Entrepreneur and businessman, Robert Kiyosaki, said, “The greatest cause of human financial struggle is the fear of losing money.”
Knowing this, what if we could flip that statement on its head, and use the anxiety of losing money as a power source to finally attain life goals that have, until now, been mere passing by dreams?
Motivational speaker, coach, and businessman Bret Treasure, co-founded the app ‘Stake Something’, with industry collaborator and friend, Ben Rafael, who shares the goal of helping people reach their goals! The pair have seen a 96% success rate in their users being able to reach their goals when correctly using the implemented Nobel Prize-winning theory of loss aversion.
(Coined by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, loss aversion proposed that losses have a greater emotional impact than a gain of the same amount; suggesting that us humans are much more sensitive to losing things than we are to strive for things. Loss aversion has been socially paired with prospect theory to be called ‘the most influential theoretical framework in all of the social sciences’)
Stake Something requires you to set a goal and attach a financial risk to it. The app holds your money, however much you choose (the sweet spot for success being around the $100 mark), for the amount of time you have set yourself to reach your specific goal – 1 week, 3 weeks, 4 months and so on. If you reach your goal, you get 100% of the money back. If you don’t reach your goal, the money can be donated to a charity of choice such as One Girl, The Hunger Project, World Wildlife Fund, and more.
Bret explains the other psychological play within the app, “For some people, to lose $100 to charity is fine. It’s like, I may as well have another hamburger. It’s still going to a good place. So, for those people, we give them an option where they can stake money to a non-charity, which is something called Two Rich Guys. You can be sure that the money is going to be wasted, so it’s better to reach your goal.”
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Click HereAn almost orchestrated reflection practice between both Bret and Ben has seen them work alongside each other harmoniously throughout each of their careers, and now in business. They have been able to compact the perfect formula, turning extrinsic motivation (which comes from external rewards, such as cash money), into intrinsic motivation (a more personal drive), using repetition, reward, and a little bit of risk. When we do something time and again and consistently get rewarded for it, our brain wants more and more of it, pushing you further to reach that goal to get that high feeling. When we add an element of risk, like losing an amount of money, it speeds up this process and keeps us more reliable. Eventually, the joy and satisfaction of working to achieve your goal shifts from being external motivation and turns to appreciation for the activity itself. Instead of doing something just for a prize or recognition, you start doing it because you genuinely enjoy the result, making it a part of who you are. A non-procrastinating goal-getter!
Bret shares with sincerity, “I know that people have got incredible resources inside of themselves. And they often have a parallel story, which is that they can’t do things.
Whereas, in-fact, they’re capable people who are capable of changing their mindset. That’s the thing that inspires me about human beings. I know they can be brave and resourceful, which is great, but it’s that ability to recontextualise your whole life in the face of your history. That inspires me.”
Brets’ life is enriched thoroughly through helping other people experience transformative change. He is dedicated to coaching people to understanding happiness, rather than chasing a fake form of it. He’s committed to helping you build your own framework in life, business, motivation, sales, and fitness, and has explored behavioural sciences to its depths to deliver the most efficient, sustainable, and reliable methods for conquering your life, enveloping a deep trust from his audience in the authenticity and evidence of his combined efforts in serving the public with Stake Something.
“Some people use the app for exercise, some people use it for study. I used it myself for studying Spanish. I never would have called myself a reliable person. I had no idea I was capable of doing anything with that degree of reliability.
I put $100 at stake, and if I didn’t study Spanish for 45 minutes every day, seven days a week, then I would have to give up 100 bucks. Turns out I’m too tight to do that.” He laughs. “I went for 1000 days in a row. I did not miss a single day!”
But how will the app know if I reached my goal or not? I can just get my money back anyway?
Bret nods and agrees, but confirms the effectiveness of the science behind the app.
“You know if you lie about whether you did your activities or not. It comes down to integrity. It’s something that you’re telling yourself about yourself, so, psychologically, it doesn’t work. Because if you don’t acknowledge those things, they sit there in the back of your head and eat away. Then something happens later on, and you realise, ah, that thing you should have done three years ago.”
Many issues are often related to goal setting, such as:
- Lack of motivation;
- Getting sidetracked by old habits or friends;
- Setting goals that are too high and unattainable without considering the tiny steps needed to get there;
- Overthinking and sinking back into the same script of believing you have little to no willpower.
“You’ve got to be willing to be a person, and you’ve got to find trust somewhere in something or someone.
It could be you trust the science. It could be that you trust yourself. A lot of people don’t think they can trust themselves to do stuff because they’ve got 20 years of evidence of “I haven’t done this.” Can you trust me? Can you trust 40 years of science? Can you trust the 20 years of neuroscience? You’ve got to find something to trust; otherwise, you’re probably not going to step off the cliff.”
It can sometimes be intimidating and hard to maintain focus. Consistency is widely known as the hobgoblin to the mediocre, often guilty of dereliction of ambition.
Yet, fascinatingly enough, money is so tightly linked to our perception of survival that even the thought of losing it aggravates the fear receptors in our brain – so aggressively that when doctors examine a brain scan, they can see the same receptors light up as when our instinctive ‘fight-or-flight’ danger response is being triggered.
By placing a financial risk alongside our goal, it causes us to be so scared to lose it that it propels us forward to reach our goals.
Bret explains:
“When your survival is threatened, your survival circuitry in the brain is engaged. The amygdala (a major processing centre for emotions) goes, whoa, fight or flight?! You’ve suddenly got a whole different range of actions that are available to you. We read stories about people who are in terrible situations and are capable of incredible behaviour that they would never usually dream of doing. When Aron Lee Ralston was wedged in a rock, and knew that if he didn’t do something, he was going to die, he cut his own arm off and didn’t die in the Grand Canyon.
That’s an extreme example, but if your survival is threatened, then other parts of your brain kick in because you’re programmed to survive.
When they do a scan to look at your brain, they can see that when you risk losing money, it’s the amygdala that kicks in. Your survival circuitry that lights up. When you risk losing money to your brain, you’re in trouble.
You can simulate that threat to survival if you threaten people with losing money. For the modern person, losing money is a threat to survival. We perceive that as a threat because we’ve spent the last 5,000 years assigning a monetary value to everything in our environment.”
With the new year approaching and new goal landmarks being paved in our minds, Bret is proud to deliver you a time and time again, scientifically proven, actual successful way for you to ensure you reach them.
But I pay for a gym membership already and I still don’t really go that much, so how will this help?
“If you’re trying to lose weight, and you discover that you’ve put on weight one week, that counts for twice as much as if you lost the same amount. That’s a kind of a reverse loss.” Shares Bret, who has used the intricacies of human behaviour to our advantage for us. He continues; “ Gyms use this because they ask for an upfront payment. They say, ‘well, you give us $1,000,’ and that will motivate you to come to the gym for the next month to get the value, which works to some degree, but a lot of people let that membership fall to the back of their mind because you’re not getting the money back. So, does it matter whether I go to the gym in week 10, or not? I’m not getting the money back if I go to the gym. It doesn’t work as well.
The reason that we do things the way we do, is every week that you have some money at stake, it gets you going consistently because it’s an immediate dopamine dump hitting you every week. Then we get into the enjoyable cycle of sustainability.”
We can have all the knowledge in our brain or at our fingertips in a second, yet still struggle to put the pedal to the metal. Attaching a financial risk to our goal triggers our brain to succeed. Staking something triggers four major parts of our brain to start functioning in our favour in goal setting.
The basal ganglia, which, amongst many functions, helps you to process and evaluate goals and risks. The signals this part of the brain sends out affect both your emotions and motivation levels, making it an important role-player in planning and carrying out the habits needed to complete important tasks
Our orbital frontal cortex wants a reward, and knowing there is a survival risk at stake, it’s looking for the most simple decision-making solutions to provide a sophisticated decision-making map that gets you to that goal most effectively and gets the reward of all your money back. Phew.
The prefrontal cortex, which is involved in our immediate and long-term planning.
Finally our amygdala evaluate the goal for how important it is to you. In theory, the more money you place on your goal, the more important it is that you achieve it. The frontal lobe, the brain’s logical problem-solving portion, defines the goal and digests it. They then work together to push you toward the completion of the goal.
Who has a fitness goal they are trying to hit this year FOR DEFINITE?
Who’s determined to learn that other language they’re so interested to communicate deeper with?
Who’s sitting down and making financial goals for their future?
Who’s looking to be more focused on organising and implementing tasks?
Give the science a go – Download stake something. Stake something, outsmart your brain, and let’s win together!
P.S Humans are more likely to stick to goals that begin on a Monday. So gear up, indulge in your final phase of low self discipline, and brace yourself for a transformative indulgent experience with the only cost of excelling yourself.
TTFN
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