What truly makes people follow through?

[Ralph]

For the last two months I've been writing articles with empowering advice and insightful truths. Yet all the time I am aware that most people still won't follow through and use what they have learned. It's not about what you know, but what you do with what you know that makes the difference. Not people that know what to do, but those that do what they know succeed.

Heck, even I myself don't always use my own teachings. Too many times I know what to do but I come up with an excuse and settle for less. Still, do I have to be totally passionate, self-disciplined and ready-to-go all the time to ensure that I always follow through? I'm working on some simple system that will allow people to follow through on what they know they should and want to do, but they still don't do it.

This question is really bugging me lately. What is the ultimate difference between someone that does what he knows and someone that doesn't?


Perhaps it's committment? But is it all to it that there is?

Are there any common disempowering beliefs that prevent people from following through? If so, how could the knowledge be reframed so that it goes around the beliefs and will be used?

The energy level and state of consciousness is probably involved.


I'd really use some help brainstorming. Please strike up a passionate and insightful conversation

Ralph

[Swede]

In many cases what made me follow through was comparison: What will happen if I do NOT follow trough? The answer was that I would end up in unbearable misery. Hence, I had to do everything in my power to move on.

[Ralph]

Originally Posted by Swede

In many cases what made me follow through was comparison: What will happen if I do NOT follow trough? The answer was that I would end up in unbearable misery. Hence, I had to do everything in my power to move on.

So generalizing - it's the pain or pleasure that drives our lives, and what we associate pain and pleasure to, as Tony Robbins teaches. Thanks and please bring up more

[Brutha]

Maybe your distinction between knowledge and action is a bad model?

How would your world view change if you would believe that there isn't such a thing as knowledge?
What would the world work like if there would be only habits and interactions that provide feedback which in turn change habits?

[SimonaRich]

Passion for something empowers you, joy empowers you, happiness empowers you.

When you do something with passion, you draw others to you and they perceive you as a great human being.

Self-doubt disempowers, doubt in general is very disempowering and should be avoided at all costs.

Negative self-talk disempowers, boredom disempowers and all other negative activities/emotions are disempowering.

[bbdream8]

Hi Ralph,

Follow through is an act of taking action and what can we do to increase the percentage of possibility to take action?

I believe the carrot and the cane method is one of the best method to do this. By knowing the rewards when we are able to follow through and also the "negatives" that will happen if we are not able to follow through will help to motivate us to take action.

Cheers
Vincent
Personal Development Blogger

[Swede]

"They can because they think they can."

I found this quote in a book. It summarizes it: People have to believe change is possible to be motivated to change.

[Ralph]

Originally Posted by Swede

"They can because they think they can."

I found this quote in a book. It summarizes it: People have to believe change is possible to be motivated to change.

What book was it? I could swear I have read that somewhere Was it Coelho?

Originally Posted by Brutha

Maybe your distinction between knowledge and action is a bad model?

How would your world view change if you would believe that there isn't such a thing as knowledge?
What would the world work like if there would be only habits and interactions that provide feedback which in turn change habits?

I've never thought whether it's empowering or not. I thought that that's just how it is, it's an accurate representation. There are people that have ineffective habits, don't take the right actions towards their desired goals and yet they know every step they would have to take. Where do they fit in the model that you suggest?

[Brutha]

Where do they fit in the model that you suggest?

What do the phrases "desired goal" and "know every step" mean?

Why should those things change something about the actions that someone takes?

[Ralph]

Originally Posted by Brutha

What do the phrases "desired goal" and "know every step" mean?

Why should those things change something about the actions that someone takes?

What's the difference between:
a person that doesn't know what to do and doesn't do and doesn't do what it takes
a person that knows what to do and still doesn't do what it takes

It's the clarity. It's the potential of action. THAT is what we know. If one doesn't take it into consideration, what difference would there be between those two examples of people?


I take those things into consideration because one of the primary goals of my website is to give people that clarity. I want them to succeed so I'm exploring the positive change further and I'm figuring out how to push forward those that already know what to do (maybe they do after reading my articles) but they still don't do it (so I want to make my articles more impactful by inspiring people to use the knowledge they have attained).

Answering your question - the difference might just as well be before and after one reads my article. Not always, but sometimes. Perhaps most of the times.

Thanks for replies so far Brutha, can't wait for more.
Ralph

[Swede]

Ralph: I checked my source: '177 Mental Toughness Secrets of the World Class', by Steve Siebold. An excellent book, by the way.

[Fullcrum]

Follow through?

Desire.

That's mainly it for me. I have to want the result bad enough. What often makes me want it more is if I visualize the goal, the end result, how I will feel if I achieve it.

This is true with my financial goals that makes me work towards them. And other goals, too.

Cultivate burning desire.

[Brutha]

Answering your question - the difference might just as well be before and after one reads my article. Not always, but sometimes. Perhaps most of the times.

Maybe I should specifiy my question:
How does a test look like that can you distinguish a person with knowledge from a person without knowledge.

It can't be doing the thing in your model.

It's the clarity. It's the potential of action. THAT is what we know. If one doesn't take it into consideration, what difference would there be between those two examples of people?

In which mind does that potential exist?
A lot of people archieve things without understanding any underlying theory.
The just have the right habits which happens to be enough.

People build habits through experiences that provide positive and negative feedback.
Experiences doesn't have to be real and visualising might be enough in some cases.

[Ralph]

I did some thinking. A lot of thinking in fact. This is the way I went:

I got myself into situations where I wouldn't follow through. I noticed the biggest distinction is that I made excuses for why it's OK not to do it.

Excuses are answers to questions. If I asked myself subconsciously "how can I do it" instead of "how to rationalize not doing it?" then I'd follow through. But then I thought it's quite hard to control the subconscious process of evaluation.

What makes me ask the questions I do in such situations? Why do I want to rationalize not doing it?
The answer to this is: My brain links more pain to doing it than not doing it. If I chnaged the associations with pain and pleasure in my brain, I'd automatically follow through. There's no problem following something that's pure pleasure, right?

It's not really about what brings me pain or pleasure. It's my beliefs of what will cause them. That's why a child with inaccurate beliefs will touch a hot frying pan. If I modified my beliefs about pain and pleasure involved in the activity, I'd surely follow through.

It all comes to modifying the beliefs. All seems to fit just well. Desire means linking pleasure to doing it. Fear of failure or fear of success are the beliefs that pain awaits further down that path. What do you think?




@Brutha

Looking from my point of view: I want to create a lasting positive difference in my readers' lives. How can I do it? I surely have to provide the right knowledge, philosophy, the mindset. And then I have to make sure they use that knowledge to create the change themselves. If one element of those two is lacking - my work isn't impactful.

Speaking in terms described in PDSP, I have to bring people into alignment with both truth and power. How to empower them best?

[dice]

I visualize what I'm missing out on. Ie. If i miss a drama class I kick myself all day because each class is completely different and I KNOW I missed a surprise.

Knowing exactly whats going to happen causes me to not follow through.

also easy stuff that builds up momentum. ie. drinking water tieing up my shoes and putting on my jacket while i'm contemplating going for a run, then i'm already 1/2 way there by the time i have a chance to decide otherwise.

[Brutha]

Speaking in terms described in PDSP, I have to bring people into alignment with both truth and power. How to empower them best?

In PDFSP Steve describes his approach to truth the following:
Someone makes a prediction about the future. If the thing he predicted happens he learns something.
If it didn't happen he also learned something about the world.

Goalsetting also provides people with some kind of feedback. If you successfully make the first step towards a goal it feels good.

Truth in that sense isn't about having a model that describes objective reality. Steve doesn't really believe in objective reality anyway.
It's about making intuitive predictions that turn out right in the future.

I got myself into situations where I wouldn't follow through. I noticed the biggest distinction is that I made excuses for why it's OK not to do it.

I'm not sure that you got the relationship between cause and effect right.

There an experiment that done with people who's two brain hemispheres got disconnected:
You project the command stand up to the left eye with afterwards goes to the right brain hemisphere.
The person stands up.
Afterwards you ask the person why they stood up and the left brain hemisphere answers because it's has the job to process language.

The person answers something like:
I wanted to grab a coke.

If you use electrodes to stimulate a motoneuron of someone and he moves he will also make up a reason for his movement if you ask him.

Human beings always find reasons to justify their behavior after they have decided to do something.

I want to create a lasting positive difference in my readers' lives. How can I do it?

Why does toastmasters work so well in teaching people good public speaking skills?
You make all the time evaluations of whether something is good or bad in regards to being a good public speaker when you hear someone speaking.
After you make a speech you get written evaluations from all members a specific evaluation for your speech.
You also have goal for the speech that the manual sets and that you can use to self evaluate yourself.
You can look at your audience while speaking to get feedback.
You have a Ah-Counter a timer and other functionary that provide you with additional feedback.
Afterwards a lot of clubs provide you with a video of your speech that you can also use to further understand what you did well and what didn't went well.

Toastmasters provides a structure that gives you a lot of feedback on how to improve your abilities as a public speaker.
That the important thing: Having a structure that gives you feedback. Goals do that for some people and for some tasks.
But in general that's the key, having some sort of feedback.

[Ralph]

I think I did, but the cause wasn't the excuse. It was too much pain linked to doing it and not enough pleasure that caused inaction. Then the inaction was explained by the excuses.

I started from a wrong assumption, but it got me to the core anyways

By the way, fascinating experiment, thanks a lot for sharing it

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Ralph

This question is really bugging me lately. What is the ultimate difference between someone that does what he knows and someone that doesn't?

It's competing priorities.

There are numerous positive things I can do. However I cannot do them all at the same time.

So sometimes I will not do what I know I should do. Because I am busy doing something else that I also know I should do.

It's also habit.

The human being is a habit-forming creature. We easily fall into regular patterns of behaviour. Getting out of those patterns is not necessarily easy.

Eg a person may know that it's a great idea to do X, Y and Z, but the fact is that his habitual daily lifestyle does not contain X, Y and Z. So instead the person will do what he habitually does.