Not Feeling Motivated? That's Because Your Purpose Sucks (But We Can Fix That)

Jeremy (00:23.022)
All right, thank you for being there. Zach is off today. We are joined today by a special guest, my coach, my friend, Joe Villegas. Joe, I'm so psyched to be doing this with you, man. You have been instrumental in some big changes in my life. So tell the folks who you are, a little bit about you, so they know that you are someone you should trust as we spend the next 30 minutes or so chatting about motivation.

Joe Villegas (00:40.942)
Yeah, I'll try my best to convince them here in a couple seconds, but definitely appreciate Appreciate you have me on you know for those listening. My name is Joe Villegas kind of longtime nutrition strength coach worked with folks kind of from all over everything from stay-at-home parents to pro UFC fighters anything in between and I've had the absolute pleasure of getting to work with our very own and Jeremy greater here So just pumped to be along like really excited to be on the episode here with you today kind of Guest hosting and excited to see where it goes

Jeremy (00:44.21)
Hahaha

Jeremy (01:10.334)
Yeah, me too. Well, here's what we're talking about. We're talking about motivation. This is something that I have spent way too much of my life waiting for to make the changes that were necessary. We hear from people all the time. How do I get motivated? I'm just waiting for motivation to show up. Maybe on Monday, maybe on New Year's, maybe next month. And the motivation typically never comes or if it does, it's fleeting.

This topic is coming up because we actually got an interesting question from a listener, and his name is Nick. And so let's hear from Nick now, because I thought that this was a very poignant question. I wanted to hear it from directly from him rather than having me share his words on his behalf.

Jeremy (02:35.202)
All right, so Joe, you're the professional here. I have my ideas, but you actually work with people on this. And I think there's two interesting points here. One is the motivation itself. How do you get it? How do you keep it? Is it even important? But also that tracking. And when you're talking about wellness, wellness is very squishy. Weight loss, there's numbers. Inches, there's numbers. Miles, there's numbers. But wellness, it's sort of the squishy, like I'm feeling more well today. How do you help people with this?

Joe Villegas (02:54.374)
Right.

Joe Villegas (03:04.358)
For sure, great question. I'm glad it's all dumped on me now. I gotta do all the work today, but it's fine. It's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you and Zach get the day off. No, all good, all good. So it... Ha ha ha.

Jeremy (03:08.298)
Yeah, because you're the experts. The light is shining on you now.

Joe Villegas (03:19.03)
It's interesting though, and it's very interesting timing because as you know, I have my own show, which you were on, which is awesome, and I just had a guest on. He was a former Navy SEAL, real super cool dude, and he told his story about getting through SEAL training. And he actually, this first time through, he quit during Hell Week.

which have people seen that kind of like on, you know, YouTuber TV, right there, wet and sandy, carrying logs and boats and all that stuff. And he said the second time through.

He found himself literally it was the same day in training around the same time Sitting in the same spot and he pushed through and he made it and I was like dude Like take me to that take me to that point in time Like what was the difference and he goes he was the first time I went through training or tried to he's like I was motivated He's like I was motivated to be a seal He goes I just it waned I got tired delirious couldn't do it and I quit

He said, the second time I went through training, I wasn't motivated. He's like, I was inspired. And he said that his grandmother had raised him and he really connected with the idea of like.

Jeremy (04:24.619)
Hmm

Joe Villegas (04:32.214)
I want to show my grandmother I can be somebody kind of break this he kind of you know Grew up in a broken home and came from a really rough area. This is like DC in the 90s You know, like not a great place and he said I really wanted, you know kind of break that cycle and show her I could be somebody and That's what like pushed me through that moment and got me through so I think when we talk about motivation right at least from my Perception of it is it tends to be for most people very like

Jeremy (04:43.66)
Yeah.

Joe Villegas (05:02.168)
motivate you right it's my goal motivates me or I want to look good at the beach or whatever it's you need to kind of push yourself down the road to follow whatever that thing is versus if you're inspired you're pulled to do that thing right so I think inherently like from okay

Jeremy (05:14.495)
Yeah.

Jeremy (05:20.366)
I think there's a difference between.

I was just, I think there's a difference between motivation and purpose. I think in this case, inspiration and purpose are interchangeable. I think motivation is that feeling that you get once every, you know, 37 months where you're like, I've, I could probably go for a run today. I feel pretty good. And people wait for that to show up every day and not the, like, I, there's, there's something I have to be. There's someone I have to become. There's something I need to do to make this life more enjoyable or.

Joe Villegas (05:27.899)
Yes.

Joe Villegas (05:39.04)
Yeah.

Jeremy (05:53.046)
worth living, right? That's that purpose. That's that thing that drives you that no matter what you feel like, no matter what the mood is, or your lack of motivation, you're like, Nope, I said, I'm the guy that does this. I got to go do this today.

Joe Villegas (06:07.119)
Yeah, so it's...

It's more like intrinsic, right? It's more within you than it is, like motivation is like fleeting thing, right? It's kind of how I feel. Like, yeah, you might feel motivated for the moment, but what's gonna carry you through is like the discipline you build by doing the thing. So typically speaking, like if I'm working with somebody, they have their goal set up, whatever it might be, right? Like, actually, you're probably a good example of this when we work together, right? Like you had a more of a longer term goal, and what did we do? We like cranked that thing down

Jeremy (06:12.3)
Yeah.

Jeremy (06:21.9)
Yeah.

Jeremy (06:32.63)
Yeah. Yep.

Joe Villegas (06:40.016)
to the point where like all I wanted you to do was not drink that much coffee you know what I mean and like and you're like I can do I could do that like I don't even need motivation to do that like that's ridiculous I was like great and you did it and it game changer right so I think motivation is great but it's fleeting it shouldn't necessarily be the focus because you're not gonna have it all the time but if you can link your goal if you can dovetail your goal to a

Jeremy (06:45.279)
Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. Game changer.

Jeremy (07:04.005)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Villegas (07:08.486)
then you don't need the motivation. And when it does come, then that's like a A plus day, right, where you crush it. But the days that you're not motivated, the days like on your worst day, what's gonna push you to do it then? If you can figure out what that is, then you're good pretty much any day. And what's interesting, one more point I wanna share is I have a client right now, and I won't say her name, you know, kinda keep her privacy, but she has three different goals that we're working on together.

Jeremy (07:33.954)
Sure.

Joe Villegas (07:39.42)
One is wellness related, the other two have nothing to do. One's like her business and one's like relationship related. So it's like very spread out. And she was like, I don't understand why I keep like self sabotaging my wellness goals, like getting shredded and all this stuff. And I said, okay, let's look at your goals. Like let's look at the things that you want, right? So she has this business goal, her health goal and this relationship thing.

And I said, let's put them in order of priority. And so she said, business is like number one. Okay, great. And then her body was number two and relationship was number three, right? And as we're going through this, I'm like, okay, like why is your business the number one? Like, why does that get all the attention? And she's like, well, it's my source of income. It's fun to me. Like, it's fun to build. I connect with my clients and like, that's important to me. I feel like special, like, you know, running my thing.

Jeremy (08:22.09)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Villegas (08:34.6)
anymore it kind of like ticked all the boxes for her right and so I said okay if your business is like that big of a deal to you right and you really care about those people you help could you tie your health goal to that purpose meaning like would you achieving your health goal mean anything to those people that you're already serving and she said yes

Jeremy (08:37.506)
Yeah.

Jeremy (08:55.392)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Villegas (09:03.162)
Because some of them are, like the folks that she works with are dealing with addiction. And she herself has dealt with addiction. And so the whole kind of idea of it is like, hey, if you can, but like if I can overcome this addiction and I can better myself beyond like even a normal expectation of someone trying to get fit, you can do it too.

Jeremy (09:03.232)
Mm.

Joe Villegas (09:27.37)
And so the second that she connected those dots of like, oh, well, by me achieving this health goal, I'm setting the example for these people that I help in my business, it changed the game for her. So I believe the inspiration's there.

Jeremy (09:28.055)
Yeah.

Jeremy (09:35.565)
Yep.

Jeremy (09:41.618)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think Yeah, I think there's two things just talking about those conversations that you have with people the people she's now going to interact with because of that change. She's going to help them the way that my conversation with you about coffee completely changed everything because it opened up other doors. The other conversation I had was with Tony Horton, the creator of the P 90 x workout, you had him on your show as well. I talked to him a couple years ago and

Joe Villegas (09:51.729)
Yes.

Joe Villegas (10:00.998)
Yes. Love Tony. Yep.

Jeremy (10:05.258)
He is the one that really kicked the door open for me when we had this conversation and I asked him this very thing like How like you know, I hate going to the gym. I don't want to do it. It sucks How do I do it anyways? And here's what he told me

Jeremy (10:21.383)
if it'll play.

Joe Villegas (10:23.619)
Fingers crossed.

Jeremy (14:27.328)
Nobody has more fun than Tony Horton.

Joe Villegas (14:30.002)
I love that guy. He is the man.

Jeremy (14:33.294)
But that's

Joe Villegas (14:49.53)
Yeah. Yes.

Jeremy (15:02.562)
how do you and I've struggled on this show talking to Zach about it because we talk all the time about just focus on being 1% better every day. What the hell does that mean? How does it What does it mean to be 1% better? I can go to the gym and I can lift five more pounds on the bar that day I lifted more look at me I grew I got stronger. I can run an extra couple of you know 100 meters or whatever and oh look I got farther. But that 1% improvement every day.

Joe Villegas (15:10.612)
Yeah.

Jeremy (15:27.414)
I don't know if that's something that you do, Joe, in your work, but how do you quantify like a little better every day?

Joe Villegas (15:33.826)
Yeah, for sure. And I don't personally, for me, I don't see it as like, oh, I lifted five more pounds today, or I walked 1000 more steps. It's not, I don't quantify it like that. For me personally, I have a list of my daily rituals. So like, if nothing else happens today, as long as I tick as many of those boxes as possible, if I get them all, it's great. I have like seven of them.

If I get them all, that's still a great day. And they're very, like, if you looked at the list, you're like, oh, that's it. Like, it's, I mean, on a different screen, I can read them to you right now, though. I'll tell you right now. It's funny, I don't have them all memorized because I look at it every day. But it's, I do, I have a little 20 minute.

Jeremy (16:02.015)
Mm hmm.

Jeremy (16:19.602)
I have my little project management tool. I do the same thing. I track them every day check the box of all the things I did

Joe Villegas (16:23.77)
Yeah, yeah. And so I have a little like walking, it's not a meditation, but it's kind of just kind of prime your brain a little bit. Like I practice some gratitude, visualize, I get my moving because I'm walking. I do that, okay. I train, I lift weights, not every single day. I might do like a yoga on a day or whatever.

I have certain work responsibilities, like client check-ins and things. I have to get that done. And then I have a couple personal development things. So right now I'm working on a coaching certification. So it's like get those exercises done for that. That's literally it. It's a very small list. But that's the idea. It's like if the whole day goes to hell...

Jeremy (17:00.782)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Villegas (17:03.662)
and I have at least checked most of those boxes, I know I'm moving in the right trajectory. So I don't see it as like, oh, can I quantify if I got one, like in that question, right, from the fan or whatever, it was, what's that point, Nick, from Nick, what's that point 1%, like it's not going to be perceptible. It's not, like it's perceptible over very long time horizons.

Jeremy (17:19.938)
From Nick, out.

Jeremy (17:27.17)
Yeah.

Joe Villegas (17:31.822)
Right? And so when we talk about like, like what to do, the way that I kind of see it, right, and if you remind me sharing an analogy, is like your brain operates like a thermostat. Like your mind operates like a thermostat. Right? So like the thermostat in your room, if it's set to 70 degrees, when it gets too hot, the air conditioning kicks on and knocks you back down. If it gets too cold, the heat kicks on and brings you back up.

Jeremy (17:33.633)
Yeah.

Joe Villegas (17:57.798)
you have a default temperature that you operate at. So if you decide to start a new plan and it's loaded with like, you're gonna work out seven days a week and you're gonna meditate for an hour and you're gonna split a bagel with a trash can for your diet and do all this crap, you have kicked up the heat so high and you're meant, yeah.

Jeremy (18:14.42)
Right.

And you're gonna do it all at 4 a.m. because that's what all the most successful guys do, right?

Joe Villegas (18:22.158)
Right, right, and you wear your red light glasses and your finger shoes and whatever, toe shoes, whatever. But you do all that stuff, but what happens is you have now kicked up the heat on your mental thermostat so high that your brain's like, this is not us, this is not what we do. And you start to self-sabotage in little ways, right? Like maybe you take a day off here, you have some cheesecake there, and eventually you start to bring yourself back down.

Jeremy (18:26.546)
Yeah.

Joe Villegas (18:48.102)
But the opposite is true. And this is, I think, the root of the question for people. It's like, they get to a point, the other direction, where things get so, I don't wanna say bad, but like they look in the mirror, they don't like what they see, or they're falling behind at work, they're not making the money they wanna make, and they kinda hit this threshold of like, I gotta get my ass in gear and get my shit together, and they start to come back up, you know, back up to baseline again. So the question becomes, how do I reset where my default is?

so that I'm at a place where I'm always operating at that level, right? Where like ideal, like best version of me would operate. And the only two ways that I have found to do that, one is like a very significant emotional event. You know, like someone has a heart attack and they survive it and now they have a new lease on life and they get healthy. Okay, we don't want that. The other way is like through conditioning, where you just do it all the time. This is why I have daily rituals. The...

Jeremy (19:34.818)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Villegas (19:47.254)
trick is those rituals need to be so like small and like almost imperceptible. Otherwise you start to ring that thermostat alarm in your head and you go the other way and now you're not motivated because it's too hard it's too much it's like I'm tired of the kids are running around like maniacs like it's got to be like little things and so I tell people I literally just gave a webinar yesterday for a company

Jeremy (19:59.992)
Yep.

Joe Villegas (20:14.258)
part of it, it was a nutrition webinar, but part of it had some goal setting, like how do we attack this on your own personal level? And the main step in the goals was like, whatever you wrote down to do is like reduce, reduce. Like make it as silly easy, like as easy as possible, to the point where you're like, this looks stupid, like it's not gonna work, but it will work because you can do it and you don't need to be motivated to do it.

Jeremy (20:22.815)
Yeah.

Jeremy (20:29.288)
Mm hmm.

Jeremy (20:33.235)
Right, right.

Jeremy (20:43.21)
Mm hmm.

Joe Villegas (20:44.672)
and then as you get more consistent and you feel better about it you can turn up the intensity. Right? So yeah.

Jeremy (20:52.126)
Yeah. So two things about this. When this question came in, I was thinking about it. And ironically, I was I was moving my car around that we live in this little gated community, I was moving the car. And I don't usually buckle the seatbelt because I'm driving like 200 meters and whatever. But I literally I heard this question, I was thinking about I'm driving the car and the little alarm goes off saying, Hey, dummy, your seatbelt's not on. And it was the perfect analogy to me because I was like, for me to change my behavior right now.

this has to be less comfortable than the seatbelt. So in order to make this annoying problem in my life go away, I need to make a change. Which is more comfortable? Listening to this for the next two minutes while I drive around, or putting the damn seatbelt on to shut it up. Same thing, I think, with life. Like Which discomfort do you wanna live with? The one where you're overweight, you're miserable, you feel like crap every day, you crawl out of bed, you crawl into bed at the end of the day because you're just exhausted and worn out.

Or are you a little worn out because you went to the gym and your muscles are taxed, but you have a little more energy, you have a little more focus. Like these little changes that we talk about, there has to be a level of it's less uncomfortable than staying stuck where I am and feeling miserable. I think that's the thing that people need is to figure out which discomfort do I wanna live with.

Joe Villegas (22:12.238)
Yeah, and what's cool, like the light at the end of the tunnel and all this, right, is if we kind of like set motivation aside for a second, like we know what's going to come around, you know, it's like Haley's Comet, it'll come around sometimes, like every once in a while, like we'll get it, but yeah.

Jeremy (22:26.208)
About every 75 years as it turns out.

Joe Villegas (22:28.174)
Approximately right but if we if we focus more on like the discipline up front like hey set a ritual for yourself Like people like I'm a morning guy. So I have like my morning routine Whatever You don't got to do at all Like these people on it, you know Instagram say like you got to get up at 4am I am and run 50 miles Make your routine fit what your goals are But give yourself a couple simple things to do that, you know, you could do on your worst day You could do when you're traveling you could do like anytime

And you'll find that the momentum will bring about more motivation. Cause you'll see some success and that'll bring it versus trying to get the motivation first and then going for that. That makes sense. Right. So it's give yourself a couple of little things to do and work through that. And then as you build the confidence, as you build the experience, you'll be motivated to do more like beyond of what you've done. Cause you have some success under your belt. Right.

Jeremy (23:09.462)
Yep.

Joe Villegas (23:23.766)
So that's the, I mean my biggest takeaway, I feel like I repeat myself all the time when I talk to people, is like, dude, you're just doing too much. Like you're just doing too much stuff. Like if you just break it down to like really, just a couple basic things, you can get to being complicated later, but complexity fails, simplicity scales. You gotta keep it simple. So,

Jeremy (23:24.492)
Yeah.

Jeremy (23:43.084)
Yeah.

Yeah, build the momentum rather than waiting for the motivation. Like that's the key.

Joe Villegas (23:49.966)
Yes.

Jeremy (23:52.318)
All right, good stuff, man. Thank you for sitting in today for Zach. I know he's writing some ride right now in Disney World, having a great time on our behalf. Thank you to listeners for being there. If you've gotten any value out of this conversation, please do share it with your network, either through social media or email or however you wanna share it. Just helps us accomplish our mission of helping as many people in your position as possible. You're the key to that. So please hit that share button today and come back next week to thefitmess.com for a brand new episode. Joe, before we get out of here, where can we learn more about you and your coaching services?

Joe Villegas (24:21.274)
For sure. First of all, thank you for having me. Thank you listeners for checking it out. You can check me out at resultswithjo.com or at resultswithjo on pretty much any platform. Love to have you check it out and thanks for having me on.

Jeremy (24:33.942)
We'll hit that link in the show notes as well. We'll see you next week at thefitmess.com