Motivation Manifesto, The Leader Who Had No Title, True Grit and Grace by Amberly Lago. My personal favorite Million Dollar Influence by yours truly. Lewis Howes, The School of Greatness. Don't get me started on the motivational speakers: Eric Thomas, Cassandra Worthy, David Goggins, Lisa Nichols, Michael Beckwith, Les Brown.

Okay. So here's the question. With all these motivational books, videos, and quotes. With all these sources of potential inspiration and content that can actually change your life, why doesn't it?

Why don't these things change your life? Why can you read and watch and listen to so many brilliant minds and still find yourself stuck in the same place and in what seems to be repeating patterns of the same old lifestyle. Today, we're gonna dive in.

I'm gonna do two things for you in this episode. First, I'm going to explain why that happens, and Second, I'll explain how to fix it once and for all. Let's get started.

And guess what? I still read those books. I still watch those videos. I still love amazing quotes, but I don't depend on them to change my life. I leverage them to support who I've decided to be. And that's the difference. Motivation manifesto, the leader who had no title, true grit and grace, Amberly Lago. Are you kidding me? My personal favorite Million Dollar Influence by yours truly, Lewis Howes. The School of Greatness. And don't get me started on the motivational speakers. Eric Thomas, Cassandra Worthy David Goggins, Lisa Nichols, Michael Beckwith, Les Brown. Okay. So here's the question with all these motivational books, videos, quotes with all these sources of potential inspiration and content that can actually change your life. Why doesn't it? Why don't these things change your life? Why can you read and watch and listen to so many brilliant minds and still find yourself stuck in the same place and in what seems to be repeating patterns of the same old lifestyle. Today, we're gonna dive in.

I'm gonna do two things for you. One, I'm gonna explain why that happens and two how to fix it once. And for all let's get started. I think the easiest way to explain this phenomena is to start with a simple story. So a few years back when my daughter was in the elementary school, it was June school was out for the year and here comes summer. And one of the projects that my daughter had to do over the summertime was called a thrill points assignment. And all that meant was the students were able to collect points for doing really cool stuff like going on vacation or reading a certain number of books, practicing math, going to the beach, doing things that were cool and fun and productive over the summertime, they would get points. And then when school started in the next year, they could brag about what they did all summer.

So I had this brilliant idea to do this with her, which is cool because this wound up being the summer that I started, my first podcast, I started writing my first book, but I had this one thing that I wanted to do at the time. And I'm a pretty big guy. I'm like six foot four, about 240 pounds, roughly give or take depending on the year. And at the time I was running about like three and a half miles. Every time I would go for a run, I was doing 5k's, stuff like that. So I had this great idea. Hey, one of my throw points, challenges for the summer is gonna be, I'm gonna double what I usually run. Meaning I'm gonna go instead of running three and a half miles, uh, routinely this summer, I'm gonna run seven. So I tell this to my daughter and she just kind of looks at me and says, I don't get it.

Like, what's the point of running seven miles who runs seven miles? Why is that gonna change anything? And why is that even exciting? And certainly not thrilling. You don't get points for that. Now mind you, she's probably roughly nine years old at the time. So I look at her and I'm like, well, what should I do? I mean, what do you want me to do? Run 10 miles. But she says, yeah, go ahead and run 10 miles. That seems like it's a good idea. And I just looked at her and I said, well, if I'm gonna run 10 miles, then I might as well just do a half marathon at least maybe do a fundraiser and do like the Philadelphia marathon. Because at the time we were living right over the bridge from Philly inNew Jersey. So she looks at me and she goes, yeah, that seems like it would make sense.

So here I am, I answered the challenge. I'm like, well then you got it. I'm gonna do a half marathon. I'm gonna raise money for cancer research. And that's gonna be my biggest throw point for the summer. Here's the problem. I had no idea how to run half a marathon. I mean 13.1 miles for me. That was a lot. So now I had to figure out, okay, I just committed. I overcommitted to this challenge. How do I get from three miles to 13? But then it dawned on me and I thought to myself, okay, Aaron, what would you tell one of your coaching clients to do? And the answer was really simple for me. Instead of figuring out how do I do it? I had to answer the question, "Who would I have to be?" And very simply the answer was, I would need to be a "runner" because if I decide that I am a runner as a portion of my identity, well then it becomes simple.

I can just wake up in the morning and say, okay, what does a runner do in the morning? Well, they go run. What does a runner learn during any given day? I don't know. Maybe something about what's the appropriate way. What's the best way to set a pace in a distance run. What's the best way to run and plant your feet when they hit the ground. So you don't develop shin splints or hip issues. What kind of equipment does a runner need? What are the best shoes for me to run it? So the point is simply by claiming that identity, it didn't make the challenge easy, but it made it certainly attainable. I was able to logically go through this step by step process of attaining a goal that I had to hit by the end of the summer. And here's why that's relevant to the challenge that we're talking about with changing something you want to change in your life and why the videos and the books and the really inspirational quotes don't fix anything.

It's because if you ingest all this material, all this information that should help, but you still identify yourself as the exact same person, you're gonna have the exact same standards. You're gonna continue the same habits. You're gonna have the same mindset until you decide you are something different. You will continue to be the same. There's a doctor, Daphna Oyserman at the University of Michigan who did some research on the subject. And I wanna quote her here. "Once an identity is formed action and procedural readiness can be cued without conscious awareness or systematic processing resulting in beneficial (or iatrogenic) outcomes." Now what does all that mean? It simply means this, the decision of identity prompts the change in behavior. So you don't have to decide what you need to do after reading a book, you don't need to decide what you need to do after reading an amazing quote or listening to an amazing speech.

You just have to decide who you're going to be. And that is one of the most simplest, but not necessarily easiest things for us to comprehend. It is a process. So my solution for you is this, whatever you're trying to get out of the books, you read, the videos, you watch, the quotes, you read the people that you spend your time in virtually or in person who specifically do you need to become to make those changes stick. Do you need to be a dependable leader? Do you need to be an amazing parent? Do you need to be a trustworthy and ethical CEO do need to be an inspiring entrepreneur. I challenge you to write that down, post it somewhere, make it a wallpaper on your phone or iPad or your laptop and decide that's who you are in the present tense, not in the future, but now, because as simple as it sounds, deciding who to be is how I got that first half marathon ribbon that I still have in my office today. And guess what? I still read those books. I still watch those videos. I still love amazing quotes, but I don't depend on them to change my life. I leverage them to support who I've decided to be. And that's the difference. These things weren't meant to change your life. They were meant to support you as you made the changes and become the person you want to be. And if that message sounds helpful to you, go ahead and share it to someone who needs to hear it today. Hey,

Did you know if you have a question on leadership or life that you want to hear answered on, welcome to leadership. You can just ask, just send me a text message to 2 3 9 2 1 7 7 4 3 4. Again, that's 2 3 9 2 1 7 7 4 3 4. Or just head over to Aaron, Keith hawkins.com and hit the podcast question tab and send me your question. You just might hear your question answered on an upcoming episode. Hey, this is Aaron. Did you like that episode? If you did go ahead and hit that subscribe button on whatever platform you're using to listen to this episode, that way each new episode will get delivered to you directly. Then second, leave a quick five star rating and review explaining what in particular you actually liked about this episode and how you found it helpful. Hey, this is Aaron. Did you like that episode? If you did go ahead and hit that subscribe button on whatever platform you're using to listen to this episode, that way each new episode gets delivered directly to you. And second, go ahead and leave a quick five star rating and review and share this episode with two people that might also find it valuable just like you did, because given that five star review and sharing an episode may seem like a very small thing, but in reality, it does make a big difference in helping more people get this message and helping us continue to give you more useful episodes. I appreciate you and I will see you soon.