Dr. Tali Sharot on How to Motivate Yourself and Others to Change

High-Level Overview

Mel Robbins opens with a fantasy most people share: a magic wand that would make the people we love finally exercise, save money, find a new job or do the dishes without being asked. Her guest, Dr. Tali Sharot, a behavioral neuroscientist who directs the Affective Brain Lab at University College London, teaches at MIT and wrote the new book Look Again, explains why the usual tools of guilt, pressure, fear, pleading, threats and ultimatums do not work, on others or on ourselves, and what the research says works instead.

The tone is warm, practical and often funny, with Mel repeatedly applying ideas to her own marriage and kids, and Sharot admitting she once needed chocolate to wear her bike helmet. The conversation moves from the psychology of control and emotional contagion, to why fear stalls action, to three research-backed levers for change (social proof, immediate rewards and progress tracking), then to parenting, the surprising benefits of change itself, and how to motivate yourself when you lack support.

The Discussion Explores:

• Why trying to change someone feels like control, and why control kills motivation
• Emotional contagion: how your stress and mood spread to people around you
• The approach-avoidance principle, and why fear freezes people instead of moving them
• Three levers for change: social proof, immediate rewards and progress tracking
• Present bias, and why future benefits lose to immediate pleasures
• Giving choices to kids, employees and patients to preserve their sense of agency
• Research showing that making a change tends to make people happier
• How to motivate yourself: credit past achievements, plan small steps and find support

Deep Dive into Main Ideas

The Problem With Trying to Change People: Control

Mel sets up a familiar scene: a partner happily watching golf on a Sunday afternoon while you seethe with judgment, wishing they would go exercise. Sharot says the core mistake is that when you try to change someone, what they feel is that you are trying to control them, and once people feel their agency is being restricted, their motivation drops and anxiety rises. Pressure can also make them feel they are not enough, as if you see only their negatives.

Why do we try so hard? Sharot says "the desire to control is the main desire of a human being," because controlling our environment helps us get rewards and avoid harms. Changing people around us is partly a way to control our own world, and often a way to reduce our own stress: if you are worried about a partner's spending or health, getting them to change would make your worry go away, and we call that love. Mel realizes her desire to control directly conflicts with the other person's fundamental need to control their own life. Sharot adds that we do have a real responsibility to influence others, especially children, patients or students, and more influence than we realize, so the goal is to use it well.

Emotional Contagion: You Influence More Than You Think

Sharot explains that we constantly shape the people around us, even strangers. Seeing someone eat an ice cream makes you want one, and a stressed stranger across from you on the subway raises your own stress. This emotional contagion evolved for good reason: if someone nearby looks afraid, there may be danger, so the brain quickly and subconsciously picks it up. The same goes for excitement. The effect is even stronger with family and coworkers. Mel connects this to her couch scenario: her own stress, conveyed through tone or an eye roll, likely makes her partner stressed and defensive, escalating the situation.

Why Fear Backfires: The Approach-Avoidance Principle

Does fear ever work? Sharot says it depends on whether you want someone to act, like going to the gym, or to stop acting, like not sharing confidential information. Fear is especially ineffective at getting people to act, because of the approach-avoidance principle. To get good things, whether a promotion, chocolate cake or love, we usually have to act, so anticipating a reward triggers a "go signal in the brain. To avoid bad things, like untrustworthy people or deep water, we usually need to hold still, so anticipating something bad triggers a no go" signal that reaches the motor cortex and makes inaction more likely. In her lab's experiments, people are much better at pressing a button to gain money than to avoid losing it.

So telling someone they will get fat if they skip the gym, or that vaping will destroy their lungs, tends to produce freezing, not action. People also assume bad outcomes will happen to others, not them. Reframing toward positive gains works better: Sharot says friends who smoke seem more motivated to quit by wanting glowing skin than by fear of cancer. Instead of saying route A will cost you time and money, say route B will gain you time and money. The same framing works when motivating yourself.

Lever One: Social Proof and Modeling

The first of three levers is social incentives: highlighting what others are doing. Sharot describes the British government's letters to people who paid taxes late. Adding one sentence noting that 9 out of 10 people in Britain pay their taxes on time increased compliance by 15% and brought in 5.6 billion pounds. When Mel jokes that telling her husband Chris about a neighbor who runs daily would not work, Sharot adds that modeling matters: if you want kids off their phones or eating well, you need to do it yourself, and if you want a partner to run, invite them along. Mel laughs that in her marriage, Chris is the one who exercises and she is on the couch.

Lever Two: Immediate Rewards

The second lever is immediate reward, which counters present bias, or temporal discounting. The benefits of exercise, writing a book or job hunting come in the future, while the couch, the chocolate cake or the drink pays off now. Most people, Sharot notes, would take $100 now over $110 next week, partly because the future is uncertain and we feel more in control of the present. The fix is to attach something good to the action right now.

For yourself, that might mean watching a guilty-pleasure show only on the treadmill or listening to a podcast while running. For others, it can be as simple as positive feedback. Sharot's friend always says "thank you for asking" when she checks in on his problems, which makes her want to do it again. A woman told her that touching her husband's arm after his first gym visit and remarking on his muscles got him to go back the next day. Another parent stopped warning her teenager he would be tired if he stayed up late and instead told him that going to sleep early would make him look better and have more energy for his girlfriend, and it worked. Sharot stresses verbalizing praise when people do the right thing, like congratulating her daughter for ordering a sandwich with vegetables, and thanking her husband for handling school mornings so she can sleep. Mel suggests avoiding condescending framings like "finally," and simply saying you are proud of them.

Lever Three: Progress Tracking

The third lever is tracking progress, which is why so many apps count steps or expenses. The joy we feel comes not just from doing well but from doing better. Sharot compares running a marathon in 3:30 one year and 3:28 the next: improvement feels much better than maintaining, and even people at the top of their game become demotivated without progress.

Her favorite study took place in a New York hospital where a camera showed that only about 10% of medical staff washed their hands before and after entering patient rooms, even though they knew the camera was there. Then the hospital installed an electronic board giving immediate feedback, such as "well done, good shift," along with running shift and weekly rates. Compliance jumped from 10% to 90% and stayed there; a replication in another division went from 30% to 90%. Sharot explains it combined all three levers: an immediate positive reward instead of a distant threat, social proof from seeing colleagues comply, and visible progress as numbers rose. She compares it to city bike displays showing how many people have ridden that day.

Giving Choices: Parenting, Work and Medicine

Applied to parenting, Sharot says the key is not making kids feel controlled. Instead of "eat your carrots," ask whether they want carrots or cucumbers, or let them make their own salad. She even asks her kids whether they want her to choose their outfit or pick it themselves; when they hand the decision to her, they keep their agency. The same applies to employees and patients: offer a few options and discuss them rather than prescribing one answer. But not too many options: she cites the famous study where shoppers faced with a large selection of jams often left with nothing, while two or three options work well.

She also admits she does not always wear her bike helmet and rewards herself with a small chocolate when she does. She confesses she rode around London for months in a badly fitting helmet that would not have protected her because she kept putting off buying a new one. Mel delights in the fact that even a top neuroscientist needs an immediate reward.

Change Itself Tends to Make Us Happier

Why is change so hard? The status quo is easy, change takes effort, and it brings uncertainty, which the constantly predicting brain dislikes. Yet Sharot cites a study by economist Steven Levitt in which people wrote down a change they were considering, from a new haircut to leaving a job or relationship, then flipped a virtual coin. Those who got heads were about 25% more likely to make the change, and when surveyed two weeks and six months later, those who changed were, on average, happier.

Sharot offers two reasons. If you are contemplating a change, something probably needs changing, though that does not mean breaking up; the change might be therapy or new routines. And change brings variety and puts you in a state of learning, which people enjoy more than they predict. She cites work by neuroscientists Rutledge and a colleague showing participants were happier when they learned something about a task than when they received money. That, she says, is part of why podcasts are so popular.

Talking to Someone Who Resists Change

For a hard conversation with another adult, Sharot advises exploring options rather than prescribing, and focusing on what the other person wants, not what you think they should want. Start by simply asking how they feel, for example about their job; she holds such check-ins with her team at least yearly and says you learn a great deal. With very resistant people, the barrier is often negative expectations: they believe change is impossible or will not feel good. Making a specific plan can build optimism, which fuels action. Mel observes that many couples' standoffs are not really about health or jobs but about one partner refusing to be controlled.

Motivating Yourself

For self-change, Sharot suggests first taking stock of the difficult things you have already done, since even very successful people fixate on what could be better. Recalling past achievements, related or not, like writing articles, giving birth or raising kids, builds the belief that you can do the next hard thing, and belief drives motivation. Then break the goal into concrete steps, like an outline and ten pages at a time for a book. Finally, surround yourself with people who believe in you. If your family is not supportive, look elsewhere, such as communities of people pursuing the same goal. Mel agrees, saying she learned too late that looking for support from people who have never been where you are going leaves you feeling misunderstood.

Conclusion

Dr. Tali Sharot's message is that change is not driven by pressure, guilt or fear, which trigger a sense of being controlled and the brain's freeze response, but by moving toward something good. Protect people's agency by offering choices, highlight what others are doing and model it yourself, attach immediate rewards and praise to the right behavior, and make progress visible. For yourself, give yourself credit for the hard things you have already done, plan small steps and find people who believe in you. And take heart from the research: on average, making a change leaves people happier, because it usually addresses something that needed fixing and puts us back into the joy of learning.

This is a summary of "How to Motivate Yourself (and Others) to Change Any Behavior" from The Mel Robbins Podcast, giving you the GIST so you can decide if you want the REST. Listen to the full episode.