What do you think about the entire motivational angle that people use to get into entrepreneurship and the concept of motivation alone. What do you think about that?
For me, Motivation can come and go – If I don’t have my cup of coffee in the morning motivation is extremely low. People often think that increasing and improving motivation is the answer to getting things done, but from what I see Motivation is really not enough. What do you think about that entire concept?
There are days, i’m sure everyone feels this – you feel it, where you think you can take on the world, and in that day you should get loads of work done, and then the next day you feel low, you don’t feel like doing anything. You notice by looking at the people that are really successful, you look at the successful guys in your field that you look up to – they don’t rely on motivation to get things done – they rely on Discipline. People should not get the two confused – motivation kind of goes up and down. I’m sure you’ve seen it – I feel it all the time. It comes down to having the discipline to get you through the times when you are low on motivation, but also the discipline when you are high on motivation! Because when you are highly motivated and you wanna wake up at 1am and you wanna work through to 11pm, but the thing is the next day that completely burns you out.
So its having the discipline when you are uber motivated not to destroy yourself for the next 3 days. So motivation for me, is exactly like when jay shares his quotes, when you heard them or you read them you get motivated – that can last a few minutes, a few hours, maybe a day. Motivation takes you really nowhere – its all about having the discipline and the structure in place to take you through the low times.
Have you ever heard that saying ‘easier said than done’? I hate that statement – as it fits exactly with this entire talk about motivation vs discipline . its a lot easier to say things, it’s a lot easier to get motivated and to want to do things, but its a lot harder to actually do them. Of course its easier SAID than DONE. You’re only saying the words, it doesn’t take much effort to conjure up the desire or want to do something – you have to actually go ahead and, you’ve got to put your hands to the plough and push through the high grass. I can want to do plenty of things I want to be successful in my business – my wife who works in a corporate job – she can want plenty of things, but unless we actually do something, its not gonna do anything for us, you know, one of the things I absolutely hate about our space are the people who complain all the time about whether or not programs that they purchase work, ok.
One of the things that absolutely drives me up the wall – I literally feel like shoving a screwdriver in my ears, everytime I hear it. There are so many people that are this “thing doesn’t work” – this information doesn’t work for me, it all stems from the fact that they have the motivation that they want, but they don’t have the discipline they need in order to make these things work. Somebody buys something and then they go ahead and put it into practice into a day or 2. That is not discipline, doing something just once – discipline is doing something over and over and over. The first thing people have to realize is that its something you have to work on every single day. Discipline isn’t something that just comes – you have to work on it every single day – its a mind set shift, ok so you shift your mind. You talk about people want to push the button once – they want that instant gratification.
Business, especially mid to long term business plans all about delaying that gratification. Instead of looking for instant gratification, which as humans we are kind of programmed still aren’t we ? We want the results now – we want that thing now. Its all about delaying the gratification, understanding that delayed gratification is actually a good thing. People see it as a bad thing, its a very good thing. Sometimes the quick wins, the instant gratification can actually hurt you long term. So its understanding that you’re in the long game. So whatever you do – understand delayed gratification. Now, how do you learn that delayed gratification that comes with the discipline, it comes with daily disciplines that you need to build, day in day out. The first way to build discipline in your life is to start with your personal life. So when we think of business, we have to build a solid foundation of ourselves. So that might be things like building the discipline to wake up the same time every day.
A lot of people know the benefits of a simple thing like meditation. A lot of people don’t talk about things spiritual or whatever. But meditate at the same time every morning, building the discipline to do that thing at that time. Building a discipline, a routine, where you do a certain thing at a certain time. That is where discipline comes from, doing the same thing over and over again, by building time. We all know for example that reading books is immensely important for our development as people, development in business. Making the time and planning the time being disciplined with the time to do that. Allowing time for gratification – another thing – when you delay gratification, or gratitude. You build in the disciplines you can always be looking towards the future, and when you always look towards the future it can build anxiety, it can build stress. It can build things in you – this is what it done for me, it started to build stress because you’re looking towards the future and you’re constantly thinking how do I stop this from happening, how do i make sure this happens. So what you need to do is build time into your routine for gratification – so be happy with where you are at now. Be grateful for the money you’ve got or the time you’ve got or the job you’ve got, the family you’ve got, the friends you’ve got, because that allows for the delayed gratification to be less stressful.
This is an actual proven scientific situation. Are you familiar with the marshmallow study ? Well in 1972, stanford – stanford if you guys don’t know is one of the most elite schools in the US. These Psychologists created this study back in 1972 where they placed kids in a room and they let them sit in a room with a Marshmallow. They said, children, eat 1 marshmallow now, and that’s all you get. But if you wait fifteen minutes after I leave the room i’ll give you 2 marshmallows instead. A lot of kids opted to receive the single marshmallow, and that’s it, right then and there. But then the other children that opted to wait received a 2nd marshmallow. They followed these children for about 15 to 20 years, absolutely amazing study by the way guys – look it up by typing in ‘the marshmallow experiment’ if you’re interested in reading it. They showed that the children that had the ability to wait in terms of gratification, who were able to wait the 15 minutes to get the 2nd marshmallow – they outlasted, and outperformed the other kids who didn’t wait for the 2nd marshmallow, in life altogether in success, because they were able to delay gratification. They were able to delay that immediate dopamine hit in their brain. They said – you know what – I will get 2 if I wait 15 minutes, rather than the ones who simply asked for their reward immediately. The same thing goes with anything – the longer you can put off the payoff, the better off you actually are.
