Episode #242 When the Alarm Goes Off

🎙️ PODCAST MINI-EPISODE: “When the Alarm Goes Off – Motivation, Grit & the Brain” Hello everybody, you’re listening to the Mindset Matters podcast, I’m your host Riley Jensen and today we are talking about when the alarm in your head goes off, and how your amygdala can hijack your brain. Let me ask you something: Have you ever felt like you were doing everything right—but your motivation just disappeared? If so, you're not broken. You're wired that way. 💥 In this episode, I want to unpack something powerful from Chapter 3 of my book Pure Unadulterated Guts—the three biggest killers of motivation: Comparison Perfectionism Unrealistic expectations Now before I break these down, I want to tell you a story. A real one. One that shook me. One night, after tucking in my kids with the usual prayers and stories, I crawled into bed thinking the day was done. At 2:47 a.m., our alarm system gave that gentle, terrifying pre-alarm chirp—the one that says: “Get up now or the house is about to sound like a nuclear reactor.” Groggy. Annoyed. Irritated. I got out of bed, walked to the kitchen, and my wife whispered: “Wait... this alarm has never gone off by mistake.” Boom. That’s when the real alarm hit. It was loud. It was terrifying. And it made it hard to think correctly. Suddenly, the college football player in me took over. I sprinted to my kids’ rooms, checked every corner. The alarm system said the back door had been breached. So I sprinted downstairs… And sure enough—it was slightly open. Wind? Kids? I wasn’t sure. But when we checked the security camera in my office, which is right next to that door... what we saw sent chills down my spine. A shadowy figure had come into our home. He stepped into the hallway—then bolted when the alarm went off. By the time I got downstairs... he was already gone. 😳 I share this because motivation, clarity, and grit are never just about mindset. They’re biological. Our brains have an ancient alarm system—the amygdala. It's designed to keep us alive. But in today’s world, it's constantly reacting to things that aren’t life-threatening. 📉 When the alarm goes off, decision-making tanks. We don't think. We react. In sports and life, this looks like: Getting in your own head Losing confidence over one bad performance Forgetting the 100 things you did well, and obsessing over the one thing you didn’t 🎯 Here's where it gets personal. I work with a pro golfer named who recently earned his PGA Tour card. That’s a huge deal. But here’s what most people don’t realize: He didn’t need to overhaul his swing. He didn’t need a miracle. He improved by just 0.79 strokes per round to become a PGA tour member. Less than a stroke! But here’s the kicker: That tiny improvement moved him from rank 90-something to 26th on the Korn Ferry Tour. Just one stroke shy of his dream—and the next year he finished by improving to 19th and received his PGA tour card. 📌 So what does this mean for you? Here’s your gut-check moment: Are you letting comparison steal your joy? Are you chasing perfection instead of progress? Are your expectations so high that you can’t even see your own growth? If the alarm bells are going off in your life right now—it might be time to breathe. To pause. And to recognize that small wins are still wins. 🧠 Here’s a challenge: Track just one small win per day for the next week. It could be: You showed up. You stayed composed. You spoke kindly to yourself when it got hard. Build that muscle. Train that brain. And remember: Motivation doesn’t disappear—it gets drowned out by noise. You can turn the alarm down. You can get back on track. You’ve got Pure Unadulterated Guts. Let’s use it. 🎧 Want to go deeper? Grab Chapter 3 of the book and learn the tools I teach to elite athletes for beating comparison, perfectionism, and unrealistic expectations. Let’s make high performance a habit—not a fluke.