Podcast Transcription: The Simple 5-Step Framework To Creating Unstoppable Motivation in 2023 (Follow This And Never Lose Motivation To Exercise Again) with Ted Ryce

Ted Ryce: One of the biggest struggles that I hear people have with taking care of their health is they lack motivation. They can’t exercise consistently. They don’t eat the right things consistently. They easily fall off, and when they do, their motivation goes with it. 

So, in today’s episode, I’m going to break down the simple five step framework to creating unstoppable motivation. And I’m going to make the argument here that if you follow this, you’re never going to lose motivation to take care of your health again. Are you skeptical? Great, you should be because it’s the internet, and people make a lot of claims here.  

But I want to tell you, if you don’t know who I am; I’ve been in this business for 23 years. And I’ve struggled with motivation to do things as well. So, we’re going to dive into how to create unstoppable motivation today. So, if that sounds like something you want to hear about, you’re in the right place, this episode is for you.  

And what is up, my friend? Welcome back to the show. I am your host, Ted Ryce, coach to entrepreneurs, founders and other high-performing professionals. And like I said, we’re going to break down motivation today.  

Because the way most people think about motivation, and I used to be this way, too, it’s like magic, it shows up sometimes, it appears sometimes, and it disappears sometimes, and there doesn’t really seem to be a rhyme or reason why it happens.  

Can you relate to that? I know that’s how I used to think about it. Like, man, I just…I know I need to do some things. I know I need to take care of myself, but I’m not motivated to do it. And it became— I don’t want to call it an excuse. Because if you’re not feeling motivated, it’s a reason, it’s, you want to feel motivated to do things. But for some reason, the motivation, it’s just not there, and you’re not sure how to get it.  

So, let’s break down this simple five step framework to creating unstoppable motivation. And again, the key word here is “creating,” not waiting for it to happen one day, but creating it. And the first thing that I will tell you is it starts with intrinsic motivation.  

And I’m going to mostly talk about motivation in relation to taking care of your health. Yes, you can apply these things to other areas. But I’m going to give examples here, and the examples are going to be around health. But I just wanted to share with you this. I think this works with anything.  

So again, number one intrinsic motivation, you must be intrinsically motivated. Well, what is that? Well, there’s internal motivation and external motivation. For example, if you want to take care of your health, the way that shows up is probably “I want to lose weight.” So that’s an external goal. I want to lose weight. Or if you’re running a business, I want to make money. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to lose weight, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to make money.  

But the thing is, I don’t know about you, but running a business, running my business, if all it were is to, like, you know, you’ve listened to the show, or maybe it’s your first time listening, but I sell coaching, I have a coaching business, I have a podcast, but the way that I fund the podcast, as well as the other things that we do, it’s through our coaching business.  

Now. I give talks and I get paid for those too, but our bread and butter here is the coaching business. And if I just had the goal of “well, I want to make money” as my sole reason for doing coaching, to have a business, it’s not so strong. At least for me, I’m motivated. I like making money. I want to make money. But if I’m honest with myself, it’s just not that strong of a motivation. 

I mean, there’s easier ways to make money and then running a coaching business, by the way. So I got to go off on a tangent, but I could easily go off on a tangent, right, there are easier ways. So starting a supplement company would be an easier way, right? Selling products over services, and selling products that help people make money. Those would be easier to sell than coaching.  

But I love coaching people! I love when they show up in my group, and they’re working with me one-on-one and they’re struggling with their health. And then there’s this magic connection that happens and they start to improve their health. They start to lose weight, but more important than the weight loss, they start to become a better person. 

And I don’t mean better like, “oh, you’re not a good person,” and you become a better person. What I mean is a better version of themselves, they start to show up... It’s incredible the way people start to show up on coaching calls as they go through this transformation. That motivates me. It’s like that energy, I can’t even give a name to it. But that’s an intrinsic motivation. I feel something being part of that process versus like, “Oh, I’m doing this to make money.” Do you feel how that’s different? 

Now, I want to talk about health. It’s like, we all know that health is important. We all know we need to take care of our health. I mean, oh, my gosh, how many people do you know who’ve had a heart attack, or who have had a diabetes diagnosis, or who have had cancer, and we see the trajectory. Part of us doesn’t want to believe it’s going to happen to us.  

But we know, man, the chances are good, especially if you have a family history of that. But yet, we’re not motivated to do it. And what I want to tell you is this: a lot of people, the way they view exercise and eating right, they view it as a way as separate from other areas of their life.  

If this isn’t quite making sense yet, I want you to pay attention anyway. Because this is something it took me decades to learn, and you can learn it right now, just in a matter of minutes. Won’t take you decades.  

So anyway, going back to motivation, intrinsic versus external. Most people think exercise, eating right, taking care of their health, getting enough sleep, etc, etc, “Oh, it’s just about weight loss. And weight loss is about looking better, right?” So very superficial. And when I say superficial, there’s no negative connotation there. 

I like to look better. I like to—not necessarily weigh a certain amount, but to have a certain level of body fat percentage, there’s nothing wrong with that. But I’m just saying it’s superficial. It’s external. So one of the things that I try to do with my clients is start to show them, listen, what is it that you really care about in life?  

Well, I care about my career, because most of the clients that I work with, they’re either entrepreneurs, their founders, they’ve sold their businesses, or they’re high-performance professionals, they’re attorneys, they’re accountants, they’re either C-suite executives or working their way up to C-suite. So maybe they’re not a C-suite, but they’re on their way there. You get the idea.  

And what I try to do for them is this, “Okay, so career is really important to you. What else is important to you?” “Oh, well, the most important thing…” and you know, this, my clients speaking, “…it’s my family, my children, right? They’re really important. Everything I do, it’s for my family.” And then second is work. And then health comes in last, right?  

Here’s the connection I try to make for my clients. It’s like, listen, you’re not exercising to lose weight and to be selfish and so you can focus on a superficial goal, although that’s important, I want you to understand that there is…I help them connect the dots between their health and their performance at work, their health and how they show up in their relationships with their wife, husband, children, friends, parents, because that is the foundation. 

Your health is the foundation. Your health is simply this, either you’re healthy, and your biology is working with you, or you’re unhealthy and your biology is working against you, making everything harder. And you may say, “Well, I’m not unhealthy. I’m overweight, and I don’t exercise, but I went to my doctor and they said I’m okay.” 

Ah! It means you’re a train wreck. You haven’t fallen off the rails yet, but you’re a train wreck waiting to happen. That’s the… I’m just shooting it to you straight versus, oh, I’m taking care of my health. I have a good body fat percentage. I am doing regular exercise, I sleep well at night, etc.  

So, it’s about getting your biology to work with you instead of against you, and if your biology is working against you, you got brain fog, you don’t feel good when you wake up in the morning, you got to drink coffee to get going, you sleep poorly because you have alcohol at night to help wind down from a stressful day and that causes you to eat certain foods that are more that higher in calories and more tasty. 

If you’re not managing your stress, you’re stress eating. So that’s all your biology working against you. So, when you have your biology working for you, everything becomes easier. Navigating the challenges that you face in your career or running your business, become easier, navigating the challenges that you face in your relationship, right? 

And we’re not talking about if you’re doing shitty in your career or having a shitty relationship. I don’t work with those people I work with people who are doing well in their relationships; it’s just that it’s not as good as it could be. They know it’s not as good as it could be. They know their career isn’t as good as it could be.  

Yes, you’ve been in your relationship and working for a long time, and you’re doing well, but it’s not as good as it could be. And when you have your biology working for you, you’re in good shape, you have energy, your mind is clear, it’s easier to crack a smile, it’s easier to laugh, it’s easier to have those good emotions.  

So, making those connections is clear. So, being aware of how your health is the foundation to your goals, with your career, or business in relationships, that’s the key, making those connections. And then you can say, well, what are your big goals? Now that’s the basics of intrinsic motivation.  

The reason I’m so motivated is because I know the difference when I show up on my coaching calls, and I’m not feeling my best, because I didn’t sleep well, or I haven’t exercised for a little while, or whatever the reason is, versus when I do those things. I know when I’m in the zone, and I know when I’m not in the zone. 

Like right now, I feel like I’m in the zone. I’ve been working out regularly. Hopefully that comes across to you. But I would even ask you: Have you ever listened to this podcast and heard me when I wasn’t in this zone? Well, there’s reasons for that. And the same thing is true for you. Either you’re in the zone, with your relationships and with your running your business, or your career, or you’re not.  

And so, health makes it easier to get into the zone. And if you’re unhealthy, you’re going to be struggling. Now, I’m not saying that you can’t achieve success on a sheet of paper and make more money, or everything’s good on paper with your relationships, but I’m talking about the feeling. So that is why this is so important. You must have that intrinsic motivation.  

Now let’s talk about the next thing, reinforcement. Reinforcement is—there are two things: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement. So positive reinforcement is when you do something and you get a benefit from doing it, you get a reward from doing it. You eat the…Like, I’m in Madrid right now. And there’s this delicious cheesecake, it’s made with like, I forgot, either goat’s cheese or sheep’s cheese.  

And so, it’s cheese cake, but it has this gooeyness in the middle, and it was just phenomenal. It wasn’t too sweet, but it was super creamy. And when I ate it, it’s like, hmm, reward. Are you with me? Of course, you are, right? Maybe you don’t have cheesecake, but just replace cheesecake for your favorite dessert or favorite food.  

Now, also, what’s rewarding is, let’s say you’re not feeling great, or you’re just feeling okay and then you go do a workout and then you feel better. That’s positive reinforcement. And when I work with my coaching clients, and myself, by the way, all my workouts, the goal is to feel good afterward. I want to come in to a workout feeling a certain way and come out of the workout feeling better.  

This is crucial. Because let’s say you go into a workout and it crushes you. And maybe you’re a glutton for punishment, and you say, “Oh, that was such a good workout. I feel crushed.” Okay, cool. But can you keep that up? That’s the problem. If you can’t keep it up, then it goes from that positive reinforcement, where you’re very happy to negative reinforcement, where every time you go to the workout, you’re feeling like, “Man, this was good when I first started, but now I feel like I’m getting my ass kicked.” 

And at first, if you’re a bit of a masochist, you can push your way through that and you like it. But eventually, it starts taking away from your ability to do things. I remember, I pushed one of my clients, Roberto, he was the… CFO? He was the second in command of Carnival Cruise Lines. I forget, Mickey? I forget the name of the guy who is CEO. 

But Roberto was the second, I think it was the CFO or COO, I forget. And we did a really hard workout. And he came back our next workout. He said, “Ted, I can’t train like that again. I worked out with you. It was a good workout. But I was dragging in all my meetings. I had meetings all day and it was a struggle to get through the day.” 

So, what we needed to do is shift the workout so that he would leave feeling good, instead of feeling bad. Hope that’s a good example and can you relate to that? Have you ever done a workout where it took away from you? So, we want positive reinforcement.  

Negative reinforcement, just in case I’m not clear. You know how when you sit in the car and you don’t buckle your seatbelt right away, and it’s like ding, ding, ding, ding, and then you’re like, “Oh, my gosh,” and then you really fast—I don’t know about you, but at least like, I buckle my seat belt right away, because it’s so annoying.  

That’s negative reinforcement, you take a behavior to get rid of something that’s negative. Positive reinforcement is you do something because you get a reward from doing it. So, the negative reinforcement, the reward is that thing that feels bad stops.  

So, if you’re creating a workout, or doing a workout program that is beating you up, making your joints or exhausting you, making you feel sore for five days in a row, how long are you going to be able to keep that up? Probably not long. So you need to make sure that you’re getting positive reinforcement from your workouts.  

I know this is a bit technical, folks, but this is what you’re missing. I wish I was better at explaining this stuff. And I’m working on that. But this is what you’re missing. This is what isn’t being talked about when it comes to changing behavior. 

So let’s talk about two more things here. You want to also reward good behavior, because one of the things that high-performers get trapped in is that they’ll do something good for themselves and then they won’t reward them... They may get a reward from doing the behavior. Let’s say you feel good about it, you feel good after workout, but you’re not rewarding yourself.  

The way we can create even more motivation is rewarding yourself, hey, you’ve been consistent for a week, okay, go buy yourself something. Not food, if you’re trying to lose body fat, but go buy yourself something, or go have an experience somewhere, get yourself a massage, do something, have a spa day, take a day off, whatever it is. 

I don’t know what will work for you as a reward, because you need to feel rewarded, right? That’s the key. That’s how you know you’ve done the right reward, is you’ll feel good. Buy yourself a pair of shoes, so you have to reward your good behavior.  

Now, this might bring up—well, I should punish bad behavior then. And I wouldn’t do that, because most of the people that I know already punish themselves when they do something they perceive as bad or against their goals. So, there’s no need to punish yourself. Punishment can raise stress. I think you already punish yourself when you do something like that anyway, so no need to do that.  

Just reward good behavior, focus on rewarding good behavior, focus on that instead. So, let’s move on to the third thing, which is sustainable strategies. Now, this has a little bit to do with what we just talked about, right? Something sustainable is when you feel good after it. And just to share with you briefly my story of unsustainable strategies.  

If you look at my photo that I’ve shared in our email list and on social media, when I was in my late 20s, I was ripped. And most people thought I was the pinnacle of health, which I wasn’t, I was beating myself up with exercise. I was doing a low carb diet and exhausted constantly, didn’t sleep well, because of over exercise and under eating.  

And I didn’t know any better, right? It wasn’t like this was my plan. I didn’t know any better. I didn’t have a podcast like this to help put me on the right path. So, jiu-jitsu was beating my joints up, not because of jiu-jitsu is terrible, though, we could make that argument, because people try to twist your joints in ways that God never intended.  

But I could have done it in a way that was much more beneficial. And when I trained now, I do it in a way where I’m not so crazy about it. I’m not doing it in a way that’s hurting me, in other words. But at the time, I didn’t know better. So, I had to stop eventually, my joints ache too much. And I felt exhausted all the time. I felt good when I was doing it sort of. But afterwards, my joints were sore. I felt like when I was sitting on the couch, just doing a squat to sit on the couch. My knees felt 90 years old. 

 And I was just thinking to myself, “I’m not even 30 yet. How am I going to last until 80 years old if I keep going this way?” I literally had that thought, and I had to change. So now I have a sustainable strategy, I mostly focus on walking. And I focus on a lot of physical therapy exercises that make that lower pain and inflammation in my body, so I feel good.  

And then on top of that foundation, I stack strength training and cardiovascular training. Then on that foundation, I stack martial arts training when I can squeeze it in, or scuba diving, or things like that. So, I make it so that I feel like what I’m doing is sustainable.  

Now, this can be tricky, and it can be harder than it seems. And maybe you have a history of unsustainable strategies like me, and I want to share a story about that in a few minutes. But what I want to tell you first is one of the ways to do this is make it so easy that you can’t say no.  

For example, I’ve told this story about Paul, a CFO that I worked with. And we started out with five-minute workouts, five days a week, five-minute workouts, he’s tracking his nutrition. And we started with five-minute workouts. Now, we eventually bumped it up to 10, or even 15 minutes, I don’t really remember because that was a few years ago, but he lost 20 pounds in three months. 

Another client comes to mind, Barbara, she’s a partner in an auditing firm. And we started her off with 10-minute workouts three times a week in her office, while she was on Zoom meetings that she didn’t have to participate in, she just had to listen to them, and boom, she lost 40 pounds with me. 

Again, we eventually evolved away from those 10-minute workouts, and she was doing long cardio sessions towards the end for like 45 minutes to even an hour. But we started with 10 minutes. And what you might say to this is, well, 10 minutes is stupid, that’s not doing anything for me.  

And you’re right, but you’re also wrong. And here’s what you’re missing if you think that way, if you don’t have a habit of exercise, you have no business trying to do something optimal. What’s optimal for you is to develop the habit of exercise. You need to be consistent, then we can build on that.  

But if you’re not even consistent, because you’re saying that, “Oh, if I’m going to the gym, I need to do 90 minutes or one hour,” you’re doing it wrong. Just straight up, right? That’s the truth. If you’re not consistent, and it’s because you can only do your workout when you have enough time to spend an hour to 90 minutes or whatever it is, 45 minutes, you’re doing it wrong.  

You’re missing the point. You have to start with consistency. You have to build the habit of being consistent on a weekly basis. Now, I want to give you a recent example of a client I’m working with now, Anthony. Anthony, I started him off with workouts that were expertly written, if I do say so myself, but he didn’t do them.  

And then I asked him on our call. I’m like, “Anthony, what’s going on? Like, I mean, there’s no judgment here. I’m just curious, why aren’t you doing the workouts?” And he said, “You know, it’s just, I had to get the equipment, I haven’t been able to get all the equipment in one place. And so I just haven’t done them.” 

And so I’m like, “okay, cool. So what we’ll do is we’ll shorten the workout, and we’ll make it no equipment whatsoever.” And he didn’t do that either. And then on that call, I said, “Okay, Anthony, what I see here is, there’s just too big of an ask for you. Let’s just say you’re going to do one set of one exercise every day. And let’s even start off with three or four days a week.” 

And he didn’t even do that. So what we did to break through this is we found out he just wasn’t, again, motivated to do it on his own, even though it took almost less than three minutes. So what we did instead is we scheduled… After talking with him, I found out that he felt like it was just too boring. He needed something to get him out of his house because he works from home. He works remotely.  

And we needed something to get them out of his house and around people into a good environment. And so it wasn’t about the time as much as the activity. Are you with me on that? So, I kept on chopping time off, I kept on making it shorter, a shorter investment or smaller investment of time, and it didn’t work.  

So, what we found, it wasn’t about the time then, it was about what he was doing. And now what we’ve done is we’ve scheduled a swimming lesson because that’s something he wanted to do. We have scheduled some other things. So scheduling, in his case, a sustainable strategy was scheduling something where he had to leave his house, go to an appointment that was pre scheduled, and that has worked so far.  

One more thing I want to say about this is you may say, oh, I have a long, long history of doing unsustainable strategies. I’ve been yo-yo dieting. And recently I had a client join with me, Kenu. And Kenu is like a rockstar, she is on her way to C-suite. I mean, I’m so excited to work with this woman.  

And she said something great on our one of our calls before she ended up signing up with me, she said, “You know, I used to beat myself up about doing the yo-yo dieting. But now, I’m like, you know what, I’m glad for those experiences because now I have data. Now I can use what’s worked for me,” because she’s lost weight and gained it back, lost weight, gained it back.  

But she said something really important. I want you to pay attention here. If you have a habit of doing unsustainable strategies, that’s not entirely bad, because now you have data that you can use to figure out okay, well, what was good about this, and what wasn’t sustainable? So that’s how you figure it out.  

Now, of course, you can work with me, I can help you figure that out, if you’re struggling to do that. But if you’re trying to do this on your own, that’s what I would tell you to do. Think about the unsustainable strategies that have worked a little bit, and then take what works and try to figure out why wasn’t it sustainable and move forward in that way.  

So, let’s get to number four, supportive environment. And this is something…Wow, this is something that, again, it’s taken me a long time to learn. And what I realize is, who we surround ourselves with, has a huge impact on our health, and on our healthy habits.  

And I want to illustrate this point with Trevor, a recent client of mine, actually, he’s still working with me. He’s been working with me for 10 months, even though he hit his goal in the first, I think, two or three months, he went from 17 and a half percent body fat all the way down to 12. He’s even leaner now.  

And he’s just killing it. His family—he’s not only looking better and takes his shirt off, and everybody thinks he’s on TRT or doing something weird, or on some strange diet. But he’s living his life, he’s having a great time, his stress levels are way lower. He still drinks alcohol and goes out to eat, has black truffle pasta when he was in Italy recently, and people have asked like, what is his secret? And I’ve been wanting to know as well.  

Now he has some strategies. But then he said something really key. He talked about his wife, Julie, and how Julie was super supportive of him. And obviously, this is something I’ve heard before, it’s something I know, it’s something that’s obvious, but it really hit me different when he shared it with me recently.  

By the way, Julie actually listens to the podcast. Shout out to you, Julie, if you’re listening to this episode, and Julie got Trevor to join. So, unlike a lot of people, and I want to talk about this a little bit, a lot of people that I talked to they don’t have support from their partners when they come talk to me. And it becomes an issue. And I’ll talk about that in a second.  

And I’ve had couples join with me shout out to Eva and Jeremy, if you’re listening. Love you guys. But here’s the thing: Julie listens to the podcast. She’s the one that got Trevor to join with me. And she was supportive of him throughout the whole thing. In fact, she’s the reason that he even joined to begin with because Trevor didn’t even listen to the podcast.  

And what I see when I hop—you know how I say, hey, hop on a call with me, let’s talk. One of the most common reasons why someone doesn’t sign up with me is because their partner doesn’t support them. And it’s so interesting to see that because I see it very clearly like, this person isn’t being supported by their partner.  

Sometimes it’s a man and their wife isn’t supporting them. Sometimes it’s a woman and their husband isn’t supporting them. I’ve even had—I’ve talked with wives and husbands, actually, just a husband, just had a few people who wanted to join, and they wanted support from their partner and their partner showed up and just sabotage the whole thing. 

And I try to avoid that now after going through that experience, because it’s so clear that if you don’t have a supportive partner, it’s going to be extremely hard for you to change. So, they don’t have to do the same things that you’re doing, but you need their support.  

You need to have communicated with them, what you’re trying to do, why it’s important to you and the fact that you want their support, because if you don’t have a supportive environment, you’re going to you’re not going to succeed, you might succeed for a little while, but it’s not going to be a sustainable success.  

Another example of an unsupportive environment—because people asked me, “How come you only work with people who are entrepreneurs or attorneys? You know, why don’t you work with other people?” And I’ll say this: money issues bring a lot of fear into decision making. And I’ve said this before, if you are a person who’s struggling financially, look, my coaching, it’s not cheap. It’s not what anybody would call cheap, even very wealthy people wouldn’t call it cheap.  

Although, if you’re making six figures and above, you can afford it right or even less, you can afford it, especially if you’re smart with your money. But money brings a lot of fear into decision making. And if you’re struggling with money, like actually struggling with money, or some people struggle, they have money but they struggle spinning it on themselves. 

They’ll redo their kitchen for $10,000. But they won’t join a coaching program, they’ll go buy a new car, but they won’t join a coaching program. So people have some issues with money either spinning it on themselves, or they’re struggling with money, like literally struggling with money.  

Now if you’re struggling with money, literally, then you’re probably listening to the wrong podcast, go listen to Ramit Sethi and go fix your financial life. Because you might lose weight, just by doing that. Do you know what I mean? Because the people who I work with, money isn’t the issue. It’s not the reason they’re overweight, they have money.  

So, I’m good at solving that problem. But I’m not good at solving the problem where, “Oh, well, why am I stress eating all the time? Well, the money that I do get, I spend it on food and that’s why I’m so overweight or obese.” I’m not good at solving that problem. Because I think a lot of it comes from your relationship with money.  

It’s like, if you are that person, get the book, The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel, get I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. Listen to Ramit Sethi, go switch podcast. As much as I would love for you to keep listening to keep my listener numbers high, I really don’t think this is the right podcast for you.  

However, if you are a person who you are making money and money isn’t the reason that you’re overweight, it’s more like your work and setting up boundaries, stress management, poor, maybe you have an identity lag, maybe you grew up without money, but now you’ve created success for yourself.  

And you’re still struggling with like, you’ll go spend money, you’ll go buy a $300 pair of shoes, and a $5,000 couch. But investing in coaching is something that you have a hard time doing. Well, I can work with that, too, right? It’s a little harder to work with a person like that. That’s why I tend to talk about founders and entrepreneurs, or those people coaching is something that high level people invest in.  

But if you are struggling with that identity lag, because part of your identity is still stuck in the past where you struggled financially, but now you’re doing well, I can help you as well. So, again, supportive environment, all right? Your partner can sabotage you. Or if you’re too concerned about stress, financial stress, because it’s just the reality of modern life, you need to pay for things.  

So if you’re having trouble with your career or with your relationships, you have to ask yourself, is the reason I’m overweight to begin with just because of the stress of those two places? So next thing is you’ve got to balance stress and recovery. And I’m going to be really straight with you. If you’re a high-performance person, you have to be proactive about stress, you have to actively recover, not passively recover.  

What’s the difference? Well, passive recovery is like you come home from a long day at work and you sip a glass of wine or have a beer, and then you watch some TV, your favorite series, and you eat food. That doesn’t do it. If you are like some of my clients, it’s really intense running your company or running your law practice or whatever firm you’re working in, financial planning, etc. It’s really stressful and you come home and then you’re bored.  

You need to actively recover. You can’t just go from that to just passive. So,, what I would tell you to do is you have to scheduled recovery. And this is one thing, I mean, you can pay me to become part of my coaching business which I help you more than this, but this is what I told my clients, this is what I get my clients to do, schedule recovery. 

You want to know the secret. So, I’m telling you right now scheduled recovery, get a massage every two weeks or every week. I’m behind on a massage. And believe me, I feel it. If you’re performing at a high level, you must schedule active recovery.  

Active recovery is a massage, active recovery is meditation. active recovery is a float tank, acupuncture, there’s so many things you could do, taking a whole day off, taking a vacation. I had a client recently tell me, “Oh, well, I never take my vacation days.” It’s like, “What? You got to go on vacation.”  

And people think, “Oh, no, but I feel you know, maybe I don’t feel deserving or I feel really bad leaving my team to do all the work.” No, you should feel bad that you’re not able to perform how they need you to perform, because you are, you’re riding the edge of burnout.  

So, I’ll tell you, again, you must schedule act of recovery. If you’re a high-performance person or aspiring to be a high-performance person, it’s a non-negotiable. Now you can take this for what it is. I’m not asking. I’m not trying to force you to do anything. But I think you know the difference. 

I’ll give you an example. I had someone told me, “Hey, you know, I think I need testosterone replacement therapy. My sex drive is super low right now. I feel like I have a testosterone problem.” I like, “Huh, interesting, because you’re in your 30s. Let me ask you something, what happens to your sex drive, when you’re on vacation?”  

Like, “Oh, man, it just comes back like crazy.” And I’m like, “You don’t have a testosterone issue, you have a stress issue. You’re a high-performance person, you’re running a company,” this person was running a company, “and you’re not recovering well. And as a result, your sex drive is crushed.” And having a sex drive, it’s, you know, for people who are not asexual, right? That’s a sign of your health and the amount of stress you’re under.  

You should be horny, quite frankly, you should have sexual desire. And if you don’t have a sex drive, which is what the scientific name of it is, you don’t have a sex drive, but normally you do or you do when you’re on vacation, you’re not recovering, well, you’re not doing a good job with it. And it’s very typical for people in their 30s. I know I was there.  

I lost my sex drive, even though everybody thought I was like, oh, man, you must be, you know, quite veer, or whatever. It’s like, no, I have no sex drive. I’m too lean. I don’t eat enough food. And I train too hard. That was me. I had no sex drive in my early 30s. And now I’m 45 and I’m my sex drive is much higher than it was in my early 30s, even though I’m older, and it’s because I follow this schedule of recovery.  

I prioritize my sleep. I schedule something every week. Although I’ll tell you if I’m honest with you, I’ll tell you, I’ve been trying to get a massage this week and I couldn’t make it work. And I’m like, “ooh,” but I’m heading to Mexico literally tomorrow. And I’ve already set myself up with recovery. I’m going to the spa. I’m meeting up with these entrepreneurs who are in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico, and I’ll be hitting up the spa on Tuesday. I already have a date, six to 8pm.  

Hopefully the jetlag doesn’t take me out. But that’s the plan and set up with my massage therapist. I have a massage therapist there who I work with, Ruby, and I’m setting that up. I’m getting set up for active recovery. So, you must do this, it needs to become a non-negotiable. That is it for today.  

So let me recap here for you. Number one is intrinsic motivation, you must create it by understanding how health is related to what your goals are, your big goals in life, your high heart goals, which we’ll talk about goal setting another day, but your big goals in life, your big priorities in life, you must connect the dots between how health is the foundation for that.  

And it’s really easy to do that. You just need to see a few examples, hear a few examples. You must have reinforcement working for you. We talked about positive reinforcement, we talked about negative reinforcement. We talked about how you need to reward your good behavior. The third is sustainable strategies. We need to make sure that whatever we’re doing, we can do it consistently. And the key is to figure out what that is and to schedule it in your calendar. Number four is a supportive environment understanding how your relationships or your issues with money can sabotage you.  

And you must create a supportive environment if you’re going to have the motivation because you will lose motivation if your partner or your friends are constantly trying to get you to drink alcohol and eat food, or you’re stressed over money and the way you deal with your stress, instead of solving your money issues, you eat and drink alcohol, then you’re not going to be able to be motivated in an environment like that. So, you must create the right environment.  

And then number five is scheduled recovery, make recovery non-negotiable. That’s what I really should call this section, make active recovery non- negotiable and scheduled into your calendar as well.  

That is it. Hope you enjoyed today’s podcast, and super excited, I’m going to Mexico tomorrow, being an all-new place where I’ll have a much better, it’ll be much easier to implement these things for myself, especially with that fourth one and that fifth one actually, you know, changing my environment to make it easier to balance my stress, that is going to be so much easier to do in Mexico.  

So I want you to pay attention to how I change how these…I want you to pay …here’s a little bit of extra insight for you. I want you to listen to how the different situations that I’m in how my energy changes how I show up on this podcast to do these and start to connect the dots. So, if you start to connect the dots like, oh, Ted’s on his game, I can hear it. Ooh, Ted’s really struggling there. I wonder what’s going on with his routine. 

Start to listen for that and when I have things dialed in, you’ll be able to hear it. And that’s what I want you to pay attention to when you have things dialed in for yourself. People are going to sense it as well. And life is going to be so much easier. achieving your goals is going to be so much easier. And it’s not about easy. It’s about enjoying the process. So, you’re going to enjoy the process so much better. That’s what I mean about easier. That’s it for me today. Hope you enjoy this and talk to you when I’m in Mexico. Enjoy!