“When your feelings are screaming that you’ve had enough … override that emotion with concrete logic and willpower that says one thing: I don’t stop.” — Jocko Willink, Retired Navy Seal Officer
Nobody likes the over-the-top motivational speaker. It’s a good thing that this quote doesn’t exactly come from one.
The last blog post went in detail on the best way of adapting to the things life throws at you — allow yourself room in your schedule to adapt. What I didn’t explain, however, was how to push yourself to follow that schedule and not slack off.
Here’s the thing. A majority of today’s motivational speakers are all repeating the same thing. Usually it’s something along the lines of “Get up and GRIND from the moment you wake up to the moment you collapse. Only work. Don’t rest at all. Keep going. Go, go, go, go, go.”
Although sometimes this is exactly what we need, the human psyche can’t be moved forward by the same thing all the time. In order to work around this problem, most people set aside a lot of time to rest. This method works pretty well, and for people who want to blend in with the rest of society, it’s probably the way to go. And the truth is, there’s no shame in blending in. There’s no shame in not being a millionaire. Our culture has a bad habit of trying to convince everyone that if they aren’t rich, they’re failing. It’s important to understand that this isn’t true for everyone.
That being said, some people desperately want to stand out from their peers. Some people desperately want to be noticed by people they look up to, and some people desperately want to become a millionaire. In order to truly stand out from all your peers, you need to change your mindset into something that allows you to work all day for almost every day of the week, allowing one or two days for you to rest and recover. But yes, you still need to rest. Otherwise your body will burn out. Don’t try to convince yourself otherwise.
In order to go all day for five or six days of the week, you need to form two sides of your mind: emotion and logic. Jocko Willink sums it up beautifully in the quote at the top of this article. The thing is, people burn out. It’s just what they do. They run out of motivation. First off, get rid of motivation. Allow yourself to understand that you’re not always going to be motivated to work. Replace motivation with discipline. Make yourself finish the task, even when you don’t want to. When discipline runs out, use logic. The idea is to fuel yourself on emotion to work towards your goals, then use logic when your emotions can’t keep you going. By the time logic fails, it’s usually a bit easier to pick your emotions back up and tell yourself to keep working. Logic and Emotion both remind you that you can’t stop until your goal is reached.
Understanding how to use Emotion and Logic to drive yourself makes it easier for you to achieve your goals or, in this case, stick to your schedule. Then, as we know by now, your daily schedules (otherwise known as habits — see past blog posts for details on those) slowly carry you towards success.
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What do you use to keep yourself disciplined? Do you reward yourself immediately after? Do you think about your end goal? Or do you try to find joy in what you’re doing? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to comment them down below! I’d also appreciate it if you liked this post and shared it with your friends and family — they might thank you for sharing this information later on! Stay tuned for future blog posts every Monday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, and try to be the reason someone smiles today 🙂
— Chris