The problem with Shia LaBeouf

(Or, "Why you can't motivate yourself even when you really want to")

There’s a YouTube video of actor Shia LeBeouf giving a motivational speech in front of a green screen. He stares at the camera for a poignant moment, then yells

“DO IT!”

He pauses, then explains his idea further.

“Just… DO IT!”

It’s a fun video – and can be legitimately helpful. If you’re looking for a bit of motivation to finally wash those dirty dishes, a few minutes with Shia might be enough to spur you into action.

Unfortunately, “Just DO IT” doesn’t work very well over the long term.

Anyone can muster up a few moments of effort when Shia Lebeouf yells at them. But sticking with a goal takes sustained effort, and “Just DO IT” becomes less effective every time you hear it.

Now, I don’t think most people play Shia’s video every time they need to accomplish something. But I do think it’s easy for a subconscious Shia to lurk in your mind.

Here’s what I mean.

You have something you need to accomplish, but it’s not getting done.

It’s not a big or hard thing (at least, it doesn’t seem that way.) So you feel like you should be able to just…DO IT! You try to push yourself to take action and….

Nothing happens.

Subconscious Shia continues yelling. “It’s so easy! Just write that email! Take out that trash! Hit the gym! JUST DO IT ALREADY”

And we keep listening. We buy into this belief that since we “should” be able to complete this task, we just need to keep pushing. But the more we push (and fail), the harder it becomes to actually take action.

This is because we get caught by the Avoidance Anchor – which drags us into the Shame Spiral.

The bad news? I’m going to keep using cheesy alliteration (sorry not sorry)

The good news? Once you understand how these ideas keep you stuck, you’ll learn how to break free. And your first insight is just around the corner.

The Avoidance Anchor

Your imagination is a miraculous thing. You can design entire worlds, dream up characters you’ve never met, and make books you read come alive.

Right now, I’m going to ask you to use your incredible imagination to picture… calling the dentist. (Feel free to imagine something more interesting later.)

Chances are, scheduling a dental appointment isn’t your idea of a good time. You have to wrestle with your busy schedule, you have to talk to a stranger over the phone (yuck) and – worst of all – you’ll eventually have to GO TO THE DENTIST as a result.

So when you look at “Call the dentist” in your to-do list, you don’t think about healthy teeth. You think about all that anticipated stress and you feel a spike of anxiety. And whenever anxiety appears, avoidance is soon to follow.

See, avoidance comes with a compelling offer. It says “Instead of calling the dentist and feeling all that anxiety and stress, what if you just….didn’t?”

That sounds pretty good to you, so you decide to skip calling the dentist for today. Immediately, your anxiety disappears, followed by a nice feeling of relief.

And just like that – the Avoidance Anchor wraps around your ankle and starts pulling you down.

The next time you think about the dentist, you remember feeling stressed and anxious, and you remember the relief that avoidance brought you. So you choose to skip calling the dentist again.

Each time you do, it makes calling the dentist feel a little more stressful and difficult, which makes avoidance a little more tempting and automatic. After you avoid something several times, it can feel almost impossible to break out of avoidance autopilot and finally take action.

You might not even realize it’s happening. After all, we don’t consciously think through every decision to procrastinate on an assignment or go to the gym…tomorrow. But on a subconscious level, your mind is constantly learning, and what you’ve taught it is that trying = scary and avoidance = relief.

This is why we can struggle to answer an email that’s sat in our inbox for two weeks, but immediately respond to an email that came in today (or easily unload the dishwasher you just ran, but ignore the clothes that have been slowly wrinkling in the dryer.) The deeper the Avoidance Anchor pulls you down, the harder it is to find your way back to the surface.

But that’s not the worst part. When avoidance becomes habitual – when you put things off over and over and over again – you can get pulled into the Shame Spiral. That’s where the real problems begin.

The Shame Spiral

Before we talk about the shame spiral, we should define shame. (You’re on your own if you need help defining “spiral.”)

Shame is best understood in contrast to guilt. Guilt is the emotion we feel when we did something wrong. Guilt is uncomfortable, but it’s actually a pretty useful emotion. Guilt tells us:

• Hey, you did something wrong

• Try to fix it or apologize

• Learn from your mistake so it’s less likely to happen again

In contrast, shame is the emotion we feel when we start to believe that we didn’t DO something wrong, but that we ARE wrong. Shame tells us

• You did this because you suck

• There’s no point in fixing it; you’re just going to do it again because you suck

• There’s no point in trying again; just give up because you suck and you’ll always suck

(Swap in whatever word your own self-critical voice uses in place of “suck.”)

Shame is intensely destructive.

It isolates us from the people that care about us (because we’d rather hide than risk them rejecting us the way we reject ourselves.)

It fuels self-destructive or addictive patterns (because we’ll take anything that lets us numb out and forget our shame for a second.)

And it kills our motivation to change (because we believe that we can’t.)

Avoidance can lead naturally to shame. Avoid something enough times, and you start to wonder… what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I do this thing that seems like it should be easy? I must be lazy/bad/incapable/etc.

And then shame leads to more avoidance. Now, the worst part of calling the dentist isn’t the call itself. It’s the fact that thinking about the dentist means confronting your failure. Here’s how it works:

1. You remember that you’ve been putting off this “small” thing for a long time.

2. Shame takes the opportunity to send self-critical thoughts swirling through your mind.

3. Those thoughts make you feel awful, so you distract yourself with something else.

4. The dentist goes uncalled, avoidance becomes more automatic, and your shame belief – that you’re lazy/bad/whatever – feels a little more undeniable.

This is the shame spiral in a nutshell. And if you’re not careful, it can metastasize. As you start to believe that you’re lazy/bad/whatever, shame can trigger anytime a new task has any kind of difficulty or resistance. Avoidance becomes your default, and change starts to feel impossible. This might be limited to a specific category of actions (like schoolwork or social connection), or you might reach a place where doing just about anything triggers the shame spiral.

Now we understand why “JUST DO IT” doesn’t work. You don’t need to JUST DO the thing itself. You need to break out of a long pattern of avoidance, and you need to endure an excruciating reminder of shame. That takes more than Shia LeBeouf can offer.

Fortunately, there’s a way forward. We can side-step the shame spiral and build motivation that works.

But first, we need to ask an important question. Why do dogs pee on the carpet?

Compassionate curiosity

I HAVEN’T WRITTEN THIS NEXT SECTION YET SORRY

But I figure it’s better to publish and get feedback than continue to avoid this post and let the Avoidance Anchor drag me down.

So let me know what you think and if it’s worth continuing!