“At some point, the pain of not doing it becomes greater than the pain of doing it.” — Pressfield……
let's talk about motivation and what is it really…
For the longest time, I used to sit still on the couch waiting and waiting and waiting for the magic to happen, hoping a piece of inspiration or motivation will strike me like a bolt of lightning so I can do the work and keep moving but it didn't come, there was no magic spell to get me moving and everything stayed the same and around that time I come across this article by James Clear and this one line “ Motivation is often the result of action, not the cause of it. Getting started, even in very small ways, is a form of active inspiration that naturally produces momentum”…changed everything,
and that is when I realized that I have been doing this the wrong way all this time and that motivation is not magic. It does not come in a bottle. There is no little blue pill for it, it is just a short-term emotion that will naturally fade with time. And it doesn’t really matter if you get the results you want or not.
You have to move first, do the action first, and get things done so that you can activate this emotion.
a quote I love:
motivation is waiting until you feel like doing something before doing it.Discipline on the other hand, is doing it regardless of how you’re feeling about it.
and to stay motivated in the long run:
Set a goal that interests you and visualize it daily either when you're going to bed or in the morning.
Break things into small chunks, by splitting them into smaller pieces, by doing this you increase your sense of self-efficacy, the belief that we can successfully accomplish a goal.
Tackle procrastination: Don’t make excuses foe why you haven’t already started. Instead, try to uncover the real reason for the delay and get to work immediately. The best way to begin something is just to begin as Life is a constant balance between giving in to the ease of distraction or overcoming the pain of discipline.
Keep it fun. If you seriously want to stay motivated, find a way to do the task and make it fun at the same time.
Use productive procrastination: give yourself permission to procrastinate in small ways on a regular basis, so you won't have to procrastinate in big ways. you can do achieve this by giving yourself a 10 min break where you do whatever you want before you start any task.
keep a distraction list: Whenever you set out to do your task keep a small notebook, quickly jot down any thought, feeling, memory, or any other distractor you have by this you will ensure that you stay focused on the task at the hand and at the same time If there’s anything actually important, in your distraction list you will have to deal with it later.
finally a quote I love:
Motivation, broadly speaking, operates on the erroneous assumption that a particular mental or emotional state is necessary to complete a task
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