405. Doing the Right Thing for the Wrong Reason

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 405, Doing the Right Thing for the Wrong Reason.

Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master-certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me I can show you how. Let’s go.

Hello, everybody, welcome to the podcast. I am excited to talk to you about this concept that has been really powerful for me in my life in terms of making the little tweaks that feel like they don’t really matter, but they create tremendously different results in the end. That’s what I love about coaching, we get to work in that space of fine-tuning. And it’s sort of like the concept that small hinges swing big doors. It’s easy to neglect and not pay attention to these things. And there’s nothing wrong with not doing it. It’s just that the effect can be so exponentially powerful that it’s fun to do it.

So I do want to preface by saying, using the words right and wrong is sort of an extreme and I don’t mean it to be that way. I just needed to keep the title brief and give you an idea what it was going to be about. But the truth is what we’re going to be talking about today isn’t so much, is this the right reason for doing that thing or the wrong reason. I want you to think of it more as is this useful? Is this my best reason? Do I like this reason?

And the truth is, you might have reasons that you like for doing things that I’m like, “I don’t like that reason for me.” There is actually not right or wrong reasons for doing things. There is just different reasons that will get you a different result in the end. And I’m going to talk to you about what to do if you recognize that some of your reasons aren’t your best reasons, aren’t getting you what you want ultimately. And we’ll dive into that. But the easiest way for me to teach this is to use examples like most things I teach.

I have chosen things to talk about that I think most people would agree that just on the surface these are good things to do, these are useful behaviors that I don’t know that anyone would say there was anything wrong with any of them. And in fact we might say, “That’s a really good thing to be doing. I want to be doing that in my life.” And yet, if your motivation doesn’t serve you, sometimes taking that behavior from certain motivations might actually be doing more harm than good.

Okay, so to begin with, let’s talk about being on time. I don’t know very many people that would say, “I don’t want to be on time. I want to be late to everything.” I know people that would say, “I don’t really care about being on time. I don’t think it matters that much, or I’m not good at being on time, I don’t know how to be on time.” But I don’t know anyone that would be like, “It’s wrong to be on time. It’s a bad thing to be on time.” And in fact, most people that I talk to about this topic fall in the opposite camp of being, I think what is overly strict about you have to be on time.

And it’s always fascinating to me what we make it mean when either we’re not on time or when other people aren’t on time. So much judgment happens around this one little simple topic. “I think it’s so rude”, this is what people say, “I think it’s so rude when people are not on time. It’s disrespectful. It’s dishonoring of the other person’s time. If you say you’re going to be somewhere you better be there.” I just want us to pause and consider for a minute, I like to be on time by the way. I’m a fan of being on time, but what is the reason why?

Why are you so worried about being on time? Why are you really focused on it? Why do you make that an important part of your routine? Because it doesn’t just happen automatically, something that takes focus and a little bit of effort. If your motivation is fear based, if it is about what other people will think and whether or not they will judge you, you’re going to get a different result than if your motivation is just that’s who I choose to be. And I’m even okay with you keeping the part where you are like, “I think it’s respectful. I choose to be respectful of other people by being on time.”

But I would question the part that’s if other people aren’t on time for me, they’re disrespecting me. Because that may or may not be the case. In fact in most cases my guess is people aren’t sitting around going, “I could be on time but I don’t really respect her so I don’t think I will.” What’s actually happening is something else. They weren’t paying attention at the time. They have little kids that had something come up. They’re just not great at time management in general. It’s actually not about you.

So if you have a lot of judgment of other people when they’re late then it’s going to be you being on time from a fear based place because you’re worried about other people judging you the way you judge them. And that’s going to get you a different result than if you clean that up and you decide people are late for all kinds of reasons, it’s none of my business. I choose to be on time when I can and sometimes it’s not going to happen and that’s okay. It’s just who I choose to be and people can think whatever they want.

I’m always fascinated by people saying, “I was late and then I had to walk in and sit in the front row, it was so embarrassing.” And I’m always interested like, “Tell me why that’s embarrassing.” And sometimes it’s just, “I don’t like everybody’s eyes on me. I don’t like being the center of attention.” But other times it’s, “They’re going to see that I’m late.” And I was like, “Well, yeah, but so what? What do you think? Do you think people think you’re perfect?” Because I don’t think anyone’s perfect. I don’t have any judgment of people when they’re late.

I can’t say I don’t every now and then get annoyed if I’m waiting for someone and they’re very late, but overall I’m not very judgmental of people for being late, which helps me be on time from a clean place. If and when it happens, which it does on occasion, that I’m running late, I’m not really worried about what people are thinking. And they might be judging me and I’m okay with it. So being on time, good thing to do, but what is your reason why? Are you operating from a motivation that serves you, because I think I got sidetracked.

Let me just be clear. Your result will change and what I mean by that isn’t that you won’t still be on time. You can totally be on time from a fear based place, but your overall experience will change. Your overall level of peace in your life especially around this topic, how you feel in general. And I don’t know about you but when I am not operating from a clean place then I get really snappy and mean with my family if I’m trying go somewhere with them and they’re running late. Now we’re mad at each other, we’re snapping or yelling at each other.

That’s not what I want. My favorite is when people get coaching on being on time for church and they’re like, “We just can’t be on time and then we’re all yelling at each other and we’re all mad.” And I’m like, “Why are we going to church in the first place?” To feel the spirit, to worship God. And so yelling at each other about whether or not we get there on time is the opposite of that. What if we clean that up a little and we just decide, we’re going to try to be on time and if it doesn’t happen it’s not worth getting upset over. Anyway I could tell a lot of stories about this, but that’s my first example. Let’s go to another one.

The next example I want to use, which this is probably a really obvious one that everyone can relate to, is around working on your health and your fitness, eating right, dieting, watching what you’re eating, exercising more, trying to change your habits around food or exercise. I don’t know about you, but I’ve done a lot of that from not very useful motivation in the past. I’ve done it from body loathing and self-loathing and insecurity and fear and shame and all of that energy.

And the truth is we can get some results, meaning we can change our bodies, we can get ourselves to take some action, to go to the gym, to eat better or whatever from that fear based motivation. The only problem is we don’t get the overall result that we want. What is the overall result that we want? Yes, to have healthy bodies but also to enjoy being with ourselves in our own heads, to respect ourselves more once we get to the end of a goal like that or we achieve a goal like that. Rather than like ourselves less, to be more energized, more excited about life, not defeated and frustrated and tired.

This is why a lot of people get to whatever was their fitness goal and then it’s really disappointing because if you’ve been beating yourself up to get there then you’re not going to suddenly arrive and love yourself overnight. You might do the work on your body but what are you doing to your spirit and what are you doing to your mental and emotional health? So what is the reason to get healthy? It’s complicated, this is one I’m still working on, but I would say just because we can, because we recognize the value of these bodies of ours.

I was on a girls’ trip recently and I bought a really expensive handbag, which I have never done before. I have never bought a handbag that was a lot of money just because I don’t know, I don’t really value that and it feels kind of extravagant. And it’s just not what I’ve chosen do with my money but I saw this handbag that I really liked and it was a really expensive designer handbag. And my girlfriends are like, “You should get it.” And so I did. And do you know what I’m doing with that handbag? I’m taking very good care of it.

I don’t take it to the movies and set it on the sticky floor. In fact I saved the little bag, they come with a cloth bag to store it in. And I’m making sure to not leave gum wrappers and let my kids drop Goldfish into it because I value that handbag. It’s very expensive and I love it and it’s beautiful and I want to keep it that way. That’s a good motivator for taking care of your body because you value it, because it’s amazing and beautiful and you want to be very cautious and careful with it.

Not because you’re going to impress your ex-boyfriend, not because you’re going to love yourself more, if you could just hate yourself enough first. See what I’m saying? Different motivation will get you a different result.

Here’s one I love to help people with and a lot of women especially, sometimes men but women especially struggle with this one. Service, serving others, this might be serving in your church calling. It might be just doing a favor for a neighbor or helping out at the school, volunteering some place, agreeing to help someone in some way that they ask. Taking care of the family etc. even just being a mom, raising kids. Service, what is your motivation? This is a tough one.

If you are motivated by people pleasing energy you will get a different result than if you are motivated by something more useful like this is who I want to be, I want to give back in this way. I think I could help here and I like helping, pick me. Now, I don’t know anyone that’s perfect at serving from that place. Don’t beat yourself up, but if you’ve got a lot of people pleasing energy happening you’re going to get a different result. You know what I mean by that?

The person that you’re serving or the people in general that you’re serving might like it just as much when you do it from a people pleasing energy. They might not know the difference but your result will be different. What you get out of that service will change based on your motivation. In the LDS church we talk about or we read in the scriptures I should say that the Lord wants a willing heart and that we receive blessings when we do it with a willing heart. And I don’t think that’s because the Lord is sitting back going, “Oh, well, your heart wasn’t in the right place so I’m not going to bless you.”

I don’t think that’s what it means at all. I think what it means is that you will not get the same experience, the same transformation, the same feelings of confidence and being proud of yourself and grateful to yourself. And that expansive abundant feeling that’s possible when we serve is not as likely if we’re doing it from resentment. Instead we just build more resentment when we do it from resentment or from people pleasing. And by people pleasing I just mean trying to manipulate what other people think of us, afraid of people judging us if we don’t do it, all of that kind of nonsense.

So service, not a bad thing to do, nothing wrong with serving from resentment. It’s just not going to get you the same result as if you serve from something more useful like desire.

How about planning? Where are my planners at? I love someone who’s really good at planning because I’ve gotten pretty good at it but it’s not my natural default state. I would much rather be organic and messy and figure things out as I go. So planning is a great thing, nothing wrong with planning. In fact the more detailed you can plan oftentimes the better. But what is your reason why? When I see planners operating from a fear based motivator, I get nervous for them.

I’ll tell you what that fear based motivator normally is for a planner is a desire to try to control and predict outcomes. Can anyone relate to this? I can even relate to this, even as a non-planner. If you are trying to control the world outside of you through planning, brace yourself because what happens to plans? They often don’t work out or they have to get changed or they just don’t even turn out the way we thought that they would. So I love a planner.

I want you to keep planning. I just want you to do it with also the motivation of I am doing this because I want to be prepared and I want to make decisions ahead of time and I want to accomplish more in my life, but I am able to be flexible and change the plan if necessary. Let’s just see what happens.  Do you see what I’m saying? Have a plan, but keep your motivator like this is a useful skill that as humans we have and other animals don’t. But the plan might go out the window because I don’t control the world even if I have a great plan.

I’ve got this amazing team. I love my team. My husband and I were just saying how we wish they lived near us so we could hang out with them more often. But at any rate, I’ve got some great planners on my team and sometimes they will start planning things for the whole year and which I love. And then I always say, “Don’t forget it might all change.” They’re really good, they’re like, “We know.” Not because I’m just going to change my mind on a whim usually, occasionally I do that.

But mostly it’s, “Okay, this thing didn’t pan out the way we thought it would or this thing is actually taking off that we weren’t expecting. So now we’re going to go ahead and change the plan and you’ve got to be flexible in your planning. How about hard work? Nothing wrong with working hard. This is what people tell me when they are often entrepreneurs or maybe you have a job somewhere and you’re like, “I’m working so hard. I’m putting in all these extra hours. I’m putting in all this effort.”

And I say, “Okay, nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with a little hard work, but why? Why are you doing it? What is your reason why?” If you’re doing it because you’re pretty sure that once you achieve something then you’ll be able to be proud of yourself or believe that you’re legitimate, then we might have some work to do. Or if you’re doing it because you’re just sure that if you don’t your company won’t value you and you might get fired, then I don’t know, let’s examine that. Those are scarcity fear based reasons. Do you see what I’m saying?

So what do we want to do instead? I’m all for a little bit of hustle and hard work sometimes. I’m even for working harder or longer hours from time to time than I normally would, but only if I like my reason. Only if I’m doing it for, you know what would be cool, let’s see if I could do this thing and I know that it’s going to be temporary. What you don’t want to do and I see entrepreneurs do this over and over again. They hustle and grind their way into a business that’s successful, but only if they keep hustling and grinding and now they’re stuck.

Because if they stop the hustle and grind the business can’t sustain itself. You don’t want to create that kind of a situation in your life or yes, if you are putting in long hours and over-delivering for your boss then that’s what he or she probably expects. And now we’ve got to go back and say, “You know what, I actually can’t do that forever. I don’t want to do that forever.” And we have to re-establish things. So I’m all for extra hard work at times. And I’m all for working hard all the time within the parameters that you set up, but what’s the reason why?

Ideally it would be because it’s fun to see what you’re capable of, because it’s fun to push yourself sometimes and see what you could achieve, but that fun energy is going to get you a different result, meaning a different experience than that hustle, grind, stress, in a hurry to get somewhere so that we can feel good energy. This can be true too for whatever your ‘work’ is. I sometimes coach people who say, “I just never let myself sit down and rest. I’m constantly doing another project or cleaning up the house or there’s always something more to do and I never let myself rest.”

I mean on the surface you get a lot done, you’re a go getter, that’s not a bad thing. But if your reason is that you’re just not disciplined, that you have placed your value in how much of your to-do list you get checked off, that’s not going to probably create the life that you want. The life that you want is going to be filled with sometimes working really hard and sometimes learning to relax and be. Can you just be in your life? What is that like if you just choose to be and you’re not doing?

It’s really fascinating how uncomfortable that is for so many adults. So you just want to check your reason. Now, I’ve given you a whole bunch of examples and I hope I have illustrated the point here. But you might be wondering, okay so I’m pretty sure I have some reasons that I don’t like for doing a lot of these things or maybe you have other things that I didn’t discuss. What do I do about that Jody?

Here’s the thing. You’ve got to come and discuss it with me. We’ve got to take a look at the nuances. It’s not as simple as just change your reason. In some cases the way I coach a client is you need to stop doing that thing altogether for a little while until we can clean up your head. Don’t do it at all unless you can have fun doing it, unless you can do it from a useful motivation, a useful energy. I would never tell somebody that. We would just explore options. Or in other cases we can change your motivation, we can clean it up. But it’s not as simple as me just telling you, “Do it for this reason.”

We’ve got to take a look at your current reason. We’ve got to take a look at what you’re believing. We’ve got to really be tender with it in most cases. Sometimes you can just hear a new reason and latch on to it, that’s great. But in a lot of cases it requires a more fine-tuned approach. And that’s what we do in coaching. So if you are not registered for Tryout Coaching you’ve got to get registered because it’s right around the corner and the price is free. We will be sending out a replay if you can’t come live, but you’ve got to be registered to get the replay.

So head on over to jodymoore.com/trial. And I’d love to help you with this. Thanks for joining me today for Better Than Happy. And before I let you go I want to ask you a favor. If you like this podcast would you please do me a favor and make sure that you’re subscribed to it in whatever podcast app you like to use. If you don’t know how to subscribe, ask someone in your life, they’ll probably know but it’s usually in the upper righthand corner, there’s a little plus arrow or something that you can click on.

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So thank you in advance for your help. I love you. I will see you next time. Bye bye.

Hey there, if you enjoy this podcast or even if you just find that it sort of piques your curiosity, or it makes you think, you’re going to love the book that I wrote. It’s called Better Than Happy: Connecting with Divinity Through Conscious Thinking. And it’s available now at Amazon in print or kindle version. Or if you want me to read it to you, head over to audible and grab the audio version. And why not grab a copy for your sister, your best friend, or your mom while you’re there too. Just saying.