By far, this is the strangest motivation strategy I have ever elicited. I had to go through the elicitation process twice, because I simply couldn’t believe it. I tried it myself, and obviously – it worked. But I am surely not going to try it out again. At first, I thought that my friend should visit a professional for his mental abuse by which he drives himself… but then again, hey – we’re all different. If he likes it this way, who am I to say what’s better.

Here’s the story – Jeff (a fictitious name, of course; his real name’s Jonah), a friend of mine from around here, one of the most determined guys you’d ever meet. We started working out together in the gym, and I noticed a strange pattern in his weight-lifting behavior. He would get “psyched” when he was about to start lifting, and then he would push himself pretty strongly.

Now, I didn’t get this fully until we started jogging together. I simply couldn’t run in his pace. Even though we did interval trainings (there’s another post on this method, by the way), he would run as if someone is chasing him… and in the “rest” interval, he would simply run just a bit slower. Of course, after 3 or 4 rounds he would get exhausted and start walking.

Being curious, as usually, I had to ask about it all. In the gym, he’s slamming the weights away in every repetition forcefully; while doing interval sprints, he’s pushing the term “cardio” to “psycho-cardio”…

His answer, after some investigation, was that he’s just motivating himself this way. In fact, after explaining to him about images he can see inside his head, which brought me of course some strange looks from him, but later on he was more than a bit surprised. Guiding him through the auditory – visual – kinesthetic models of re-representation of the world around him, he got a bit anxious. And I still wondered why.

Eventually, I elicited this motivation strategy from him:

To make sure he does the best he can during every weight-lifting set, he talks to himself and visualize a action-film type of scene. Someone is chasing him… or he’s being bullied by skinheads… and so on. Sometimes it’s even actual scenes from the movies, just that he’s fully associated as the actor that is being chased…

Now, I tried this one myself too after eliciting it. I can tell you this – IT IS SCARY AS HELL. You hold 75kg of weight above your chest, and your whole body is suddenly driven with adrenaline, your jaws clamp together, your facial muscles tighten and you just want to break free… you know that before you can let it go, you must finish 10 or 12 repetitions and you slam them so fast just to get this whole kinesthetic feeling outside your body.

Believe me when I tell you – just don’t try this one. It’s not only exhausting, it’s freighting, it puts all the systems in your body, mind and soul into a whole lot of defense mechanisms. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s how chronically angry people evolve. When you can’t release (or don’t or think you shouldn’t) that feeling and vent it outside, it can spin inside and build anchors all over the place for your future.

It’s been the same in jogging. We took a run, and I only completed 2 rounds before falling down feeling disappointed and scared. It’s a shi**y strategy! But it works for Jeff, and he claims he has no problems with it at all.

After this experience, I started thinking about the whole concept of having such strategies in other contexts. I know quite a lot of married people who have a shi**t set of strategies for their relationship. I’ve never been married, so I don’t let myself advising others who’ve been where I haven’t yet. But there are many others… students who cram in the last night before an exam (cough…), motivating themselves to drink 12 cups of coffee in 4 hours to complete a chapter by morning… mothers who criticize their 13 years old child for his clumsy sport-ability, thinking that’s a way to get him to lose some weight and get in shape… Bosses who keep pushing their employees, forgetting that giving a compliment is not a bad thing in business… or worst – employees that laugh from their bosses dry (and not funny) jokes…

These strategies and many others are all around us. Maybe we should be more careful not pick them up into our own toolbox. What do you say?