Ep. 60 - The Psychology Behind Motivation to Change and Learned Helplessness

This week's episode is for anyone who has areas of their lives they feel helpless and powerless to change.

In this episode, I talk about learned helplessness and how it may be showing up in your life and impacting your ability to move forward in areas you'd really like to change.

Perhaps it's in the area of health and fitness, money, career, relationships, or even in your ability to overcome your own mind so you feel free to live a life of your own design.

Learned helplessness refers to feeling powerless to help yourself now and in the future, due to the experience of being powerless in the past.  When we feel powerless about the future, our motivation to keep looking for ways to help ourselves is dramatically reduced.

Why would we want to keep trying and putting forth effort when we subconsciously believe that nothing we do will change the outcome or get us the desired result?

This is where bringing awareness to learned helplessness and how it relates to motivation to change can be incredibly insightful. We can bring this understanding to our own lives and see where we might be holding ourselves back so that we can leverage this knowledge and start to gain some authority over it.

What are you believing about your ability to influence your future?

Walk through an exercise to see how asking yourself specific questions about your beliefs can shift you out of the frozen, powerless state and help you gain a sense of control over the direction of your life.

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Cited in this episode:

Slides  |  Motivation for Change: Overcoming Helplessness by the Yale School of Medicine (on Addiction)

Martin Seligman, Ph.D. (considered the founder/pioneer of the science of Positive Psychology; author of numerous books on learned helplessness and its opposite, learned optimism (or learned hopefulness about the future); TED Talk speaker: The New Era of Positive Psychology (2004)

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Original intro/outro music by JMW

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1:1 mindset coaching isn’t just for athletes or select special people. It’s for anyone who wants to ask more of themselves but knows their thinking is getting in the way.

Uncover what’s holding you back. Learn tools and concepts to challenge your thinking and regulate your emotions so you can set goals you want and be able to do the belief work to meet them, rather than playing small and living at the effect of your unchallenged beliefs in your unmanaged mind.

It’s not about following the crowd. It’s giving yourself permission to think outside the box to find inspiration and processes that resonate with your brain so you can finally feel what it’s like to live a life that feels true and meaningful for you.

If this is work you’re excited to do, you’ll want to sign up for my free offering (a 90-minute deep dive coaching call) so you can experience firsthand what it would be like to work together and learn how mindset coaching can uplevel your life.

To book a call, email me at kari@kariwatterson.com with the subject line: "Book a 90-minute call."

At the end of the day, we have one life.
How do you want to live yours?
Think about it.
And then, let's get to work.

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Interested in mindset work and the practice of mindfulness and using tools to help you manage your mind to live a happier, more peaceful, successful life? You can also follow me on Instagram:  @_thisonelife