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  • And most of your stress is because you're thinking about too many things at once.

  • In fact,

  • when people don't do things,

  • it's not because they can't—

  • it's not even because they don't want to

  • it's because of the way they are focusing, or what I call "chunking things."

  • When people don't follow through, here's what they do. I'll give you an example.

  • Who here believes exercise is very important

  • but you don't exercise regularly? Let me see a show of hands. Raise your hand.

  • More hands than most of us want to raise our hand, right?

  • Now, who here exercises regularly? Raise your hand. Regularly? OK, great.

  • Who here does not exercise regularly even though you believe it's important? Just be truthful.

  • OK, great. So let's see what the difference is here.

  • A person who does not exercise regularly: I want you to raise your hand and I want you to

  • tell me why you don't exercise regularly. Be truthful.

  • OK, yes sir.

  • "I don't have the time."

  • Now, is that true?

  • He even knows it's not true! He's going to answer you first! "No."

  • But it feels like he doesn't have the time because time is

  • emotion

  • and he's got so many other things he is focused on getting results in

  • that adding this to the list

  • seems like a lot,

  • right?

  • And the other things are very important to him, like his business. "I don't have the time."

  • He has the time.

  • What's the real reason he doesn't do it? Because of the way he thinks about

  • exercise: when he focuses on what it would take to exercise, he does it very

  • differently than someone who follows through.

  • When you think about exercising, what's involved?

  • OK, he starts thinking about "I've got to get to mile 14 of the London marathon,"

  • and that--even the thought of trying to get to the 14th mile much less

  • the 25th mile,

  • is like, beyond my imagination right now.

  • So, he is what I call "over-chunked."

  • He's not thinking about

  • what he wants.

  • He's thinking about what's painful.

  • You just saw a perfect example.

  • He's not even thinking about victory or succeeding, so the chance of him following through

  • on something he associates major pain to

  • when he can do something else right now he can feel competent or successful at,

  • his chances of following through are very limited. How many of you follow that? Say "aye." ("Aye.")

  • His focus is on failure.

  • His focus is on pain.

  • That's why he isn't following through with it, OK?

  • He's also focused on the 14th mile of a marathon rather than today's workout.

  • Which one seems more daunting to you?

  • So when you think of what-- and here's also what he's thinking about:

  • he's thinking about the process,

  • not the outcome or result he wants.

  • And when you think about what it's going to take to do something,

  • usually it takes a lot and you're not going to want to do it.

  • So he's "over-chunked" himself.

  • He's trying to eat the whale whole

  • without taking any smaller bites,

  • and it seems too big for him, so he says, "well, I'll do it when? Later."

  • As my Australian friends would say, "lat-ah."

  • And of course, the problem with doing it tomorrow is when you get to tomorrow,

  • tomorrow is today.

  • Tomorrow never comes.

  • So, and you keep promising yourself... By the way, what does it do to you emotionally when

  • you keep breaking your own promises with yourself?

  • Or you keep failing to do things

  • that you know are important?

  • Does it increase your level of certainty and confidence? No.

  • What it does is erode it. When you erode confidence in one area, believe it or not,

  • it affects the other areas, too.

  • You believe me on that?

  • Don't believe me? What about your own life experience?

  • Maybe not one area, but when it starts to be multiple areas, it sure does. Another reason why

  • somebody doesn't exercise or do anything

  • is because they don't just "chunk" it too big,

  • they "chunk" it in too many details.

  • I'll give you a perfect example.

  • So I asked somebody one time, I said, "OK,

  • how important is exercise?" "Oh, exercise is extremely important."

  • Really? OK, good.

  • "Tell me, why don't you exercise regularly?" "Well, I just don't have time."

  • OK, everybody gives that answer. That sounds wonderful. So, tell me though,

  • don't tell me how much time you don't have, tell me this:

  • when you think about exercising, what do you think about? Which is a way of saying what

  • do you focus on.

  • And so, this woman says to me "Well, my gosh, you know, I-i-i mean,

  • what do you mean I think about?"

  • Well, let's say I said to you,

  • "you've got to start exercising and I'm going to put a gun

  • to the head of your children

  • and I will do very horrible things

  • and hurt them badly if you don't exercise. Could you do it?" "Oh yeah, I could do it."

  • You know if some mafia person came here and said "I'm going to kill your children

  • if you don't exercise every day," how many of you think you could find a way to exercise everyday no matter

  • what your time constraints may be?

  • So, remember this:

  • remember this,

  • change

  • is never a matter of ability. It's always a matter of motivation.

  • I'll say that again.

  • Change is never a matter of ability.

  • It's always a matter of motivation or drive! Having strong enough reasons! If you've got a strong enough

  • reason, you could figure out the time, couldn't you?

  • So the biggest part of life and time management

  • is knowing what you want and having enough reasons to follow through.

  • But, there is one more piece: if you make enough reasons to follow through and you know what you

  • want to but make the task overwhelming, you'll be overwhelmed.

  • So, I said to her,

  • "forget what I said. Let's just say you're really going to start exercising.

  • You're going to do it regularly. How would you do it? What's involved with exercise?"

  • "What's involved with exercise?"

  • "What do you focus on?" She goes, "Well,

  • if I was going to have to work out regularly,

  • I'd have to find a club to join."

  • I said, "OK, so then what?" She goes, "Well,

  • you want to know the whole process!?"

  • "Yes, tell me the whole process, what it would take to exercise." She goes, "Oh my God,

  • I'd have to get on the Web and search for all the exercise places around my home.

  • And then I'd have to look through those and say 'which one is probably the closest, or

  • which one is the probably nicest?' and I don't really know so I'd have to search on the web

  • and like read about each of them and get a sense and see the pictures of the place, but of course

  • you know, it's never really the way they show it to you. They always show you the best pictures.

  • It's not really that nice.

  • So then, I have to get in my car

  • and I've got to find these places. So you know, I've got to Google the location and look it up

  • and then I drive there and you know,

  • a lot of times the instructions are wrong on Google.

  • So sure enough, I get to the place; it's not even the right place and then I have to call the place on my cell phone.

  • Then after I call the place, I've got to write down the directions. Of course, I probably don't have a pen.

  • I mean, you know how it is when you're driving.

  • And so finally, I get a pen, I jot down the directions, try to remember in my mind and I get to the place

  • and now I've got to get a ticket--you know how you get that ticket--and then I've got to go find a parking space.

  • And then I find a parking space, and what do I gotta do? Now, I've gotta go into this place. And when you go into the place

  • you can't just go look around. They want to escort you, don't they?

  • Some salesperson wants to escort me, so I've got to go with the salesperson.

  • They walk me around and show me

  • the locker room and they show me this and they show me that and they show me all the stuff.

  • And let's say I want to buy it here!

  • I can't just give them a credit card. They want me to fill out a little application like

  • I'm two years old again. I'm in high school.

  • Oh, c'mon, give me a break!

  • And then I fill out the application. I've got to pay them and then they want to sell me a

  • ten million year membership and I just want to try this for six months.

  • And then after all that, then they want to take a picture that looks worse when you take it

  • than your driver's license.

  • Plus, after that, now what do I do? Now I've got to flash the card, go in to work out. What do I got to do

  • to work out? I've got to take off all my clothes, I've got to hang them up in this tiny little locker where

  • my stuff doesn't really fit and it's going to get wrinkled and I know it's going to fall off and it's going to be wrinkled.

  • It's going to be terrible.

  • So, let's say now I do that, and I go to the first station. I've got to figure out which station

  • to go, so now they want to give me some trainer who's going to tell me what to do.

  • But let's say I do it on my own.

  • I go for a station and somebody's sitting-- some sweaty, smelly person

  • who gets up and they've got sweat all over, so I've got to take my towel

  • and I've got to wipe it all off and then

  • now I've got to adjust the weights and then I don't know what the right weight is and I've got to adjust it again.

  • Get the hassle of figuring out how to adjust it. Finally, do my exercise and then I've got to

  • wipe the thing off and then I've got to find a second station and

  • maybe there's somebody there. Maybe it's all sweaty and I don't know the numbers and

  • after I do all these--one station, after station after station, after station, now I've got to go

  • to the locker room

  • and take off my sweaty clothes, which I'm gonna put in a bag which I know is going to stink up my car.

  • And then, I've got to go in and take a shower

  • and maybe I'll first do a steam room or something, but then I'm gonna see body parts

  • of other people I don't even want to see

  • and then I've got to go and I've got to do my hair and do my makeup all over again, I've got to start

  • all over again with my makeup. I've got to do the whole thing, you know, all these little pieces.

  • And then I've got to put on my now-wrinkled clothes and now I can't even just leave.

  • I've got to go to the front and get my ticket stamped so I don't have to pay for it and then I've got to find my car

  • which I've forgot where it is.

  • And then I've got to show it to the guy and then I drive out.

  • That's what it takes to workout.

  • Well, what does it take to eat?

  • Pfft. Just do it.

  • "What do you mean, 'just do it'?" "Well, I don't know, tell me what kind you want?"

  • "Italian." "OK, I know 12 places. Let's go."

  • "Well, what do you mean?"

  • See, eating is one "chunk."

  • Exercising is 3,229

  • where every little step of what I've got to do I think about all the consequences

  • and the elements and the pieces

  • and that's why they don't do it.

  • They're "over-chunked."

  • What you focus on, you feel.

  • What you feel, you are moved to somehow actuate.

And most of your stress is because you're thinking about too many things at once.

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