these spontaneously bubble up in response to your new goal does
not mean that you cannot accomplish it. Instead, realize that your
mind is simply doing its job and reporting to you the thoughts you
must change to accomplish your goal.Changing Your Motivation—From Inconsistent
to UnstoppableThe human nervous system is wired to motivate us at a very basic
level: to move toward pleasure and away from pain. Your nervous
system is already doing this 24 hours per day, whether you think
about it or not. Such motivation comes without effort or intention.
Imagine if you use this essential unconscious motivation to obtain
and achieve your consciously intended goals.
The moving-toward and moving-away motivation are instinctive
and unconscious. You don’t have to do anything to get them. Thus,
everyone can use these motivations. You will be using motivation
that circumvents the conscious mind and its intellectual, sometimes
conflicting, messages. You won’t need willpower anymore, nor will
you have to talk yourself into doing the things you don’t want to.
Even animals use such motivation. Next, you’ll be learning to use
your natural instinctive resources to move yourself toward whatever
you desire. This way of motivating ourselves originates in our un-
conscious mind, the same source of commands that causes our
heart to beat 100,000 times per day, reliably, day after day without
thinking about it.
The other day I (PL) watched a squirrel in my backyard. It
spotted an acorn and bounded toward it (moving-toward-pleasure
motivation). Before it got to the acorn, it spotted the neighbor-
hood cat lurking behind a fence. Immediately it changed direc-
tion and scurried up the nearby oak tree (moving-away-from-pain
motivation). We humans possess these same resources to motivate
ourselves.LIMITATIONS OF RELYING SOLELY ON MOVING AWAY MOTIVATION
We all use moving-away motivation. It helps us avoid danger, un-
pleasant people, and a wide variety of things that are not good for
us. But the moving-away motivation has some very serious limita-
tions. It ensures survival—you run much faster when a bear is chas-
ing you than when you chase a bear—but you desire far more from
life than mere survival. To be a peak performer, a person who46 The Emotional Dynamics of Change