Why Motivation Fund Works
I love hearing the excitement of those achieving their goals with Motivation Fund.
“It’s working!!! Nothing else could ever make me exercise at night!!” Erin G. – Exercise and Weight Loss Goal
However, thus far, I don’t think we have done a good job explaining how and why it works. So, here is my attempt to remedy that. Based on what we are seeing and hearing from customers, below are the six areas that come together to make this work.
A Financial Commitment
US News and world reports that 80% of New Years resolutions fail. In part, this is because it is easy to make and then break these resolutions with no consequence. The “fund” of Motivation Fund is first and foremost a commitment to yourself to not ignore or forget this goal. Just like when you get a gym membership, buy new running shoes, hire a life coach, or put down an entry fee for a marathon, the financial expenditure increases your commitment and follow through. Of course, you get to decide the size of the financial commitment you want to make. We have had everything between $25 to $1000.
People succeeding have said things like this:
“I love this is now a goal I can’t ignore.”
“I love the idea of earning back my money by doing my action plan.”
“I would much rather put my money in a fund I can get back than spend money on a gym membership, life coach, or weight loss program.”
However, the financial commitment is just one small part and just the beginning.
Daily Accountability
By far, the #1 thing people say is helpful about Motivation Fund is the daily accountability. Every day, you get a text message asking you to report on whether you followed your action plan or not. Knowing this text and reporting is coming is what people say gets them to follow through on their goal. Once they are in the program a while, their daily action plan become more natural as the change is made and the routines are developed.
“Accountability checks have been a game changer for me.”
“Knowing that text message is coming in the morning gets me off the couch at night.”
Daily Journaling
Journaling is powerful for many reasons. One of the key reasons is that it lets you take a step back and see what is driving your thoughts, emotions, and actions. Brooke Castillo is a very successful life coach and entrepreneur. In her first episode of her life coach podcast, she talks about how everything you learn in psychology will confirm that 100% of the time, your thoughts drive your emotions, which drive your actions, which determine your results. Journaling daily about your goal helps you see the connections in these. If you had a day where you failed to do your action plan, you can think through what you were thinking, feeling, and doing that drove that result. It also creates a story of your journey that you will never regret having.
Based on early data, I am convinced that there is a strong correlation of using the journal feature daily and the likelihood of hitting a goal. I am really excited as we get more data points to see how this plays out.
Focus on the Action Plan, not the Goal
With Motivation Fund, you create a goal/aspiration and then your action plan. We focus on the action plan, not the goal. As some say, this is a focus on inputs that you control vs. outputs that you don’t always control. We do it this way because the right inputs will eventually lead to the right outputs. This also means that you are fully in control of earning back your fund.
Built in Exceptions
Let’s face it. Change is hard. You will not follow your plan 100%. There will be days that you fail. One of the worst things you can do is to be hard on yourself for your miss. A key reason people miss their goals is that they set the expectations too high for themselves or don’t plan for exceptions they will need. To counteract this, we do two things:
- We encourage people to think through the planned exceptions they needs when creating an action plan. For example, indulgent foods are not part of my food plan. However, I have a built in exception for when eating indulgent foods is the “gracious” thing to do. I love this exception and it perfectly hits the balance I need to feel good about both sticking to my food plan while being gracious when I am offered something I don’t normally eat.
- We encourage people to give themselves “allowed misses” for unplanned exceptions. People love having a “budget” of misses that they can use when something unexpected comes up. This also makes the fail a positive rather than a negative.
Zero Judgement and Total Control
In the end, Motivation Fund makes it easy for your to manage your own goal and stay committed to yourself, not to us. As we have interviewed early customers, this was a surprising benefit that we did not anticipate compared to other goal setting/weight loss/fitness challenges. People love that they can work on any goal they want without judgement from us or from others. You don’t have to find a group of friends doing a similar challenge and can keep your progress as private or public as you want. You can even change your action plan, number of exceptions, or any of the details of your goal. In the end, we want to empower you to be in total control.
One interesting aspect of this is that some people want even more accountability. We are currently building a feature where you can ask a friend, family, or one of our coaches to be an accountability partner for you. I am excited to see how that helps.
Conclusion
We think we have hit on a winning formula for personal development that can help many people. If the above formula sounds like it might work for you, we encourage you to give it a try. The service is free (we are funded by donations from those happy with our service once they achieve their goal) and you are in full control of getting your fund back by following your action plan with no judgement from us or others.
If this sounds like it would work for you, get started below.