Understand this presentation on motivation, broken down by a Neurolanguage Coach (Me!)

- Hey there.

Do you ever wish that you could watch

like real life English videos on topics

that you're interested in,

but I don't know, it's just not that easy for you yet.

Well, let's watch a video together

and today the topic it's,

how to motivate yourself with rewards.

It's a good topic.

Hi, I'm your English coach, Christina,

and welcome to Business English with Christina,

where you become better at English and better at business.

Today, we're gonna watch a great TED Talk together

about how to motivate yourself to change your behavior.

You know, I don't know, maybe there's something right now

that you would like to change about your behavior.

Like, maybe you want to get out of bed

earlier in the morning and go do some exercise

or learning English, or, you know,

maybe like me trying to eat less sugar,

but it's not always easy to change those habits.

And so we've gotta find ways to do that.

And this video starts with what not to do

if you wanna motivate yourself.

And, you know, I really like laughed

about that part where Sharot is talking about

what to tell yourself when you open the fridge

for a little snack.

- Let's say you're trying to stop yourself from snacking.

What do you tell yourself?

Well, most people's inner monologue will say,

beware you'll be fat.

- Or, you know, maybe you make like threats

to maybe like scare yourself

or to scare the people around you.

You know, have you ever heard

or maybe even said anything like this.

- And if this was your kid,

you would probably tell him that smoking kills,

and by the way, he's in big, big trouble.

- Okay, so now you know what not to do to motivate yourself

because it turns out that we are actually

very resistant to warnings.

We don't like hearing bad things.

You know, we don't listen to bad news about things

that might happen to us in the future.

Honestly, like too much bad news,

you know, it leads to inaction,

like not doing anything.

Just think about, you know,

the past few years with the coronavirus and COVID

does like you so much bad news that you just feel

like you can't do anything.

Here's some good news and something that you can do,

go and get the worksheet for this video.

Because for each video, I create a worksheet for you

to help you learn new vocabulary

and remember what you are learning in these videos

and really take action.

So you can go over to christinarebuffet.com

and go get that worksheet.

All right now, back to the video.

Now, according to Sharot,

we actually have the ability

to learn more from positive news.

Sounds kind of obvious, right?

But it means that positive information

can, actually, motivate us to change

how we feel and what we do.

In fact, maybe that's really all we listen to.

- But what you can see here is that

it doesn't matter what age you are.

You can be 20, 30, 40, 50, or 60,

everyone takes in information they wanna hear

more than information that they don't.

And, so we end up with a view like this of ourselves.

(audience laughs)

- And, you know, I have to admit,

I find it more motivating

to focus on the positive things

like you've probably noticed in the videos,

we're very positive about learning English.

I'm generally, I'm quite optimistic

I think in my everyday life,

but, at this same time

we don't want to only focus on the good things.

We need a, you know, a balance

and Sharot talks about three principles

that really work to help us stay motivated.

The first one is Social incentive.

Now, what does that mean?

Basically, it's, you know, like when you know

that other people are watching you

and watching what you're doing,

like my cat back here,

I don't know, is not watching what I'm doing.

Anyway, so people are watching to see

if you're going to reach your goals,

or maybe you're comparing yourself

with others who are doing the same thing as you.

Now, the second principle,

I don't think you'll be very surprised at this one,

but it's Immediate rewards.

I mean, you know, you and I both know

that if you want to reach some big goal,

like learning English, running a marathon,

stop eating so much sugar

that is quite a long, hard process.

But, you know, the future is uncertain.

So even like smart, intelligent people

who are good at managing themselves and their time,

you know, we also need those immediate rewards.

You know, it's easier to change your behavior

if you can get some sort of like

immediate present happiness

rather than like happiness two years later.

- But what will happen if you reward people now

for doing actions that are good for them in the future?

So, studies show that giving people immediate rewards

make them more likely to quit smoking,

more likely to start exercising

and this effect lasts for at least six months.

- So what's the final principle in staying motivated

to make those big changes in your life?

Progress monitoring.

Basically, that means keeping track of your progress,

noticing the progress, noticing the improvements

that you're making or just the steps

that you're doing to move you closer to that goal.

Like for example, maybe you have like

a checklist of the things that you want to do.

And every time you do it, you check that off.

And that is such a satisfying feeling

of just checking something off your list,

or, you know, maybe in your calendar,

whenever you do something in English,

anything you just put like put it in your calendar

or write it in a notebook

and put a little smiley face next to it.

That way you see over time,

you can go back and look

and see how much you did

or how much progress you made.

And again, all of that helps you

to have that sense of control over your life.

Not like everything's too busy

and you never have time to do English

and you really wanna improve,

but it's just so hard.

Like, no we're gonna eliminate all of that,

so that you stay motivated,

even if you're just doing little things,

but, consistently, over time.

Now, if you don't use it, you lose it.

So, here's an opportunity

to practice what you learned today.

In the comments down below

tell me about one goal or habit

that you're working on right now.

And also, let's get your motivation up.

What is one immediate reward that you can give yourself

for taking a little action on that?

And, if this lesson was helpful for you

there are three things that I would love for you to do.

First, just give the video a thumbs up

and subscribe to my channel on YouTube.

It helps me to help more people

improve their business English.

You can, like I said, go over to my website

get the worksheet that goes to this video

and then come back and you can do a little bit of revision

and work on that worksheet with me and this lesson.

And then the final thing that you might want to do is

continue watching this video,

which is all of about building up your English habits.

And I don't know, maybe we'll start off

on some grand adventure,

improving your English together.

Anyway, thanks a lot for improving with

Business English with Christina,

and I'll see you next time.