Mastering Behavior Change: Manipulating Emotions for Success

Manipulating emotions and environment, taking small actions, and leveraging social pressure are key to overcoming inaction and achieving goals.

### The Psychology of Action: How to Overcome Procrastination and Achieve Your Goals
* 🧠 "Every problem of inaction is ultimately a **problem of emotion**."
* 🐶 You can manipulate your own emotions to **want to do things that are good for you**, similar to training a dog.
* 🌱 "The single biggest factor in behavior change is **your environment**."
* 🎯 The **second most powerful tool** is creating incentives for yourself, setting up **rewards and punishments** for your behaviors.
* 📝 According to the Do Something principle, **action is the cause of motivation, not the result**.
* 🎉 It's important to celebrate accomplishments, but be careful not to let **rewards prevent further victories**.
* 👥 Utilizing social pressure is a **practical and useful tool** to help achieve your goals.
* 🚀 "Recognize that **failure moves us forward**." The point of your goals is not the goals themselves, but the **act of taking action**.

- Every problem of inaction is ultimately a problem of emotion. You procrastinate not because you don't know what to do, but because you don't feel like doing it. You eat garbage and stay up all night because you don't care in that moment that it's bad for you. The trick then is to master manipulating your own emotions, and it turns out it's actually not that hard to do this. You can trick your mind into wanting to do things that are good for you. It's like you train the subconscious the same way you train a dog to stop shitting on the carpet. By the end of this video, you'll have the tools necessary to start attacking your life's biggest goals. Now, a quick note. This video will be best if you have a major goal in mind as you watch. So take a second and think of a major action that you want to implement into your life, and then get the fuck ready.

When it comes to behavior change, the single biggest factor
will probably shock you. It isn't willpower, or
discipline, or motivation, or self-esteem, or vision
boards, or manifesting, or asking the fucking universe to come magically clean your pool for you. The research is clear. The most important factor to determining behavior
change is your environment. If you're like me, that's
really disappointing. We like to believe that if we can just muster up
the right energy, and focus, and discipline, or control our thoughts, that we can become the
next fucking David Goggins. - Stay hard, stay hard, stay hard, stay hard, stay hard,
stay hard, stay hard. Merry Christmas, bitch. - But if you really wanna
be like David Goggins, easy, call an Uber, tell it to drop you off roughly
50 miles outside of town, and then make yourself run home. - [Reporter] Why are you doing this?

- I just felt like running. - What I'm trying to say is you wanna set up your environment in such a way that your desired
change becomes inevitable. In fact, it's forced by
the environment itself. You wanna lose weight, then clear all the junk
food out of your fridge. Then, pre-order all of your meals for the next month in advance
when you're not hungry. Wanna wake up early? Set multiple alarm clocks up each on the other side of the room. - [David] Stay hard, stay
hard, stay hard, stay. - The point is, before you even start on
your path to the new goal, you want to take the time
to manicure that shit to make it the easiest
fucking journey possible. The second most powerful tool that we have to influence our mind is creating
incentives for ourselves. This means setting up rewards and punishments for our behaviors. Here, let me actually
show you what I mean.

This is Jiwon. She's a fan of mine, and she's dreamed for years
of starting her own business. (Jiwon laughs) Yet, despite leaving her
job over six months ago, she has still done nothing. So have you done any work towards this, or is it still all just brainstorming? - I reached out to craftspeople. I only heard back from one person, and that person canceled last minute, and that was like 11 months ago. - Now, I offered to
help Jiwon get started, but I told her it wouldn't
necessarily be pleasant, but she accepted. Now, here's the funny thing. Jiwon is really smart. But I actually find that
smart, educated people like her often have the most trouble taking action. Smart people procrastinate more because they're so smart they can find twice as
many bullshit excuses to not do something. In Jiwon's case, she spent
months studying business plans.

doing market research, emailing vendors, and brainstorming various ideas. Now, that all sounds
like it's doing a lot, but it's actually not
doing a fucking thing. I gave Jiwon a simple choice: either work out to exhaustion or finally settle on a
fucking plan of action. She chose the plan of action. So this is how this is gonna work, Jiwon. - [Jiwon] Okay. - You're gonna push the sled and we're gonna write your business plan. (Jiwon laughs) You can't stop pushing
or pulling the sleds. - [Jiwon] Until I haven't-
- Until we've completed your business plan, all right? - [Jiwon] Okay. - Most people like Jiwon
get stuck overthinking because frankly, they have the luxury of overthinking. As humans, we don't take action unless the pain of inaction
is too great to handle. So my goal here is to
make the pain of inaction

greater than the pain of action. You're doing great. (Jiwon pants) - [Jiwon] Thank you. - The first question is: What are you gonna sell? - [Jiwon] I'm going to sell stories about craftspeople around the world. - [Mark] So what kind of crafts? - [Jiwon] Well, when I got the idea, it was a potter in Korea. - So it sounds to me, step one, build the brand. Step two, find the customers. Step three, put together a pop-up store and hope to God that customers show up and buy something. Two weeks, two weeks, two weeks. Does that sound good? - Yeah, I have to do it now. - [Mark] Now you have to fucking do it. Now you have zero excuses. - Maybe I have to go to Korea. - The best productivity advice I ever got was from my high school math teacher. He told us, If you're ever stuck on a problem,

don't just stare at it. Start writing and rewriting
it in different ways. The simple act of writing
will then spur new ideas and help you solve it. Now, this sounded crazy
in a bit woo-woo to me, but I quickly discovered it was true. And not only was it
true with math problems, but it was true for everything in life. Don't want to exercise? Well, put your shoes on
and walk around the block. Suddenly, it feels kind
of easy to start running. Don't know how to ask
your boss for a raise? Well, walk into their office and ask for 10 minutes of their time. Suddenly, the conversation
flows from there. I've started calling this
the Do Something principle. When you feel stuck, do something, anything,
no matter how small, and the rest will begin
to naturally follow. The Do Something principle works because it turns out that action is not the
result of motivation.

but actually the cause of motivation. Now, in regards to the action that you specifically want
to take, ask yourself: What is the simplest and smallest actions
that you can take today that will move you towards your goal? This can be as small and simple as opening up a Word document and writing the title of the book that you've always dreamed of writing. It can be as simple as
texting an old friend and asking them how they're doing. Start with something so small that this snowball can't
help but get going. The simple act of giving
Jiwon some incentives and getting her to take some small and basic actions towards her goal caused a chain reaction so large that even I didn't anticipate
how far it would go. Within a few weeks, she built
an entire website on her own. She started social media accounts and began creating unique content. And not only that, she actually got on a plane and flew to Korea to meet
with artisans herself.

There, she sourced a couple
dozen pieces of product (arrow chimes) and brought them back to the United States to try to sell herself. (arrow chimes). She went above and beyond all expectation, which makes this next
point incredibly important. So I believe very strongly in
celebrating accomplishments, so I brought you to Disneyland. After almost a month of work, she crushed her initial goal so hard that I wanted to reward her
for that accomplishment. (Jiwon laughs). It's important to create
rewards for yourself for taking the actions you need to take. These rewards can be part of what creates a sense of
significance and meaning, but be careful with this one. You don't wanna fuck it up. Don't use the fact that you aced your exam as an excuse to skip class
for the next three months. You don't wanna celebrate your victory in such a way that it
prevents further victories. Anyway, I wanted to make
sure this trip to Disneyland

was still productive for us, so Jiwon and I had serious conversations about branding and marketing while we spun around in teacups. So have you considered
selling on Etsy or eBay? - Never considered that. - That will also give you
a little bit of cash flow. - Yeah. - Maybe go on Instagram,
set aside like 100 bucks. Test it on a couple
different demographics. But as we were leaving, she actually surprised me because she came up with
a proposition of her own. - If I sell out all of the
products I brought back, we all go to Korea together and we bring back all of
the ceramics together. - You need our suitcases. What you basically-
- I need your suitcases? (Mark laughs) - I thought her proposal was
clever, so I accepted it. I mean, do it for the lulz, right? Knowing how hard it is to
sell everything online, I figured I was gonna be
pretty safe in this challenge.

There was absolutely no way that she was gonna sell
out her inventory in time. See, Jiwon actually leverages an interesting phenomenon here, and another strategy
to help us take action: social pressure. People love to complain
about social pressure. They complain about it because they feel like it prevents them from doing what they wish they could do. But what if you actually
use social pressure to help you do what you wish you could do? See, we're a social species. We are always looking for
the approval of others. We enjoy doing things with others. We just like being with other people. So if you can leverage that to
help you achieve your goals, then it's like adding jet
fuel to your motivation. Utilizing social pressure for the benefits of achieving your goals and taking action is actually one of the most
practical and useful tools. It also partly explains why I am in Korea. See, Jiwon didn't actually
sell all of her goods.

In fact, she sold most of it
just to her friends and family. But I'm still here, and it's actually for a
much more important reason. As I've invested more in my
YouTube channel the past year, one of my dreams has been
to travel to other countries and investigate other cultures and values. But because it was
difficult, and expensive, and time-consuming, I never did it. That is, until Jiwon gave me a reason to. So now, I have a new
documentary-style video about Korean culture and mental health coming out on my channel in a few weeks. I really can't wait for
everybody to see it. It's completely different
than anything I've ever done. Now, with Jiwon, this is the power of social influence working in both directions. While I started working with Jiwon to help motivate her to
pursue her goals and dreams, I somehow ended up finding myself

on the receiving end of motivation. I guess you could say motivation
has a kind of karma to it. The more you motivate
others to take actions and encourage them to be the
best versions of themselves, the more you'll find that
they motivate you in turn. Jiwon didn't sell all of her goods. In fact, she didn't even start looking for pop-up shop locations before our time together ended. The Jiwon from a couple months ago would've considered this a failure, but this failure has helped her learn about her business and herself. It helped her establish the connections with artists that she's going to need, and perhaps most importantly,
it helped her get started. She accomplished more in a month than she did the entire
11 months beforehand. That's why the last step to taking action is to recognize that
failure moves us forward. - I have failed. Like, I told you I was
gonna sell everything very confidently, and I didn't.
- [Mark] Yeah.

- And of course it sucked, but I was surprised at what I learned. I took the lesson as a
learning more than like, Oh, my gosh, I failed. I couldn't do the thing I said I would.
- And this is why I always tell people, The point of your goals are
not actually your goals. I mean, sure, it's cool to lose 20 pounds, or take an extra vacation, or buy a house. These are good things to work
towards, don't get me wrong, but don't mix it up. It's not the thing you're
chasing that makes you feel good. It's the chasing itself. It's taking action. It's the movement between
point A and point B. If you could go back and speak to Jiwon from before all this-
- Yeah. - What would you tell her? - I would say just go for it. Just do it. It's not that big of a deal.

It's really not, and just by doing anything,
you learn something. (upbeat electronic music)

How to Beat Procrastination Like It Owes You Money

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Mark Manson

Procrastination and unhealthy habits are driven by emotions, but it's possible to manipulate your own feelings to want to do the right things.

The most significant factor in behavior change is the environment, making the desired change inevitable.

Creating incentives, such as rewards and punishments, is the second most powerful tool to influence our behavior.

Overcoming Procrastination and Taking Action

A smart and educated aspiring entrepreneur, Jiwon, has been struggling to take action towards starting her own business.

She has been trapped in overthinking and making excuses, despite doing extensive research and planning.

With the help of a mentor, she is pushed to finally create a concrete business plan and is challenged to make the pain of inaction greater than the pain of action.

Taking small actions, like putting on your shoes or asking for a short meeting, can help overcome feeling stuck.

The "Do Something" principle emphasizes that action is the cause of motivation, not the result.

Celebrating accomplishments and rewarding yourself for taking action is important, but it's crucial not to let it hinder further progress.

Leveraging Social Pressure for Action and Achievement

Jiwon proposed a challenge to sell all her products, using the social pressure of a group trip to Korea as motivation, which ultimately led to the creation of a new documentary on Korean culture.

By leveraging social pressure, she not only motivated herself but also influenced the narrator to pursue his dream of traveling and creating new content.

This experience demonstrated the power of social influence in driving action and goal achievement.

The Power of Motivation and Learning from Failure

Motivating others can lead to being motivated in return, creating a cycle of encouragement.

Jiwon's initial failure to sell her goods led to valuable lessons, connections, and ultimately, more success.

The process of taking action and learning from failure is emphasized as crucial for personal and business growth.