Discipline over motivation

What is the motivation? Where does it come from and where does it go? Why is it always looked for? Let’s figure it out. Think back to a moment when you were super motivated, if you ever were. You were driven by your idea so much that you couldn’t sleep, you wanted to do it and nothing else. This is a great feeling that energized you to move on. Any obstacles were treated as just temporary inconveniences. Motivation is capable of really cool things. But where does it come from? It’s simple: first, an idea appears. And if motivation is already a flash of sulfur on a match, then an idea is the movement of a match along a box. Together, they light you up. It can be the idea of creating your own business, podcast, athletic body, stable life, and a million other options. And they have one thing in common: you see yourself in it. You imagine how cool it would be to have your own coffee shop, to develop it as a business, you already have the design of this cafe or kiosk drawn in your head, how you will hire staff or stand behind the bar yourself, how it will allow you to quit your job and work for yourself. You can see it. You want it. This motivates you and you are already looking for the best espresso machine for your unique and definitely successful coffee shop in the future. Or another example. You’ve been to a martial arts competition where real modern-day gladiators enter the ring or tatami and compete to determine the strongest among them. You admire their courage, skills, movements, physical strength and mastery. You are excited by the noise and clamor of the crowd supporting their favorite, by strangers for whom the star in the ring is an idol. And you want to be that idol. You are attracted to this lifestyle and tomorrow you sign up for a gym to get on the championship track. Or at the same event, you hear the announcer introducing the participants with his loud, articulate voice that gets to your bones. His “Let’s get ready for a ramble!!” gives you shivers down your spine. And more than anything else, you want to have a voice as powerful as that. You want to speak beautifully, clearly, distinctly. You want to be listened to and heard, so that no one would think of interrupting the sweet, honey-like flow of words from your mouth. So that you can lead thousands and millions, maybe even the whole country. And you’re already looking for public speaking courses near your home. That’s how motivation comes into play. An ambitious idea that captures you so much that it displaces everything in its path. A goal that you want to achieve and you know why. You don’t yet fully understand how, but you see yourself with the final result: your own coffee shop on the corner (or maybe a restaurant chain), a champion of a popular promotion with a multi-million fan base and a good contract, the best speaker who gathers stadiums and sends shivers down everyone’s spine. And even if your goals are not so ambitious. Even if it’s just a desire to have six-pack abs and the ability to keep the conversation going in the group, these are also goals, and they also generate motivation. Or they don’t, if you’re lazy or not ambitious. Then everything is pretty simple. If you have no desires, you have no problems with motivation to fulfill them. I’m sure you’ll agree that the word motivation is most often found in the phrases “find motivation,” “keep motivated,” and “maintain motivation.” So why is it such an inert thing? Why is it so hard to find and easy to lose? Again, it all depends on the idea. What if it’s not your idea? What if the idea of creating a coffee shop was imposed by some YouTube blogger who said that 9-5 work is slavery to a “master,” that it’s better to work for yourself and control your life, and that a coffee shop is the easiest business you can start tomorrow. What if your desire to become a professional athlete is just a desire for public recognition, and you saw this recognition for the first time at a big event last weekend? What if you were just angry at someone’s words in a dialog, that you can’t even connect two words without inserting “eh” and it hurt you (this is also motivation, but it’s destructive motivation, and it’s better not to deal with it at all)? In other words, what if all these ideas are not yours, but imposed by someone else, but you really want to believe in them? Well, in this case, I advise you to first pass it through the filter of critical thinking and look into your notebook of values and dreams, if you have one. Does it have anything in common with this list and is it really worth your attention? If so, the motivation will arise by itself, but if not and you have to look for it, the idea is not yours, leave it alone. It will come to you at the right time, don’t force yourself. Let’s get back to the ideas that are really yours. They light you up like a torch, and you begin to illuminate the previously unknown dark corners of your desires and at first you move rapidly towards your goal, but over time, your motivation fades, or even dissolves forever, leaving only a memory: “I once had a million-dollar idea…“. Because ideas bump into reality, and reality is not as simple as it seems at first glance. It turns out that in your neighborhood there are already 1-2 coffee kiosks in every potential location, you can’t rent a good space for adequate money, you need not only a coffee machine to make coffee, but also a hundred other things that you need to buy in the first months of operation, you don’t know the suppliers or the conditions in this market, and finally, you asked knowledgeable people to calculate the budget, and to start a coffee kiosk you need to sell your apartment. Or you came to a fight gym and immediately asked to spar to quickly feel the spirit of a real warrior, but only felt humiliated by your helplessness and a severe headache the next morning. Also, going to 5-6 training sessions a week is very exhausting and takes up all your free time, and your trainer predicts that you will be able to take part in a professional fight in about two years. Or you go to a public speaking course and instead of getting the magic pill of fluency, you repeat some strange sounds that look like grunts. You encounter everyday problems, it turns out that everything is not as simple as it seemed at first, and you see no progress at all. Your idea is not what you imagined. Or rather, the way to it. And you start to fade away. Your enthusiasm and motivation collide with the harsh reality, and it becomes increasingly difficult for you to move toward your goal. This is often where you reach a dead end. It’s dead because your motivation dies. Either you find it again, or you also bury your idea. Therefore, motivation is not a reliable and stable thing. You shouldn’t rely on it alone. But there is something more effective. At least for me, it’s something called discipline. In my case, it is more important than motivation. Let me explain why. To be motivated, you always ask yourself why you should do it and whether you should do it at all, you need to back up your decision, you need answers. Discipline, on the other hand, does not ask questions and does not require answers. You have set a goal, you clearly understand why you need it, you understand the complexity and duration of the process, and you just go towards it in small but steady steps. Discipline works great in routine tasks when you need to do similar things over a long period of time. You don’t ask yourself whether you need to get up at 6:00 a.m. today so that your coffee shop can be open by 7:00 a.m. and serve morning customers. You just set your alarm for 6 every day and get up by it. Your coffee shop has to be open at 7 every day, you need this stability, it creates a loyal audience of customers, which is the key to stable income. You don’t ask if you’re going to work out tomorrow. Your training schedule is like a job. You can miss them when you get sick or die. This is the only way to develop champion skills in this craft. You don’t ask if you need to do diction exercises today and practice your speeches in front of a mirror or on camera. You have time in your calendar for this, allocated in advance. And during that time, you do what you have to do. This way, you reduce the risk of getting off track because one morning you didn’t find motivation, another morning you didn’t feel like you had the energy, then some meeting or holiday came up and all progress went down the drain. And in this way, you also deprive yourself of the need to make a daily choice. Should I do this or not do that today? Such choices are very tiring and take up a lot of your energy and attention, which are very valuable in our time. Discipline is freedom. The freedom to choose who you want to be. It’s understanding the need to do something against your will, even sometimes forcing yourself. It helps you to become the best version of yourself and not rely only on fickle motivation. But this approach requires one very important thing: clarity. You have to be clear about why you are doing it and what you want to get. You need to know the answer to your questions: Why do I get up so early? Why do I almost live in the gym? What will these daily practices in front of the mirror give me? If you have them, discipline will help you achieve what you want. Your grand vision of life, who you imagine yourself to be and who you want to be, forms this clarity. Goals and ideas are created from these images. Ideas that are motivated and backed by discipline turn into habits. Habits turn into a lifestyle. And this lifestyle makes you the person you saw in your grand vision. A simple, step-by-step plan for a successful life.

As I wrote these lines, I caught myself thinking that I don’t have this simple plan right now. There is no clarity, and neither is the notebook with my life values and global plans. I have never had any problems with discipline and motivation. Instead, I have always lacked this one component - clarity. I want to figure out what I’m striving for, what I want to get, and answer the question “Where do I see myself in 5 years?” If you also cannot formulate an answer to this question for yourself, but would really like to, in one of the next posts I will try to show you what I have done. Maybe it will motivate you, and maybe you will find something useful for yourself.

In the drafts of this story, I had a plan to prove why discipline is more important than motivation, but in the process I realized that this is not completely true. They complement each other. And if motivation is a flash of sulfur on a match, an idea is the movement of a match against a box, then discipline is the right angle of inclination of the match, which will ensure its long and continuous burning.