Given my last post was about sacrifice, it is only natural to dedicate this post to motivation and discipline. A lot of people talk about motivation and doing the thing (whatever the thing is), when they are motivated or when they feel like it. Most of us wait for motivation to surface in order for us to change something. We think we are not ready until motivation inspires us.
Whilst there may be some desire to start something, often the trouble is the action-part of starting. You see, motivation does not necessarily mean action. We may truly want to start making changes and want to commit to a new routine, but we don’t know where to start, or what to do. We feel, we are not ready because we have nothing, and we know nothing. At that stage, motivation is even too scared to show its face. If we consider though, that our starting point is exactly where we currently are, we can start right there. We don’t need anything to start, but ourselves. I guess we are still waiting for the action-part of motivation to kick in, and in the meantime, we get busy consulting the book of excuses.
For some people, motivation, in the sense of being the driving force of action, does shows up and we start doing something. Usually at the point when we have had enough, or we randomly get inspired by someone or something, only to find ourselves weeks or sometimes just days after, right back where we began. We find ourselves in the past, doing what we have always done. We know what to expect and continue living a life that we don’t even like that much. When the pain of Groundhog Day gets too much, motivation knocks on our door, we do something, and then stop again. And it keeps repeating itself over and over again. By now, we have successfully created a Yo-Yo Effect, just not with our bodies, but with our dreams. We bring them closer to then move them further away. We kill our dreams faster than a knife fight in a phone booth.
We wait for a new habit to start when either motivation is high, or there is a deadline that we set ourselves for after an event in the calendar. Statistically speaking, more than 90% of people fail with their New Year’s resolution by February. Why would that be? One of the most common reasons is because motivation has disappeared. Likewise, the people who wait until Monday to change, fail at some point or other. They may not fail in the first week, but at some stage, they will, because motivation has gone. If we truly want to change, we don’t have to wait for a new year, or for after the holiday season. We don’t have to wait for a specific day of the week, or even tomorrow. If we want to change and if we say enough is enough, we start right here, right now.
It is also important to consider the factors attributing to motivation. For those among us where motivation is externally driven, i.e. more money if we do something, external validation if we lose weight, it is a much more challenging undertaking sticking to new habits. For those of us who in fact link motivation intrinsically to an internal value, where achieving something means something to us and it becomes a necessity to achieve a goal, it will be much easier. This way, we understand why we do something even when it sucks. That is where discipline is our best friend because we do the thing even when we are not motivated.
So the point is that motivation is fleeting and it is discipline that keeps us going. Discipline means to do the things that we may not want to do but are necessary. When we don’t want to do a workout because we don’t feel like it, or we don’t want to eat the healthy food because we feel like the sugary treat, it is discipline that keeps us in line. Motivation will most certainly not be there when life is not going our way but discipline is at our side and we do it anyway. Discipline is making a commitment to ourselves that we are not doing something for the short-term, but we are changing our entire life little by little, day by day. Discipline is applying ourselves every single day, and do what we set out to do, regardless of us being ready, feeling like it, or having a mediocre day.
Find it within yourself to do the hard part, to suffer through the workout, the writing, the long meditation, the long hours of study, whatever it is. Find it within yourself to work hard on yourself to liberate yourself from the chains of the past and to start living the life that you want. It is the small things that we do every day that accumulate to the big things in the end. Love yourself enough to want better for yourself and keep working even when you don’t feel like it.