The One Reason Most People Wont Be Successful

culled from:grassrootssuccess.net


Did you guess it?

That bullshit word that begins with M – motivation. It’s something that everyone wants and thinks they need to succeed. “If I could just get motivated, I’d be able to lose weight”. “If I could just find the motivation, I’d start my own business”. Whenever these people come across someone that lives life to the fullest and does the things they want,  they automatically assume that they have some secret. It’s as though all the “motivated” people have some huge inner fire gifted by the gods that pushes them on to conquer the world every day – and that way of thinking is exactly why most people will never be successful.

Jim Wendler, a powerlifter who has squatted over 1,000 pounds, said something recently that should be your greatest guide if you want success: “motivation is for newbies, grinding is for veterans”. Everyone is motivated with a new pursuit. It’s new, it’s exciting and you’re on the path of changing your life and learning something different. Then after a few weeks, it becomes less fun, it loses it’s excitement and you start to notice it isn’t easy and it’s going to take practice. Most people will then mistake this for not enjoying it anymore. They “lose their motivation” and stop doing it. If that’s you, this is the reason you aren’t good at anything.

Whatever you want to do, it is going to become less fun after the first few weeks. If you want to get really good at something, you’re going to have to stop searching for this bullshit thing called motivation, because all that is is an excuse. I had a colleague tell me recently that she just “couldn’t get motivated to go to the gym” – her gym happened to be a treadmill, rower and cross trainer in her own house. While my mind was busy trying to put itself back together after being blown apart, I managed to say to her “the next time you’re sitting on the couch and thinking that you aren’t motivated, say to yourself out loud ‘I just can’t get motivated enough to get up off the couch, go to the next room and jump on the treadmill’, with any luck you’ll be so ashamed of yourself you’ll just get up and do it”.

And therein lies the key – you just have to do it. Do you think I’m “motivated” to write all the time? Inspiration for good material doesn’t just come most of the time, I have to already be in the act of writing and then ideas start coming to me and it builds momentum. During my first couple of years in judo, I got pounded into the mat most nights of the week by people that competed internationally. It wasn’t fun, and it sure as hell wasn’t “motivating” because there wasn’t any end in sight. It was simply a matter of sticking to it and continually turning up, knowing that eventually I’d get better.

The other thing is, you need to make things conducive to you doing the activity once it starts losing its luster. I have more free time at night, but I never write anything new at that time because my brain doesn’t work. Instead I get into work an hour early in the morning to do it, because I can get more, better quality writing done in that hour than in twice the time at night. Likewise I don’t go home to change for the gym after work, because the temptation will be there to stay and play with my daughter, so I change at work and go straight there.