Transcript

Meaning #1190 · From Chad

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She didn't change a thing about her job.
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Her blood pressure dropped anyway.
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There's a story behind that. This is your daily message from
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Chad #1190 to upgrade your mental game today by telling
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yourself a better story. Because the most important story
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you hear is the story you tell yourself.
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This message is dedicated to Phil Jones.
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Here's the upgrade you tell yourself you need to get
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motivated. But upgraded thinking knows
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motivation is a myth. What is meaningful is
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motivational. Here's the story Carl Jung
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wrote. Meaning makes a great many
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things endurable. Perhaps everything.
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Dostoevsky said something close. The mystery of human existence
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lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live
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for. Neither man was writing self
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help. Meaning is not a myth.
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Science has caught up to what they already knew.
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In 2007, psychologist Alia Crumb and Ellen Langer studied 84
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hotel room attendants across 7 hotels.
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The job was physical, making beds, vacuuming, scrubbing
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bathrooms all day, every day. But when researchers asked how
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much exercise they got, most said none.
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They didn't count the work they were already doing with their
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own two hands. Crum and Langer told half the
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hotel attendants the truth. Their job already met the
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Surgeon General's guidelines for an active lifestyle.
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The other half were told nothing. 4 weeks later, nobody
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had changed their workload, their diet or their exercise
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outside work. But the informed group had lower
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weight, lower blood pressure, less body fat and a better waist
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to hip ratio. Nothing changed except the story
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they were now telling themselves about what their hands were
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already doing. Neuroscientist Emily Falk found
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the same wiring at work with health messages.
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She scanned people's brains while they watch videos
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encouraging exercise. The information alone didn't
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predict who changed their behavior afterward.
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What predicted it was activity in the part of the brain that
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decides what's personally valuable, The part that answers
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the question Does this matter? To me, the key finding was that
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a health message was more likely to lead to real behavior change
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when a person's brain treated it as personally meaningful and
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valuable. Meaning didn't follow the
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decision to act. Meaning was the decision.
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Nobody's saying belief replaces a workout or that positive
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thinking fixes a bad job, but your body is listening to the
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meaning you assign it, whether you're paying attention or not.
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The better story to tell yourself is what is meaningful
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is motivational. Tell me a story about a task you
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upgraded just by changing the meaning you gave it to from
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chadsmith@gmail.com. Send someone a text right now
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and ask them what are you doing today that matters more than
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you're giving it credit for? You can get a free copy of my
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book, The Most Powerful Story in the World, by going to from
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chad.gumroad.com. The transcript of this message
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and hundreds of others are always available at
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www.fromchad.com.