he associates major pain to
when he can do something else right now he can feel competent or successful at,
his chances of following through are very limited. How many of you follow that? Say "aye." ("Aye.")
His focus is on failure.
His focus is on pain.
That's why he isn't following through with it, OK?
He's also focused on the 14th mile of a marathon rather than today's workout.
Which one seems more daunting to you?
So when you think of what-- and here's also what he's thinking about:
he's thinking about the process,
not the outcome or result he wants.
And when you think about what it's going to take to do something,
usually it takes a lot and you're not going to want do it.
So he's "over-chunked" himself.
He's trying to eat the whale whole
without taking any smaller bites,
and it seems too big for him, so he says, "well, I'll do it when? Later."
As my Australian friends would say, "lat-ah."
And of course, the problem with doing it tomorrow is when you get to tomorrow,
tomorrow is today.
Tomorrow never comes.
So, and you keep promising yourself... By the way, what does it do to you emotionally when
you keep breaking your own promises with yourself?
Or you keep failing to do things
that you know are important?
Does it increase your level of certainty and confidence? No.
What it does is erode it. When you erode confidence in one area, believe it or not,
it affects the other areas, too.
You believe me on that?
Don't believe me? What about your own life experience?
Maybe not one area, but when it starts to be multiple areas, it sure does. Another reason why
somebody doesn't exercise or do anything
is because they don't just "chunk" it too big,
they "chunk" it in too many details.
I'll give you a perfect example.
So I asked somebody one time, I said, "OK,
how important is exercise?" "Oh, exercise is extremely important."
Really? OK, good.
"Tell me, why don't you exercise regularly?" "Well, I just don't have time."
OK, everybody gives that answer. That sounds wonderful. So, tell me though,
don't tell me how much time you don't have, tell me this:
when you think about exercising, what do you think about? Which is a way of saying what
do you focus on.
And so, this woman says to me "Well, my gosh, you know, I-i-i mean,
what do you mean I think about?"
Well, let's say I said to you,
"you've got to start exercising and I'm going to put a gun
to the head of your children
and I will do very horrible things
and hurt them badly if you don't exercise. Could you do it?" "Oh yeah, I could do it."
You know if some mafia person came here and said "I'm going to kill your children
if you don't exercise every day," how many of you think you could find a way to exercise everyday no matter
what your time constraints may be?
So, remember this:
remember this,
change
is never a matter of ability. It's always a matter of motivation.
I'll say that again.
Change is never a matter of ability.
It's always a matter of motivation or drive! Having strong enough reasons! If you've got a strong enough
reason, you could figure out the time, couldn't you?
So the biggest part of life and time management
is knowing what you want and having enough reasons to follow through.
But, there is one more piece: if you make enough reasons to follow through and you know what you
want to but make the task overwhelming, you'll be overwhelmed.
So, I said to her,
"forget what I said. Let's just say you're really going to start exercising.
You're going to do it regularly. How would you do it? What's involved with exercise?"
"What's involved with exercise?"
"What do you focus on?" She goes, "Well,
if I was going to have to work out regularly,
I'd have to find a club to join."
I said, "OK, so then what?" She goes, "Well,
you want to know the whole process!?"
"Yes, tell me the whole process, what it would take to exercise." She goes, "Oh my God,
I'd have to get on the Web and search for all the exercise places around my home.
And then I'd have to look through those and say 'which one is probably the closest, or
which one is the probably nicest?' and I don't really know so I'd have to search on the web
and like read about each of them and get a sense and see the pictures of the place, but of course
you know, it's never really the way they show it to you. They always show you the best pictures.
It's not really that nice.
So then, I have to get in my car
and I've got to find these places. So you know, I've got to Google the location and look it up
and then I drive there and you know,
a lot of times the instructions are wrong on Google.
So sure enough, I get to the place; it's not even the right place and then I have to call the place on my cell phone.
Then after I call the place, I've got to write down the directions. Of course, I probably don't have a pen.
I mean, you know how it is when you're driving.
And so finally, I get a pen, I jot down the directions, try to remember in my mind and I get to the place
and now I've got to get a ticket--you know how you get that ticket--and then I've got to go find a parking space.
And then I find a parking space, and what do I gotta do? Now, I've gotta go into this place. And when you go into the place
you can't just go look around. They want to escort you, don't they?
Some salesperson wants to escort me, so I've got to go with the salesperson.
They walk me around and show me
the locker room and they show me this and they show me that and they show me all the stuff.
And let's say I want to buy it here!
I can't just give them a credit card. They want me to fill out a little application like
I'm two years old again. I'm in high school.
Oh, c'mon, give me a break!
And then I fill out the application. I've got to pay them and then they want to sell me a
ten million year membership and I just want to try this for six months.
And then after all that, then they want to take a picture that looks worse when you take it
than your driver's license.
Plus, after that, now what do I do? Now I've got to flash the card, go in to work out. What do I got to do
to work out? I've got to take off all my clothes, I've got to hang them up in this tiny little locker where
my stuff doesn't really fit and it's going to get wrinkled and I know it's going to fall off and it's going to be wrinkled.
It's going to be terrible.
So, let's say now I do that, and I go to the first station. I've got to figure out which station
to go, so now they want to give me some trainer who's going to tell me what to do.
But let's say I do it on my own.
I go for a station and somebody's sitting-- some sweaty, smelly person
who gets up and they've got sweat all over, so I've got to take my towel
and I've got to wipe it all off and then
now I've got to adjust the weights and then I don't know what the right weight is and I've got to adjust it again.
Get the hassle of figuring out how to adjust it. Finally, do my exercise and then I've got to
wipe the thing off and then I've got to find a second station and
maybe there's somebody there. Maybe it's all sweaty and I don't know the numbers and
after I do all these--one station, after station after station, after station, now I've got to go
to the locker room
and take off my sweaty clothes, which I'm gonna put in a bag which I know is going to stink up my car.
And then, I've got to go in and take a shower
and maybe I'll first do a steam room or something, but then I'm gonna see body parts
of other people I don't even want to see
and then I've got to go and I've got to do my hair and do my makeup all over again, I've got to start
all over again with my makeup. I've got to do the whole thing, you know, all these little pieces.
And then I've got to put on my now-wrinkled clothes and now I can't even just leave.
I've got to go to the front and get my ticket stamped so I don't have to pay for it and then I've got to find my car
which I've forgot where it is.
And then I've got to show it to the guy and then I drive out.
That's what it takes to workout.
Well, what does it take to eat?
Pfft. Just do it.
"What do you mean, 'just do it'?" "Well, I don't know, tell me what kind you want?"
"Italian." "OK, I know 12 places. Let's go."
"Well, what do you mean?"
See, eating is one "chunk."
Exercising is 3,229
where every little step of what I've got to do I think about all the consequences
and the elements and the pieces
and that's why they don't do it.
They're "over-chunked."
What you focus on, you feel.
What you feel, you are moved to somehow actuate.