Yesterday’s email with the 3 Jake’s talking to each other got some interesting reactions. Justin Wampler posted on the Daily Attitude Email Blog an interesting way that he had tricked himself into being more disciplined. Justin was gracious enough to let me share his thoughts with you.

“I’m a big fan of tricking myself too, but I have to approach it a little differently. Using your example of working out, I’d have to make a deal with myself, once I felt the urge to skip the workout. I’d say, ok self, if you want to skip this workout, go put on your exercise clothes and stand on the treadmill, to prove to me that you did originally intend to workout. Then I’ll consider skipping it. Of course, once you’re standing on the treadmill with your exercise clothes on, it’s much easier to follow through.”

And then he followed up with some more:

“I was thinking about this some more, trying to figure out why this kind of trick works for me, and I think your analogy of the Three Jakes was the missing piece. I’m not sure how to avoid sounding like a crazy person when trying to describe several metaphorical parts of my consciousness, but here goes…

I guess you could think of those separate parts of you as roommates. They spend a lot of time together in a crowded space, so they must always make an effort to reconcile their differences.

Turns out that although Lazy Me tends to get the final say in arguments with Aspirational Me, Lazy Me is not a bad person. As such, he feels guilty whenever he lets Aspirational Me down. So when Aspirational Me tells Lazy Me that he can have a guilt free pass for exercising that day, on the condition that Lazy Me proves he was honest about his intentions to work out by putting on the exercise clothes and standing on the treadmill first, Lazy Me is eager to do so. So he does. Once he’s there he either promises Aspirational Me he will do better tomorrow (and not want to let him down twice in a row) or more often than not, he’ll just decide to go ahead and work out since he’s already standing there.

The human brain is weird, huh?”

Thanks for sharing, Justin.

Make it a great day.

Jake