Motivation is simply defined as “a person’s desire or willingness to do something”.
I’m sure every one of us reading this blog post has a goal. It may not be a life-changing goal, but there is something we are working towards that we don’t currently have. Whether it is related to health and fitness, relationships and family, education and work, finances or spirituality and enlightenment, we all have something we want or need. If you think about it, for the majority of us, the goal (or the priority and importance that is put on it) may also change depending on various factors such as your mood, time of day or year or your current situation. So, because of this ‘situation dependency’, regardless of where your initial motivation or inspiration to achieve the goal came from, you will soon see that simply having a goal and the motivation to get started may not actually get you as far as you expect.
You see, the problem with motivation is that it wavers sooner than expected and could happen for any number of reasons: impatience, being overwhemed, lack of action, lack of gratitude, jealousy, or it could just be that you are no longer interested in achieving that specific goal (in which case you set the goal for the wrong reaons! But let’s leave that topic for another time). The initial motivation almost never lasts long enough to see you through to achieving your goal. We can all agree that motivation can be a fantastic booster in the beginning to get you started on your journey, but since it is so highly dependent on your current situation and your emotions – let’s face it, we as human beings living in this day and age are changing moods several times even in one day – the motivation you started with will not have the same effect on you in, say, a month’s time.
Let’s take an example of probably the most common goal around: losing weight and getting in shape. You’re busy watching your favourite reality show on TV and an advert comes up where you see a picture of a person who was overweight and unhappy, and then the screen changes to a ‘6 months later’ progress picture of what they look like now with a caption “looking and feeling the best I’ve felt in years!”.
Or even another example, which may be more relatable to other people, is a magazine article about an unemployed or recently retrenched individual who started a small online company from the back seat of his car that has grown into a multi-million-rand empire in just 5 years, and now he has a private island and is living in financial and time freedom.
So, having just seen or heard these amazing stories, you are suddenly filled with inspiration and hope, and you fully believe that you too can achieve these exceptional results! Great stuff: we are motivated and have ourselves a goal.
For the next few days or maybe weeks, you wake up an hour earlier or use your lunch break to get your work-out done, you put in the extra time and effort to plan your meals in a healthier way and you quit the secret late-night chocolate snacking. Things are looking promising. But after a bad break-up, or during that ‘time of the month’ or after a tough week at work, you go and demolish a large Domino’s pizza with extra cheese and a tub of Hagen Das praline ice cream. Shortly after licking the last bit off the lid, you think your dreams of fitting into your new skinny jeans are completely shattered. You skip your morning work-out the next day because you can’t find the will to get out of bed and face the world. A bit dramatic, I know, but you get my point…
During times like these, when you want to give up or when you think you’ve failed, you need to always look at the bigger picture. The critical information that those ‘overnight success’ adverts and ‘before and after pictures’ don’t tell you about, is all the hard work, blood, sweat and tears that went into getting there. And this is where self-discipline comes in.
Self-discipline is simply defined as “the ability to make yourself do things you know you should do when you don’t really want to do them” or “the ability to stop yourself from doing things you know you should not do when you really want to do them”. It is about being able to manage your behaviour in a way that ensures personal or universal improvement, and is one of the key skills to help you achieve your goals. Self-discipline involves more than just your emotion and focuses on being consistent and true to your purpose – it is about choosing between what you want NOW, and what you want MOST.
Looking at the difference between motivation and self-discipline another way, we can say that motivation is more concerned with the “why to do” aspect, while self-discipline is all about the “what or how to do” part. We know why we need to be healthy and fit. We know why we need to work hard. We know why we need to save. We know all that. But what we get stuck with is knowing what we need to do to sustain those goals and how to actually integrate the process into our lives and not just let it be a phase.
Unlike motivation, self-discipline is NOT that easy to come by or develop. You see, when you are motivated, getting started and making progress is easy. You’re excited. You’re pumped up. And decisive action is the logical follow-up. However, when the time comes to strengthen or develop self-discipline, you’re not at all enthusiastic about the task at hand and you would rather be doing literally anything else in the world. Another challenge is that many people actually shy away from talking about self-discipline and don’t even think to practice it because it is often associated with self-inflicted discomfort or pain – since the word “discipline” is often used as a euphemism for punishment.
However, contrary to this belief, practicing self-discipline is often satisfying and highly rewarding, and can be developed without the denial of happiness, joy, or comfort. It’s all about taking small and consistent actions to gradually develop good habits that serve your own dreams and goals, integrating those habits into your life, and ultimately creating a lifestyle that’s aligned with your purpose. This is one of the main thought principles behind many famous sayings and quotations about goal setting: “If you invest in the process rather than the outcome, you will be closer to the goal at the end of every day, whether you realise it or not”.
So, even though motivation can be the reason you started, it is your self-discipline that will help you finish.
Now we know we need to be more disciplined – great. But how do we physically stop ourselves from eating the pizza, or hitting the snooze button and putting off our morning run, or not buying the new cell-phone or pair of heels that just came out? There are countless sources that give you really helpful tips and tricks to enhance your discipline in a specific area and I invite you to explore them if this is something you would like to read more about. However, I have compiled a few methods that have personally helped me to be more disciplined and you can begin with these and start thinking about how you can implement them into your life. I would also love to know your thoughts on them as well as hear about any other techniques you know of that can assist with self-discipline.
1. Create an environment that makes it difficult to go ‘off-track’
If your aim is to wake up in the morning to work out, but you find yourself snoozing your alarm every 5 minutes for half an hour, try putting your phone on the other side of your room! This way you are forced to get out of bed to make the siren stop. To avoid unhealthy snacking, just don’t buy unhealthy snacks! Rather make healthier snack swaps, which are also tasty, and stock up on those instead.
By making these minor changes in your environment, we are, unknowingly, breaking bad habits and developing some new ones. And for the times when you do have a terribly bad day, and I’m sure all of you have heard this before, it helps to channel that energy into doing something physically productive. Whether it is going for a run, cycle or boxing, or doing a hobby like playing music or even some retail therapy! (but obviously not if trying to quit buying shoes is your goal).
2. Take baby steps
You know you didn’t get to where you are overnight, so don’t think you’re going to get out of it overnight. Many people try and change their entire routine in one big step at the beginning when they’re feeling excited and motivated; but this huge change hardly lasts a few days or weeks if you’re lucky. The important thing is that we need to make small, permanent changes to your environment or routine that can be integrated with your lifestyle and made sustainable in the long term.
3. Develop a process to deal with ‘slip-ups’ as (when) they happen
When you slip up, it helps to analyse the situation; think about the events leading up to that point. Make a mental note of the thoughts and emotions that you felt. Even though this is a lot easier said than done, you need to try and avoid getting into similar types of situations so that you make it easier for yourself stay on track.
There will be days when you will feel like you have failed. There will be days when even getting out of bed can feel like scaling Mt. Everest. That much is guaranteed. You can bet that every person has had their fair share of those. And you can also be sure that every person who has ever achieved a goal has thought of giving up for easier or less demanding pursuits. But they didn’t! Everyone, myself included, has fallen prey to temptations and distractions (more than once). The make-or-break difference was that they didn’t let the guilt, negative emotions or a ‘bad day’ paralyze them and forfeit the progress they had made so far.
Remember, you do not need to achieve 100%, 100% of the time! But you do need to put in 100%, 100% of the time.
4. Develop self-love
After talking about motivation and self-discipline, I want to stress to you that the reason you may want to change, or rather improve, yourself or your situation should never be because you hate yourself, it should be because you LOVE yourself! And because you know you deserve better and to be happier.
Everyone always talks about loving yourself and working on yourself, and it is 100% true when it comes to working towards your goals as well. Self-love is not a selfish act, in fact, self-love IS self-discipline. It is saying, you love and respect yourself too much to give up on your goals. It is saying that you love and respect yourself too much to give in to immediate, or temporary, pleasure at the expense of your long-term goals.
But as badly as we want to achieve our goals and stay on the right path, we are all human, and we are not perfect. And I think that this is so important to remember especially when you are having a bad day and are struggling to stick to your process. At those times, you need to think about and remember why you embarked on this journey in the first place. Think about what motivated you in the beginning. Think about how far you’ve come and how much work you’ve put in already. Visualize yourself in a year from now and love yourself enough to continue on the path to becoming the best version of yourself you can be.
“Remember why you started, celebrate how far you’ve come and visualise what achieving the goal will look like.”
5. Link your goal to a greater purpose – get involved in something bigger than yourself
Will Smith said that “Discipline is to forgo the immediate pleasure for the exchange of long-term SELF RESPECT”. We earn self-respect through self-discipline and self-love. And with self-respect, you can motivate and inspire others by allowing them to respect you. Even though it is a huge responsibility to accept and take on, it is incredibly humbling and rewarding to hear someone say something like “because of you, I didn’t give up”, or “I didn’t think it was possible until you helped me realise”.
For a long time, specifically when I was younger, I was not self-disciplined; I couldn’t finish the things I started. Whether it was to get in shape, or to finish learning a song on my guitar, or to finish reading a book, once it got difficult or boring, I just stopped. Only once I started attaching my goals to a greater purpose that was much bigger than me, did I find the will and develop the self-discipline to follow through and achieve the things I set out for myself.
On my 25th birthday, I posted a picture and captioned it as follows:
“Of all the 25 years I’ve been living, breathing, seeing and feeling, I have to say that my life is the best it’s been for as long as I can remember.
Things aren’t perfect, they never will be. I still have those days when I don’t want to get out of bed in the morning, they will always happen every now and again. But I’ve never felt more content and happy with my life and everything in it. I’ve never felt more strong, fit and healthy (mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually and every other way) as I do now.
…
Don’t give up on your dreams. Don’t lose hope on what you want to achieve.
…
You may not believe it is possible until it happens to you. And for that reason, I hope that it happens. I also hope it won’t take you 25 years! But even if it does, I hope you have the strength, patience and discipline to get there.”
Now, the reason I told you this is because my dream is to inspire and motivate people to achieve their OWN goals. And what I’ve learnt while trying to do this is that people respond better when they see the advice coming from someone who practices it themselves – you wouldn’t take dieting advice from an overweight person, or financial advice from someone who’s broke. These are some of the values I like to adhere to and incorporate into my lifestyle and everything I do. And I think that when you are able to change and improve the life of someone who you love, it is honestly the most rewarding feeling and words can’t really explain it.
6. Stop waiting for the ‘right time’ to start. Just do it!
So, even though I don’t know what each person reading this blog wants to achieve, or what your personal or life goals are; for me to inspire you, it actually doesn’t matter… I only need you to simply make a start. Especially if it is something you’ve wanted to do for a while. A year from now you are going to wish you started today! So, just think; what if, after you read my blog, every decision you made was deliberate? What if every decision you made from this moment forward was one you took in the direction of your goal? Just think how different and how much more amazing your life could be in 10 years, or 5 years, or even in just a year’s time if every decision you made was that powerful and aligned to your purpose.
Come on world! Get motivated, get disciplined and show yourself some love! Do this and you can leave behind an inspiring legacy of success and improve the lives of your family, friends and colleagues, but most importantly, your own.
“Life is too short to wake up in the morning with the regret that you didn’t find start working on your purpose earlier. You CAN achieve your goals. I won’t say it’ll be easy; but I will promise you it’ll be worth it.”
Bye for now!