Motivation is Temporary, Discipline is the Game-Changer
For a few weeks, I have felt unmotivated, even a little lost 😶🌫️
I’ve been struggling at work to do more than just the bare minimum to “run the show”. I do what’s needed, but not more. Some might find that normal—that’s what a lot of people do every day. But, first, if you know me, that’s not really me; second, when you run your own business and you want to grow, you need to do more than the minimum… otherwise you become stagnant or you decline.
I won’t go into the details of why I’ve been feeling this way… that’s a story for another day.
👉 What I want to talk about today is Motivation and Discipline.
Often, we rely on motivation to do things… especially in our personal lives. “I don’t feel like going to the gym today”, “I’m not motivated to do the chores”, “I can’t be arsed going out today”, etc… You know this feeling right?
In our professional lives—discipline has to kick-in a little bit. Most of us here need to make money, so whether we are motivated or not, we need to do the work (at least the bare minimum) to get the cash at the end of the month to pay those bills 💸!
But yesterday was the last day of the month, and I thought to myself: “this feeling of being unmotivated is not going away, however you don’t have the luxury to be able to rely on the bare minimum, you need to get your shit together and get back to it if you want to keep going”. Little kick in the butt to myself!
So how do I listen to myself and get going, even if I don’t feel like it? That’s where discipline comes in! It’s a muscle that I have been developing since 2018 by building habits. You don’t become consistent with something long-term relying on sole motivation. Discipline is what makes you going when you don’t feel like it… because let’s be honest, it will happen, we all have moments like that, no shame admitting it!
So in my conversation with myself, I said “ok, tomorrow is the 1st of the month, let’s use that, fresh start!”. And I went back to basics. If you can’t motivate yourself to do something, set things up so you do it. I decided to plan my week, I’ll be working on X for 2h everyday, then I’ll do Y, then Z. And I will do this for the entire month. I will stick to the plan. I know myself, after a few weeks, it will become second nature, motivated or not I will do these things “mechanically”… and by that point motivation would have hopefully came back so it feels good to do it anyway!
It’s the same for everything. Work, gym, meditation, tidying your home, whatever… we can’t be motivated to do everything all the time. But sometimes things are necessary, sometimes we know it is the right things to do even if we don’t want to do it.
In those situations, when the “motivation-engine” ran out of fuel, use your “discipline-engine”. Use your grit, your will-power, hustle your way through this moment and you will get to the other side with a sense of pride for getting this shit done even though you didn’t feel like it 💪!